China Enjoys Best Ever Stage of Human Rights

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, February 21, 2003

China Enjoys Best Ever Stage of Human Rights

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China is enjoying its best ever stage of protecting and promoting its people's human rights and has scored substantial achievements in recent years, but greater efforts are still needed to overcome obstacles to the development of this great cause.

This message was conveyed by participants at a symposium organized by the State Council's Information Office last week to celebrate the first anniversary of the publication of Human Rights, China's first bimonthly magazine specializing in human-rights issues.

The protection and promotion of human rights have been a common appeal of the world's people. But different countries have different perceptions about the issue due to different historical, social, political and economic factors.

It is China's consistent position that human rights should be enjoyed by an overwhelming majority of the people and it opposes human rights being enjoyed only by a minority of the people.

The Chinese Government has consistently placed the provision of adequate clothing and food to its people on the top of the agenda since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

Undoubtedly, the country's long-cherished stance on human rights - which values people's rights and insists that human rights should be extended to the majority of the people - serves as the fundamental reason for the remarkable achievements it has made on this issue in recent years.

China's rapid economic development over the past years has also laid down a solid foundation for its striking progress in protecting and promoting its people's human rights.

Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics indicate that the country's gross domestic product has maintained an average annual growth rate of 9.3 per cent since 1989, and it exceeded 10 trillion yuan (US$1.2 trillion) last year. The figure was almost six times the 1.69 trillion yuan (US$204 billion) of 1989, putting China's GDP in sixth place worldwide.

With fast economic development, the income of China's urban and rural residents has increased by a large margin, thus dramatically improving their living standards.

To help improve the rights to subsistence and development of some low-income residents in poverty-stricken areas, the Chinese Government has set up a series of social-security measures and implemented some poverty-alleviation programmes.

China has actively pushed ahead the construction of political civilization to improve the political rights of its citizens. At the same time, the nation has implemented several pieces of legislation and signed a series of international agreements on human rights, providing a legal foundation for the country's protection and promotion of human rights.

The past two decades have been a period during which China's comprehensive national strength has enjoyed its fastest growth, its people have harvested the greatest benefits, and their rights to subsistence and development have improved the most.

The 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which was held last November, explicitly included the development of human rights in its goal of building socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new century. This will inevitably bring about brighter prospects for the development of China's human rights.

Currently, peace and development still remain the world's two main themes although there exist a lot of uncertain factors within the foreseeable future.

"Despite a lot of favourable conditions, China, however, will also face numerous difficulties and challenges in the course of developing and improving its people's human rights," Zhu Zhixin, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, said. "The current well-off society still lies at a lower level; the country's productivity, science and technology and education levels are still relatively backward; the urban-rural gap and regional gaps are still expanding; and there are some imperfections in the economic and other management systems."

From the perspective of the external environment, China should not be too optimistic.

Zhu Muzhi, honorary president of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, said: "There has been a prevailing viewpoint in the West that human rights are superior to sovereignty. Such a viewpoint essentially runs counter to the universally accepted principle that a state's sovereignty should not be infringed upon, and it will inevitably be used for hegemonism and power politics."

The United States, the world's self-proclaimed human-rights guardian, has long regarded the spread of its own values throughout the whole world as one of its key missions.

He said differences between China and the West on the issue of human rights still exist. Domestically, China has maintained strong momentum in its economic growth. Internationally, China's influence has been on the rise.

China should actively open itself up to the outside world to absorb the best of others in the field of human rights and combine their experiences with its concrete national conditions to create a set of development models suitable for itself.

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