In February 1994, Human Rights Watch/Asia (formerly Asia Watch) issued a 650-page survey of repression in China titled Detained in China and Tibet: A Directory of Political and Religious Prisoners. The report observed that 1993 had been the worst year for political arrests and trials in China since mid-1990 and the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.

But since the report was issued, the human rights situation in China has deteriorated further, in a way that could have major implications for the decision President Clinton must make in early June about whether to renew China's Most Favored Nation trading status. Religious believers have been rounded up and sent to prison, and peaceful advocates of Tibetan independence have been imprisoned or had their sentences increased. In a far-reaching political clampdown on the arts, film directors, poets, and publishers have been harassed or banned from working. And the authorities have launched a frontal assault against the resurgent dissident movement in Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities, with dozens of activists having been either briefly detained or arrested and now awaiting prosecution for ideological "crimes."