At Global Post, Human Rights Watch’s Maya Wang assesses the first hundred days of Xi Jinping’s presidency, and catalogs a series of discouraging episodes on the human rights front.
It’s probably unrealistic to expect Xi to turn around long-standing Chinese government practices within 100 days. But it is not unreasonable to hope that a new leadership serious about fundamental reforms would back off punishing individuals who are pressing the government to fulfill precisely those promises.
[…] It is not too late for Xi’s government to begin making meaningful changes. But if after another hundred days the list of activists and family members who are being persecuted is still growing, Xi’s rhetoric will not be credible.
Chinese people are still waiting for real progress, and a failure to deliver political and social reforms is likely to exacerbate the serious “civil unrest” that Xi has warned about. [Source]
