Coordinating Human Rights Development in China
BRICS, 22 Sep 2014
Editor’s Note: Cai Mingzhao, director of the State Council Information Office of China, addressed the opening ceremony of the 7th Beijing Forum on Human Rights on Wednesday [17 Sep 2014]. The following are excerpts of his speech.
President Xi Jinping proposed to “realize the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” in November 2012. He emphasized that the fulfillment of the Chinese Dream about the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is just the realization of the country’s prosperity, the nation’s rejuvenation and the people’s happiness. The Chinese Dream is the people’s dream after all. President Xi has specially pointed out the Chinese Dream that we want to achieve is just to offer to the people better education, steadier employment, more satisfactory incomes, more reliable social security, better medical services, more comfortable dwelling conditions, and more beautiful environment, make children grow better, work better and live better, and enable everyone to develop himself and make contributions to the society, share the opportunity for a shining life, share the opportunity to achieve the dream, and share the opportunity of equal participation and equal development.
In order to fulfill the Chinese Dream, we established our two “centuries” goals. To be detailed, we are going to completely build up a well-off society by 2020, with both the GDP and the per capita incomes of urban and rural residents doubled in comparison with in 2010; and a modernized socialist country with prosperity, democracy, advanced civilization and harmony, realizing the great revival of the Chinese nation. Around this goal, many new measures involving human rights protection have been proclaimed in succession since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and the cause of human rights in China has experienced its new development.
Economic, social and cultural rights have been further guaranteed.
In recent years, people’s living standards have been steadily improved, the cause of social security has rapidly developed, and the equalization of basic public services has taken a new step. Accordingly, the people’s rights to existence and development have been better guaranteed. In 2013, the deprived population in the rural areas of China reduced by 16.50 million, and the registered unemployment in cities and towns remained at 4.1 percent, a relatively lower level than the 6 percent average global unemployment rate proclaimed by the International Labour Organization. The national new social old-age insurance in rural areas and the old-age insurance for urban residents have covered all the population, preliminarily forming the largest social security system in the world. By June 2014, more than 1.32 billion of the population has taken part in the medical insurance system for urban employees, medical insurance system for urban residents and new rural cooperative medical care system. Educational resources and public cultural services have been further equalized and extended to more people, the State has emphatically supported the rural areas in middle and west China, the regions occupied by ethnical minorities and the areas in poverty to improve their poor schooling conditions, and also, much more attention has been paid to the transference of public cultural resources to the substratum society.
The citizens’ rights and political rights have been effectively guaranteed.
At the 12th National People’s Congress held in 2013, NPC representatives were elected proportional to the populations both in urban and rural areas for the first time, the number of substratum representatives increased, and the number of representatives of farmer-workers was doubled. The channels for rights relief have been continually smoothed and broadened, special efforts have been made to solve remarkable problems concerning petitions through letters and visits, the masses’ claims for benefits have been actively responded to. Corruption has been strictly punished, and the supervision and restriction over public power have been strengthened, leaving public power functioning in the sunlight. Accordingly, remarkable achievements have been attained in the construction of clean politics. The means for citizens to exercise freedom of speech have increasingly multiplied, and the Internet has become one of the important channels for citizens to express their opinions. By June 2014, netizens in China amounted to 632 million, and the popularization rate of the Internet was as high as 46.9 percent. Within the range of the Constitution and law, the public can discuss various social problems at will.
The legal guarantee for human rights has taken important steps.
The construction of rule by law has accelerated in China. China has insisted on ruling the country by law, carrying out the Constitutional principle of “respecting and protecting human rights” through all the links of legislation, administration and judicature, and the level of human rights protection has been constantly improved. The reform of judicial system has been further deepened, and the construction of a just, efficient and authoritative socialist judicial system has been accelerated to guarantee the people’s rights and benefits and maintain justice in the society. The system of judicial guarantee for human rights has been improved, the system of re-education through labor has been abolished, crimes seriously infringing citizens’ personal rights have been punished by law, a mechanism preventing and rectifying cases in which people are unjustly, falsely or wrongly charged or sentenced has been enhanced, and many measures have been simultaneously taken to guarantee the personal rights of crime suspects, defendants and detainees.
The consciousness of human rights has been intensified throughout society.
After the concept of “human rights” was written into the Constitution, the idea to “respect and protect human rights” has been included into important documents such as the Constitution of the Communist Party of China, becoming an important principle and basic guideline for the CPC and the Chinese government to rule the country. China has worked out two “National Human Rights Action Plans,” and the second Action Plan (2012-15) is being carried out in a good order. Various tasks and particular index are being effectively implemented. The popularization and specialization of human rights education have made new progresses, and five more famous universities have been named as “national human rights education and training bases.” Now, centers for human rights education have been set up in tens of universities and colleges in China, and have been active in doing work on human rights training.
China has actively taken part in international exchanges and cooperation on human rights.
China has been active in taking part in the UN’s multilateral human rights meetings, participating in review and discussion concerning the subject of human rights. Since 2013, China has smoothly gone through the second universal periodic review of the UN Human Rights Council, and most countries attending the conference have sufficiently confirmed the progress that China had made in its cause of human rights, supporting China in promoting and protecting human rights in accordance to its own national situation. In 2013, China was elected a member state of the UN Human Rights Council from 2014-16 by huge votes. Now, China has dialogs and discussion about human rights with nearly 20 countries each year, improving the understanding between each other.
China’s development and prosperity have not only brought better development to its own cause of human rights, but made contributions to the cause of human rights in the world.
