At a House hearing punctuated by the wails of a Chinese woman mourning a baby that was forcibly aborted 17 years ago, lawmakers said there were signs that increased domestic and international pressure on Chinese officials to end the country's one-child policy was beginning to have an effect.
The daring escape of Chinese legal advocate Chen Guang-cheng after 1 1/2 years of illegal home confinement was nothing short of miraculous. It took the world - not to mention Chinese officials and Mr. Chen's guards - by complete surprise.
The blind Chinese lawyer at the center of a diplomatic storm between Washington and Beijing is a taboo topic in each capital. Neither side wants the biggest human-rights issue between the two since Tiananmen Square to disrupt high-level strategic and economic talks set to begin on Thursday.
U.S. and Chinese officials are ironing out a deal to secure American asylum for a blind Chinese legal activist who fled house arrest, and an agreement is likely before Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives this week, a U.S. rights campaigner said Monday.
A blind legal activist escaped house arrest in his Chinese village for American officials' protection, activists said Saturday, creating a diplomatic dilemma for the U.S. and Beijing days ahead of a visit by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
A blind legal activist fled house arrest in his rural China village and made it to a secret location in Beijing on Friday, setting off a frantic police search for him and those who helped him, activists said.
Nearly 50 members of an underground Beijing church were detained Sunday and its leaders were kept under house arrest as part of a crackdown on the unregistered congregation, a U.S.-based rights group said.
Christianity is growing fast in mainland China; the faithful number as many as hundreds of millions. Christians, however, are a persecuted minority in a country where worship is limited to the state-sanctioned deity Mao Zedong.
Leading Chinese Christian dissidents blasted the Obama administration Thursday, saying it had done virtually nothing to advance the cause of religious freedom.
