390 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 3 / 2014 U.S. Embassy that almost “unleashed a diplomatic conflict”20 as, when Washington obtained permission to allow for the departure of Fang Lizhi, it was agreed with Beijing that they would not provide asylum in their embassies again. Upon agreement between both parties, Chen left the embassy and was admitted to hospital. Days later he was given permission to travel to the United States with his wife and two children to study law. During the first two decades following its introduction, the one child policy was also blamed for numerous death sentences imposed on doctors and sonographers who, in contradiction of the law, informed pregnant mothers of the gender of their foetus and helped them obtain an abortion if it was a girl. China strictly forbade doctors from informing parents of the gender of their child during pregnancy to avoid a gender imbalance, because, particularly in rural areas, female foeticide was common. The death penalty is one of the main concerns for the European Union, Amnesty International and many other international NGOs when considering the human rights situation in China – a country in which more people are executed each year than in the rest of the world. Beijing has agreed to reform the Criminal Procedure Code so as to strengthen legal aid and controls in trials that could end with the death penalty. The new authorities are inclined to abolish the death penalty for economic crimes. In 2013, China also decided to stop using the organs of those executed for transplants. CORRUPTION Most Chinese citizens believe that corruption is the cancer that is poisoning society. Thousands of activists keep street or web protests alive on a daily basis. Weeks before the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen, the most prominent activists were detained to avoid any public acts in memory of those who died fighting against this same invasive cancer. For David Lampton, director of China Studies at John Hopkins University, “corruption feeds the feelings of injustice, inequality and procedural abuse that fuels people’s anger. The Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989, fostered to a significant extent by the rage fuelled by corruption and inflation, gave an indication of the capacity that these problems have to generate demands that the system has difficulties in satisfying”21. 20 HIGUERAS, Georgina, ‘Ni tolerancia, ni injerencia’, El País, 4 May 2012 21 LAMPTON, David M., The three faces of Chinese power: Might, money, and minds, University of California Press, 2008, p. 238
REVISTA IEEE 3
To see the actual publication please follow the link above