According to statistics made by authoritative institutions, in 2013, China’s contribution rate for world economic growth was nearly 30 percent, and China has become one of the major engines to push forward world economic growth. For recent years, China has taken various forms of assistance to support and assist other developing countries, especially the most underdeveloped countries in the fields of poverty reduction, grain security, trading development, crisis prevention and reconstruction, population development, women and children’s healthcare, the prevention and control of diseases, education, environmental protection, and so on. This year, in the face of Ebola virus disease in western Africa, China has sent several groups of experts in public health to countries which suffer most, including Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and provided a large number of emergency humanity materials to help the local people preventing and controlling the plague. Since its first participation in the UN peacekeeping operations in 1990, China has taken part in 24 such activities of the UN, and dispatched more 25,000 person-time peacekeeping personnel in total. Hence, China has sent more engineering, transportation and medical units than any other countries which have sent troops for the UN peacekeeping operations, and also the developing country that pays more apportioned peacekeeping funds.
After exploration and efforts for years, China has successfully found a road of human rights development suitable to its own national situation. Summarizing the practice of human rights in China, we come to a few ideas as the following:
Firstly, the principle of universality of human rights should be combined with the particular situation of a certain country. The world develops multi-dimensionally, and there is no universal mode of human rights. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action passed by the world conference on human rights in 1993 points out, “the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind.” Likewise, ancient Chinese people said, “while oranges are grown south of the Huaihe River, they produce oranges, but when they are planted north of the river, they yield trifoliate oranges instead.” Different people and countries have different understanding and requirements of human rights, and the problems that they face and need to solve first are not all the same, either. China is a large developing country with a population over 1.3 billion, the human rights development of China has been synchronous with its economic and social development all the time, and economic development and people’s livelihood improvement have always been the crux of all the problems. That is the fundamental reason why China has taken the rights to existence and development as the primary human rights.
Secondly, the emphatic improvement and all-round development of human rights should be coordinated. It should be noted that no country can put into practice all human rights at the same. Human rights protection can be better performed only when people start with the national situation and reality of their own country to determine the emphasized items of human rights. China underwent heavy calamities and became weak due to poverty in modern times. It has been the greatest aspiration and pursuit of the Chinese people to shake off the backwards state and live a happy life. Therefore, China has always taken economic and social rights as a primary cut-in point for human rights protection, emphatically solving the problems of people’s livelihood and benefits that are most direct and most practical, with which the masses are most concerned. It endeavors to enable each social member to live more happily with more respect. At the same time, China pays attention to view various human rights as an interdependent and indivisible organic whole, pushes forward the cause of human rights in a coordinated way together with economic construction, political construction, cultural construction, social construction and ecological civilization construction, boosts the harmonious development of economy, society, cultural rights, citizen rights and political rights, and improve the coordinated development of individual human rights and collective human rights.
Thirdly, the unity of rights to peace and development should be adhered to. Peace implies security, stability and harmony, while development means being free from poverty and disease. Development lays a foothold for peace, while peace is the very condition of development. One cannot expect a huge tree of peace in an infertile land, or the abundant fruits of development from war. China has always held that the right to peace and the right to development are just like the two wings of a bird, and that it will not do without either of them. For China, the exercise of the people’s right to development requires two basic conditions: one is a harmonious and stable domestic environment, and the other is a peaceful international situation. These two conditions just mean to guarantee the people’s right to peace, if they are generalized into one point. For years, China has adhered to the path of peaceful development, which has effectively guaranteed the Chinese people’s rights to peace and development, and meanwhile made contributions it should to the improvement of such rights of the world people.
Fourthly, the relations of human rights development between the present and the future should be handled well. The cause of human rights is boundless, and so it is with human rights development. The history of mankind repeatedly shows that the cause of human rights protection cannot be finished at one breath. It is certainly a long historical process to develop from ought-to-be human rights to legalized human rights and finally to actual human rights. The progress that China has made in the development of its cause of human rights is visible to everyone, but China is a large developing country, and the problems of unbalance, disharmony and unsustainability in the development is still serious. In China, the realization of human rights protection at a higher level still requires more efforts, and has still a long way to go. China insists on starting with its own national situation and reality. While based on the current to do well various work on respecting and protecting human rights and lay a sound foundation for the sustainable development of human rights, it keeps a long-term perspective to constantly improve its level of human rights protection, and work hard so that all the people enjoy more sufficient rights.
Fifthly, international dialogues and cooperation on human rights should be adhered to. China has always held that only through equal dialogue and practical cooperation can countries, which are with different social systems and at different development levels, boost together the healthy development of international cause of human rights. For years, with respect to the question of human rights, China has always advocated dialogues and opposed confrontation, and yet strongly rejected intervening in the domestic affairs of other countries in the name of human rights. Hegemony does not accord with the principle of democracy, and pressure cannot bring about any human rights culture. China has proposed that various civilizations should respect, understand, learn from and support each other, and that all countries in the world should, through dialogues, exchanges and cooperation, endeavor to boost the development and progress of various causes, including human rights, and work together to create a rosy future of mankind.
The cause of human rights cannot be the best but the better. And human rights improvement and protection have no perfect tense but a progressive tense. For the realization of sufficient human rights protection, we still have many to do. We sincerely hope, through the Beijing Forum on Human Rights as a platform, that people both from China and other countries are able to deeply communicate and learn from each other, coming up with new ways for the better development of human rights in China.
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