http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012/world-report-2012-china
Against a backdrop of rapid socio-economic change and modernization, China continues to be an authoritarian one-party state that imposes sharp curbs on freedom of expression, association, and religion; openly rejects judicial independence and press freedom; and arbitrarily restricts and suppresses human rights defenders and organizations, often through extra-judicial measures.
The government also censors the internet; maintains highly repressive policies in ethnic minority areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia; systematically condones—with rare exceptions—abuses of power in the name of “social stability” ; and rejects domestic and international scrutiny of its human rights record as attempts to destabilize and impose “Western values” on the country. The security apparatus—hostile to liberalization and legal reform—seems to have steadily increased its power since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China’s “social stability maintenance” expenses are now larger than its defense budget.
Although the 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the subversion of state power and the protection of state secret clauses in their law system to imprison those who are critical of the government. The government is also heavily involved in censoring news through the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China, even though no publicly known state law explicitly authorizes it or any other department of the PRC's government to engage in such activities.
In November 2005 Jiang Wenran, acting director of the China Institute at the University of Alberta, said this system was one of the most strictly enforced 'apartheid' structures in modern world history. He stated "Urban dwellers enjoy a range of social, economic and cultural benefits while peasants, the majority of the Chinese population, are treated as second-class citizens".
The discrimination enforced by the hukou system became particularly onerous in the 1980s after hundreds of millions of migrant workers were forced out of state corporations, co-operatives and other institutions. The system classifies workers as "urban" or "rural", and attempts by workers classified as "rural" to move to urban centers were tightly controlled by the Chinese bureaucracy, which enforced its control by denying access to essential goods and services such as grain rations, housing, and health care, and by regularly closing down migrant workers' private schools.
The hukou system also enforced pass laws similar to those in South Africa, with "rural" workers requiring six passes to work in provinces other than their own, and periodic police raids which rounded up those without permits, placed them in detention centers, and deported them. As in South Africa, the restrictions placed on the mobility of migrant workers were pervasive, and transient workers were forced to live a precarious existence in company dormitories or shanty towns, and suffering abusive consequences. Anita Chan furthers that China's household registration and temporary residence permit system has created a situation analogous to the passbook system in apartheid South Africa, which were designed to regulate the supply of cheap labor.