BEIJING (AP) - China issued a report Monday praising what it said were its human rights accomplishments last year, citing higher living standards and gold medals won at the Sydney Olympics.
The report described the often-brutal crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual group as a sign of the communist government ``safeguarding social stability and the people's lives and property.''
The White Paper on Human Rights, released by China's Cabinet and reported by the official Xinhua News Agency, concluded that human rights in China ``maintained positive forward momentum.''
The bulk of the report focused on rising economic standards. It said China put ``people's rights to subsistence and development on the top of its agenda.''
China's leaders have responded to reports of the jailing of labor activists, torture by police and other official abuses by arguing that adopting international human rights standards would interfere with economic development.
The report said China had made great strides in improving political rights by allowing village-level elections and trying to strengthen its court system.
The white paper conflicts with mounting reports by human rights groups of abuses by Chinese authorities. In February, London-based Amnesty International said that police beatings and torture of detainees was rampant.
China is under intense scrutiny for its treatment of Falun Gong and other dissidents and its detention of foreign scholars on spying charges.
Chinese authorities argue that Falun Gong, banned in July, 1999, is a dangerous cult whose believes have led to the deaths of followers. Human rights activists say 112 people picked up in attempts to stamp out the group have died in custody.
A Hong Kong-based human rights group said Monday that a Chinese scholar who has taught at the University of Chicago and Stanford has been detained on suspicion of divulging state secrets.
Tan Guangguang, who has been in business in Beijing since 1994, was picked up by security agents in December, according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
He is the fourth intellectual whose detention in China has become known in the past three weeks, and the third with U.S. connections.
China is trying to fend off criticism ahead of a July vote to pick the site of the 2008 Olympic Games. Beijing is one of six finalists.
In the report, the government repeated its insistence that its human rights record should not be held to universal standards.
``Politicizing the issue of human rights and attaching human rights conditions to economic aid are themselves violations of human rights conditions,'' it said.
But the authors added the frank admission that there is ``still much room for further improvement'' in China's human rights conditions.
It said that the number of people living in poverty had plummeted in the last two decades.
Better diets ``improved the physique of the Chinese people,'' the report added. It pointed to the record 28 gold medals won by Chinese athletes at the Summer Games last year in Sydney.
It also said that more than 600 million farmers had voted in village elections since first being allowed to choose local leaders three years ago.
AP-NY-04-09-01 0748EDT
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.