The guidelines clarify that a court should rule a defendant innocent if the evidence is not enough to obtain a conviction. The Supreme People's Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security have taken similar approaches to promote fairness and justice in law enforcement and protecting human rights.

A man named Yu Yingsheng in Anhui province was declared innocent in August after serving 17 years of a life sentence for killing his wife; earlier in March, two men in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, were acquitted after 10 years behind bars for a wrongful conviction of rape and murder. The release of such falsely imprisoned made headlines for the right reasons in 2013.

Also at the end of last year, China introduced a draft amendment to its Administrative Procedure Law. If approved, it will be the first revision of the law since it was enacted more than two decades ago, and it will have far-reaching significance in protecting citizens' right to sue government agencies and officials, facilitating the comprehensive development of the Chinese judicial system.

No country can claim to have a perfect human rights record, but China definitely deserves credit for its painstaking efforts to strengthen its protection of human rights last year. It is simply unfair for the Human Rights Watch to keep ignoring the remarkable progress of the country and keep criticizing it for not being like the West.

The author is with the School of Law, Nankai University based in Tianjin.

(China Daily 01/30/2014 page8)