Rice defends dropping China from rights blacklist

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Wednesday defended withdrawing China from its list of top human rights violators as Washington and Beijing had just renewed dialogue on rights issues.

"We just got China to renew or to begin again the human rights dialogue that had been in limbo for some time," Rice told reporters.

In the US State Department's annual report on human rights released Tuesday, China was dropped from the list of the world's worst human rights violators, but was classified as an authoritarian country undergoing economic reform and rapid social change that has "not undertaken democratic political reform."

"The only purpose here was to call out that there are some countries that are so closed, the Burmas (Myanmars) of the...