Full Text: Progress in China's Human Rights in 2014 (7)

The construction of core socialist values gathering momentum. China's human rights will not be able to make progress without the construction of core socialist values. They are supplementary to each other. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, core socialist values, namely, prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity and friendship have been advocated, fostered and implemented in all sectors of society. Core socialist values are the common ideals and spiritual pillars of the Chinese people. In 2014 the state renewed its efforts to promote human rights education, and advanced the construction of core socialist values, launching volunteer services and programs inculcating filial piety education, integrity education, thrift education, cultivating and inheriting fine family traditions, school mottoes, entrepreneurship, fine village traditions and festival culture, and publicizing public service advertisements titled "Our Values." We intensified the building of civilized cities, towns, villages, and units, and exhorted Chinese tourists to behave themselves. We presented role models representing the spirit of our time through the online column "365 moral models." Recommendations for role models and good deeds totaled over 40,000 throughout that year, and by the end of 2014 the page featuring this topic on weibo.com at the website Sina was read by more than 170 million people, exerting a positive influence on society.

Freedom of speech better protected. In 2014 China published 46.5 billion copies of newspapers, 3.2 billion copies of periodicals, and 8.4 billion copies of books, with 6.12 copies of books per person. By the end of 2014 the population of netizens in China was 650 million, and the Internet penetration rate was 47.9 percent. Of all the netizens, 508 million were smart phone users, an increase of 76.83 million over 2013, registering an increase rate of 17.8 percent. The users of the top three Internet applications instant messaging, search engine and netnews were 588 million, 522 million and 519 million, respectively. The number of online video users was 433 million, microblog users 249 million, and Wechat accounts over eight million, with its active domestic and overseas accounts per month close to 500 million. The public can air opinions, and raise criticisms and suggestions freely through the news media, and discuss problems of this country and society. The government encourages enterprises to provide various Internet services to the public in accordance with the law so as to create a good environment for the public to acquire and exchange information. A cleaner cyber space is becoming an ever important place for the public to get information and make their voices heard.

Social organizations playing their roles better. Renewed efforts are being made to promote the direct registration of social organizations, providing more favorable conditions and an institutional guarantee for citizens to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests, express their legitimate demands, participate in the management of public affairs and engage in social services through these social organizations. In 2014 the social organizations registered at the Ministry of Civil Affairs totaled 600,000, an increase of 11.1 percent over the previous year; among them, 307,000 were social groups, with year-on-year growth of 7.3 percent; 4,044 were foundations, a year-on-year growth of 15.7 percent; and 289,000 were non-governmental nonprofit units, a year-on-year growth of 15.1 percent. Meanwhile, the government continued to outsource services from social organizations. In 2014 it allocated a budget of 200 million yuan to initiate 448 projects, with supporting funds of 166 million yuan to assist social organizations to serve society, directly benefiting over 2.35 million people and training about 20,000 heads of social organizations. (mo