Following is the full text of the statement issued here today by the Foreign Affairs Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC) on the EP resolution on China's human rights situation:

On January 20, the European Parliament (EP) adopted a resolution on China's human rights situation. The resolution, in disregard of facts, criticized China that its human rights situation is "worsening continuously". It openly invited pressure on China, and even called for an anti-China resolution with the U.S. at the coming 56th Assembly of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

In view of the EP's perverse move to insist on antagonizing China in disregard of the overall situation of the Sino-EU relationship, we hereby express our strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition.

It is known to all that China is a country where people play the role of the master. The Chinese government commits itself to doing everything for the interests of the people and protecting and promoting people's human rights, and has already made great achievements that have attracted worldwide attention.

As a developing country with the largest population in the world, China has managed to feed its 1.2 billion people, 22 percent of the world population, with only 7 percent of the world cultivated land through its own efforts within a short span of several decades.

Over the past twenty years of economic reform and opening up to the outside world, when the world impoverished population has been on the rise by 25 million annually, China has done its best to have its impoverished people reduced from 250 million in 1979 to 30 million in 1999.

This has made China a country where impoverished population decreases the fastest in the world. All of these have added up to manifest China's great accomplishments in its human rights endeavor, which has not only guaranteed the Chinese people their foremost right to subsistence, but made tremendous contributions to the cause of the world human rights as well.

China attaches importance to the protection and promotion of the people's rights to subsistence and development, in the meantime, it also attaches importance to safeguarding and advancing their civil, political and individual rights.

In governing the country, China emphasized the rule of law. This is not only clearly defined in the Constitution to provide broad citizen and political rights as well as economic, social andcultural rights, but a series of laws and regulations have also been formulated in a bid to safeguard the people's rights to administering the State affairs as well as economic, cultural and social affairs through various ways and means.

Together with the broad rights to democracy and freedom which include notably, freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, procession and demonstration, freedom of religious belief and the right to supervise the State organs and functionaries, etc. have also been provided and safeguarded.

In short, the human rights enjoyed by the Chinese people at present and China's legal protection on the human rights are so unprecedented that, without exaggeration, China ranks among those countries whose human rights situation can be counted as the best in the world.

In terms of human rights situation, China is by no means inferior to the western countries and in certain aspects even morepractical than what they practice. The Chinese people are satisfied with the situation. Now, some members in the EP still cling to their ideological bias toward China and do not bother to find out the reality in China. Turning a blind eye to China's great efforts to protect and promote the cause of human rights andthe historic progress it has made in this aspect, they stubbornly accused China for the "continuously worsening" human rights situation. Isn't it quite unreasonable?

The resolution says that the Chinese ethnic groups, especially the Tibetans, Mongolians and the Uygurs, have been "harassed". This is a sheer fabrication. China is a unified multi-national country with 56 nationalities.

After the founding of new China in October 1949, the government abolished the discriminating and oppressing system employed by theold China against the ethnic groups and realized the policy of equality, unity, mutual assistance and common prosperity among all the nationalities.

Although in recent years, ethnic contradictions in many places of the world are quite protruding and even lead to military conflicts, China has all along maintained the unity of all nationalities and thus the stability of the country. This has demonstrated that China's ethnic policy is correct.

In order to faithfully realize equality among all nationalities, the Chinese government has appropriated large amounts of money and adopted a variety of methods to help the ethnic minority areas speed up their economic and cultural development, making their economic growth rate higher than the country's average for many consecutive years.

As a result, the people's income in those areas has more than doubled in the past five years, the ethnic culture thrived and the ethnic medicare rapidly developed. The ethnic population has increased from 34 million in 1953 to near 100 million at present, accounting for 8.9 percent of the country's total population, compared to original 5.8 percent.

The freedom of religious belief of all nationalities has been guaranteed in earnest.

According to the provisions in the Constitution and laws, Chinahas, under the unified State leadership, instituted a system of regional autonomy and established autonomous organs in all ethnic areas.

