The human rights group, Amnesty International, said yesterday thousands of people in China suffered gross human rights violations last year despite some high profile rights initiatives by Beijing.
China signed the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights and there is a standing invitation for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, to visit.
While these steps are welcome, little has changed in practice, Amnesty International said.
'There is no reason for complacency on the part of the international community, and no excuse for relaxing pressure on the Chinese authorities,' the group said.
The past year saw the arbitrary detention of thousands of protesters and suspected government opponents, the continued imprisonment of thousands of political prisoners, grossly unfair trials, widespread torture and ill-treatment in police cells, prisons and labour camps, it said.
Chinese officials could not be reached for comment.
Beijing rejects criticism of its human rights record as interference in its affairs and argues that feeding and clothing 1.2 billion people is more important than political rights.
Amnesty said the world should not be soft on China. 'Foreign governments should be supporting the calls from within China for change to promote genuine human rights improvements,' it said without identifying the governments.
The European Union agreed last month not to table a resolution criticising Beijing at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva in March. In a sign of its willingness to broaden a dialogue on human rights, China played host to about 20 European officials at a rights forum that included a tour of a model prison in Beijing last week.
The US State Department said in its annual human rights report that there was some improvement in China's rights record last year but serious abuses remained.
Amnesty said the death penalty was used extensively to tackle growing crime resulting from economic and social changes.
The use of capital punishment was growing particularly for non-violent offences, including fraud, forgery and smuggling, the group said.
It said China had intensified a crackdown on suspected Muslim nationalists, religious extremists and alleged terrorists in the north-western region of Xinjiang.
Following rioting in Yining in Xinjiang, hundreds, possibly thousands, were rounded up and at least 15 were sentenced to death, 12 of whom were executed shortly after, Amnesty said. In Tibet, at least 96 people were jailed for crimes such as peacefully protesting at a ban on all images of the region's exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, it said.