(Bangkok) - The Chinese government intensified its repression across the country in 2025, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2026. 

President Xi Jinping mobilized the government to impose strict ideological conformity and loyalty to him and the Chinese Communist Party. Tibetans, Uyghurs, and other communities with distinct identities, including members of unofficial churches, face the most severe suppression of rights. Government repression of Hong Kong has also escalated.

"The Chinese government under Xi Jinping has amassed an increasingly disastrous human rights record, expanding and deepening its crackdown on fundamental freedoms," said Maya Wang, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "Foreign governments have largely been unwilling to push back against the threats the Chinese government poses to the international human rights system, let alone within China."

In the 529-page World Report 2026, its 36th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices inmore than100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Philippe Bolopion writes that breaking the authoritarian wave sweeping the world is the challenge of a generation. With the human rights system under unprecedented threat from the Trump administration and other global powers, Bolopion calls on rights-respecting democracies and civil society to build a strategic alliance to defend fundamental freedoms.

The Chinese government should immediately end its crimes against humanity and other abuses in Xinjiang, revoke Hong Kong's national security laws, allow independent observers access to Tibet and Xinjiang, and free detained human rights defenders throughout China, Human Rights Watch said.

Source: Human Rights Watch