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From: World Tibet Network Weekly Digest, April 14/20 1995

International pressure, both bilateral and multilateral, has always

been important in promoting change within China, and it has become even more crucial as economic ties between China and the outside world have grown. The UN's human rights mechanisms can be an effective avenue for addressing both individual cases and systematic patterns of human rights abuses within China, since UN intervention has a unique legitimacy and the Chinese government has, despite rhetoric to the contrary, explicitly accepted various UN standards on rights.

[...]

We have focussed on three aspects in this work: firstly, pressing

the Chinese government to ratify the human rights instruments and accept

international monitoring; secondly, increasing scrutiny of China's record by providing information to UN monitoring bodies; and thirdly, informing the Chinese public about UN standards, mechanisms and activities.

THE MACRO APPROACH: SETTING STANDARDS

We have urged the Chinese government to recognize international human rights standards by signing on to more UN human rights treaties, particularly the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Today, 130 countries have ratified the former and 132 the latter. Although it is one of only five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China has yet to sign either treaty. Both domestic and international pressure are needed to induce the Chinese government to take this important step.

[...]

HRIC has also been among those pressing for China to increase

transparency, specifically to allow investigative visits by UN special

rapporteurs and working groups and to withdraw reservations, such as that attached when China signed the Convention Against Torture (CAT), which states that the CAT treaty body may not conduct investigations of alleged abuses. In a recent positive development, the Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance went on a mission to China in November 1994. However, requests from the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to make such a visit have been rejected three years in a row, while China's talks with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on access to Chinese prisons do not appear to have made any progress, as Beijing wishes to impose conditions on any visits which would not be acceptable to the ICRC.

[...]