Being masters of their own, the ethnic minorities exercise the autonomous right of administering their own affairs, ensuring the rapid development and progress in all ethnic areas.

Take Tibet for an example. Since the establishment of the autonomous region in 1959, great changes have taken place there. The central government has provided Tibet an input of one billion Yuan and 200,000 tons of goods supply annually, applied such preferential policy to the Tibetan herdsmen that all their income belongs to themselves and the taxes and unified purchase are eliminated.

The central government and the various provinces have helped Tibet build more than 100 infrastructure projects, thus pushing Tibet onto the track of rapid economic development.

Its GDP has enjoyed two-digit growth rate for many years on end,higher than the country's average, substantially raising the living standard of the people there.

In the 200 years before the 1950s, the population of Tibet had been hovering at the level of around one million. Now the figure has risen to 2.44 million, of which 95 percent are ethnic Tibetans.The average life expectancy of the Tibetan people has increased from 36 years in 1959 to the present 65 years.

Great progress has also made in Tibet's culture, education and public health. Tibetans enjoy the full freedom of religious beliefand regular religious activities.

Every year, Lhasa is paid tribute by pious pilgrims of more than one million persons/time. The old Tibet, which was ruled by the Dalai Lama, could be a place where human rights were trampled down most seriously in the world.

The Dalai regime practiced the feudal serf system, which was even darker than that of the European countries in the Middle Ages.Under such system, 95 percent of the Tibetans were reduced to serfs and slaves and had no human rights at all.

Today's Tibet can be rated among those places where human rights situation has shown fastest and best improvement. As to theKarmapa Buddha, who succeeded, with the approval by the State Bureau of Religious Affairs, as the 17th Karmapa through the Tibetan Buddhist rite, he left Tibet, leaving behind a letter to the temple where he lived.

The letter says: "I left to get the Black Hats and the musical instruments belonged to the Karmapa ancestors. I will not betray the State and nation". This is absolutely personal deed. How can it be interpreted as "the signal of oppression"?

The resolution also accused China of "not making any progress" in ratifying the two international covenants on human rights. Thisis both unfair and untrue.

The Chinese government has been actively involved in the endeavor by the UN system to promote and protect human rights, and has shown its earnest attitude to the accession to the international human rights conventions. So far, the Chinese government has successively ratified and acceded to 17 human rights conventions, two more than the United States has.

In October 1997 and October 1998 respectively, the Chinese government signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Now they are being deliberated under the normal process for which we see no blame should have been incurred. The United States had spent 15 years before ratifying the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and has not yet ratified, up to now, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights after 23 years of deliberation.

Some European countries also took a long time in ratifying the above-mentioned two covenants. For example, Britain spent 8 years, Italy 11 years, Belgium 15 years, and Germany and Austria 5 years each. Why didn't you raise any objections to those deliberation procedures, but flagrantly criticized China's normal deliberating process? This has fully exposed the hegemonic move of some EP members.

Some members in the EP blamed China for its decision to outlaw the "Falun Gong" cult. It is also totally unreasonable. Like the "Aum Doomsday" cult in Japan, the "Davidian Branch" and "People's Temple" in the United States, the "Scietology" in France, the "Sonof Satan" in Italy and the "Temple of the Sun" in Europe, etc., the "Falun Gong" cult and its leader Li Hongzhi indulged in unbridled propaganda that "the Earth is going to explode soon" andthat "the Doomsday is coming near".

Li Hongzhi falsely called himself the sole "savior" and said that his superman strength was dozens of times higher than those of Jesus and Sakyamuni. He cheated the "Falun Gong" practitioners that he had countless magic bodies to protect them, and he said hewould install a "Wheel of the Law" in each of the ractitioner's bellies.

He boasted that people could "be rescued" only by practicing his "Falun Gong" and that they must absolutely obey his orders. Hecontrolled them in spirit and amassed millions of wealth only for him to squander. Li also declared that those who practice "Falun Gong" shouldn't take medicines in spite of having diseases. His heretical ideas have fooled many kind people and led to serious social subsequences.

