Beijing - China has published an action plan to protect the rights of its citizens, including protecting detained crime suspects from torture and forced confessions, the official Xinhua news agency reported Monday.

In addition, the 54-page plan is to extend citizens' rights to express complaints against injustices and arbitrary treatment, the report said.

In the plan, the government of China said the country of 1.3 billion people "has a long road ahead in its efforts to improve its human rights situation," but that it would continue to "raise the level of ensuring people's civil and political rights."

The document follows the recent deaths of several detainees in police custody. It states that physical and verbal abuse of detainees as well as the forced extraction of confessions are illegal, and further provides means for detainees to complain of abuse in writing as well as obtaining access to legal representation.

The plan however gives precedence to rights to "subsistence and development" over political rights.

In accordance to these economic rights, the plan foresees the creation of 18 million jobs in the cities by 2010, a 6-per-cent increase in net income for nearly 800 million people in the countryside as well as increasing the number of people with medical insurance and pensions.

Despite strict censorship in China, the action plan states that journalists are to have the "right to gather materials, criticize, comment and publish."

The international human rights organization Reporters Without Borders criticizes China as the country with the greatest number of journalists, cyber-dissidents, internet users and activists detained for demanding freedom of expression.