According to incomplete statistics, so far 1,404 people around the country have died because of practicing "Falun Gong", and innumerable people have been disabled and distraught by the cult. Some practitioners even murdered their own parents, wives and children by cruel means, believing it could help the killed "rise to the Heaven".

In face of such a cult organization which destabilizes the society and harms the people, any responsible government cannot bear to sit idle and let the cult go unchecked.

The Chinese government adopted timely and resolute measures to outlaw the cult in accordance with the law, and put to justice the few incorrigibly obstinate organizers and plotters, thus liberating the majority of practitioners and preventing them from being further harmed.

By outlawing the "Falun Gong" cult, the Chinese government aims to safeguard social stability and protect the rights and interests of the majority of the Chinese people. The action has the strong support of the whole nation.

The measures taken by the Chinese government has no fundamentaldifferences from the actions adopted by the Japanese, American, British, French and Italian governments in handling cult cases.

Why a cult organization can be punished according to law in other countries, while in China, it should have been crowned as religion and protected by the outside forces? Now you have so leniently sided with the "Falun Gong" cult, which has claimed thousands of lives, do you call it the rightful action of maintaining the human rights?

The EP has made such a decision. If not out of ignorance of thefacts, then it must have been out of deliberately applying double standards to China. Could there be any other explanations than that?

The resolution fabricated that China conducted "religious persecution" and "violated the freedom of religious belief." This is also totally groundless.

Among the 1.2 billion people in China, there are 100 million who believe in Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Christianity (Protestant) and Islamism.

The Chinese Constitution clearly stipulates that all Chinese citizens enjoy freedom of religious belief, and that no state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in,any religion.

The believers could, in accordance with the respective religious doctrines and custom, conduct all kinds of regular religious activities in temples, mosques, churches and private homes, and the state protects normal religious activities.

Meanwhile, The Constitution also stipulates that no one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order and impair the health of citizens both physically and psychologically.

China's religious cause is pursued by the religious groups, clerical staff and the religious followers themselves, subject to no foreign domination.

According to the Constitution and laws, the Chinese government supports religions in China to conduct their own religious affairs independently.

Under the protection of the Constitution, the Chinese citizens are able to exercise freedom of religious belief to the full. In China, religious or non-religious people or people with different religious beliefs show respects to one another and live in harmony.

All the religions have equal footing and coexist peacefully, and have never been engaged in religious disputes.

Furthermore, there have never happened the so-called "religious persecution" or "violation of freedom of religious belief".

As to China's "interference in the ordination of the Catholic Archbishop" alleged by the resolution, it is sheer nonsense.

On January 6 this year, which marked the Catholic Epiphany, the Chinese Catholic Bishop Corps held a ceremony to ordain five bishops. This was a normal religious activity of the Chinese Catholicism.

On the same day, the Roman Pope also ordained 12 bishops. Hence the rumors that the Chinese Catholicism put on a rival show with the Vatican came up. The EP, therefore, used the case and described it as an "interference" in the ordination of the Catholic Archbishop. This is absolutely absurd.

Ever since the 1950s, the Chinese Catholicism has selected and ordained bishops on their own. As early as the founding of new China in 1949, the Vatican issued an order that every Chinese Catholic should oppose the newly born people's government.

Under such circumstances, the majority of the Chinese Catholic adherents were forced to make their own decision: show respect to the Pope in spirit while support the Chinese people's own government.

Therefore, the Vatican found an excuse not to recognize those Catholic followers as well as their bishops. Having had no alternatives but to organize the church independently and to ordain their own bishops, the Chinese Catholics so far have ordained over 100 bishops.

The EP's resolution also blames China for "controlling" the so-called "underground religious organizations." This does not tally with the facts.

In China, there are no "underground religious organizations" at all. This is something fabricated by some western people. The Chinese Christianity and Catholicism have their own religious groups, with the Chinese Christianity having 12,000-odd churches and over 25,000 meeting places, and the Catholicism having altogether more than 4,600 churches and ritual venues.

As many other countries in the world, the Chinese religious groups and their religious venues should go through the registration formalities according to law, and their establishments and activities are protected by law.

The individual religion followers do not need to get registered. To some venues which lack the conditions of registration, the government adopts the method of temporary registration, and implements the formal registration after the conditions are completed.

This is totally to ensure that the religions can conduct their normal and lawful activities. How can it be described as "controlling"? In China, there are no so-called "open churches" and "underground churches", or "official churches" and "unofficial churches" at all.

The EP's resolution also lists the explanation by the Standing Committee of the Chinese National People's Congress (NPC) of the relative clause in the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR, accusing the Central government for failing to "abide by" the concerning commitments it has made to Hong Kong. This is utmost distortion.

On Jan. 29, 1999, when the Hong Kong Final Judgment Court handled the case of the right of abode in HK, it denied the relative article in the Regulations on the Entrance into the HKSARenacted by the SAR's Provisional Legislative Commission, which provides that the Hong Kong permanent residents' children who are born in the mainland can gain the right of abode in HK only when one or both of their parents are HK permanent residents at the time when they are born.

The court deemed that the Basic Law of the HKSAR regulates thatthe children of the Hong Kong residents, irrespective of whether one or both of the parents are permanent Hong Kong residents before or after they are born, can have the right of abode in HK. According to this verdict, as many as 1.67 million people who now live in the mainland would gain their right to reside in HK.

As the SAR's land and social resources are too limited to meet the demand of housing, education, medicare and social welfare and so on raised by the flux of the new comers, the chief executive officer of the HKSAR government, appealed, as authorized by the Basic Law, through the Central People's Government to the NPC Standing Committee to make an explanation of the relevant clause in the Basic Law. In accordance with the Constitution and the Basic Law, the Standing Committee of the NPC is authorized to makeexplanations of any clause in the Basic Law.

Under such circumstances, the Standing Committee of the NPC explained the relative clause in the Basic Law, making it clear bydefining that the original legislative meaning of the HK permanentresidents "who have borne their children of Chinese nationality inareas outside HK" refers to those people who "at the time when they are born", one or both of their parents must have the identification of permanent HK residents. The purpose to make sucha rule is to effectively keep under control the overgrowth of the HK population and safeguard the long-term stability of the HK society.

In fact, the verdict on the issue of the right of abode in HK made by the HK Final Judgment Court is not HK internal affairs butsomething pertaining to the relationship between the mainland and HK.

The explanation made by the Standing Committee of the NPC does not replace the deliberations and verdicts conducted on the concrete cases by the HK Final Judgment Court, and will not affectthe independent powers of judiciary and final adjudication enjoyedby the HKSAR.

It has won the support of the broad HK citizens. It is irrational for the EP members to lash criticism on China before obtaining the truth of the facts.

There are differences between China and Europe in economy, society, history, cultural backgrounds and so on, therefore, it is unavoidable for the two sides to have disagreements.

We believe that our two sides should abide by the principle of mutual respect, communication, seeking common grounds while reserving differences, and promoting cooperation, and solve the disagreements through dialogues rather than making troubles and confrontations.

In view of the perspective of the Sino-European cooperation, we hope that the members of the EP will proceed from the overall growth of bilateral ties and take more measures conducive to accelerating mutual understanding, promoting mutual dialogs and avoiding mutual conflicts.

After we have stated the facts of China's human rights situation, etc., we hope that the EP and EU member countries will treat China's human rights situation with a fair attitude, and do not blindly join the United States in damaging the Sino-European relationship.

Actually, at a time when the overwhelming majority of the world countries express their appreciation and support to the progress of China's human rights cause, a joint slander on China with the U.S. will only be rejected by the majority countries and lead to failure. (Xinhua)