Full Text: Progress in Human Rights over the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up in China (9)

 VIII. Path of Human Rights Protection Suited to National Conditions

Over the past four decades of reform and opening up, China has made significant progress in human rights, creating a new path of human rights protection based on China’s history and national conditions, and the successful experiences of other countries. This path is the result of the Chinese people’s experimentation in practice and theoretical innovation led by the CPC, and embodies the essence of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Human rights protection centered on the people. People are the fundamental driving force of history. People-centered development toward a better life was the original aspiration and remains the distinct goal of China’s reform and opening up. To realize this aspiration, the state respects the people’s principal position in the country, safeguards their political rights, expands orderly political participation in all fields at all levels, and ensures the people’s rights to equal participation and equal development. Furthermore, the state takes the people’s wellbeing and common prosperity as its ultimate goal, enables the people to be the main contributors, promoters, and beneficiaries of development, and works to fulfill their aspirations for a better education, more stable jobs, higher incomes, more reliable social security, better medical and health care, improved housing conditions, and a beautiful environment, advancing the all-round development of the people. Since the 18th CPC National Congress the CPC has given prominence to the principle of people-centered development by putting the interests of the people above all else, focusing its efforts on their aspiration for a better life, and enhancing the protection of all basic human rights. The CPC and the Chinese government plan reform policies and set reform measures in the interests of the people, and always make sure that reform responds to public demand. China’s national rejuvenation represents a process of promoting social fairness and justice, advancing human rights, realizing, safeguarding, and developing the fundamental interests of the people, ensuring that the fruits of development better benefit all the people in a fair way, and enabling every person to enjoy self-development and serve society with dignity.

Integration of the principle of universality of human rights with China’s national conditions. The universality of human rights is grounded in human dignity and value, and based on common interests and basic moral norms shared by all. There is no universally applicable model for fulfilling human rights, and human rights can only advance in the context of national conditions and people’s needs. The CPC and the Chinese government approach human rights from a historical, dialectical and developmental perspective, and take advantage of the strengths of socialism with Chinese characteristics while bearing in mind the overarching condition that China is still and will long remain in the primary stage of socialism, integrating universality with particularity. The central authorities take proactive steps to meet the people’s need for development, and advance human rights in a planned and progressive manner.

Primary focus on the rights to subsistence and development. From the mid-19th century China suffered repeated foreign aggression and fell to the status of a poor and weak country. The experience of numerous hardships taught the Chinese people that the rights to subsistence and development are the primary rights – the preconditions and the foundation for all other human rights. A process of self-actualization for individuals, development is a means to eliminate poverty and paves the way for realizing other human rights. Taking development as its top priority, China is committed to liberating and developing the country’s productive forces and eliminating poverty. The country has achieved outstanding economic success and realized the historic leaps from poverty to secure access to food and clothing, and thence to moderate prosperity. In the light of its national conditions, China pursues innovative, coordinated, green, open and inclusive development, highlights balance and sustainability, and promotes harmony between urban and rural areas, between regions, between the economy and society, and between humanity and nature to lay a solid foundation for fulfilling and protecting the right to development.

Coordinated progress in all human rights as a major principle for human rights protection. Over the past 40 years, adhering to the principle of interdependence and inalienability of all human rights, China has coordinated the planning and promotion of all rights and endeavored to strike a balance between economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights, and between individual rights and collective rights. Moving toward the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation set out by the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC has advanced the overall plan of seeking economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological progress, and made comprehensive moves to complete a moderately prosperous society in all respects, to extend reform, to advance the rule of law, and to strengthen Party discipline. In this way China has made comprehensive progress in human rights through an integrated approach.

Institutional guarantee of human rights under the rule of law. The rule of law is a symbol of human progress and an important guarantee of human rights. China has made rule of law the fundamental strategy for governing the country and worked to build a socialist country under the rule of law. The state enhances comprehensive protection of human rights under the rule of law, ensures that the people enjoy their rights and freedoms to a fuller extent, and strives to realize social fairness and justice, in an effort to bring about the all-round development of individuals and comprehensive progress of society. Since the 18th CPC National Congress the CPC and the Chinese government have made comprehensive moves to advance the rule of law, taking a holistic approach to building a country, a government and a society where the rule of law applies. The central authorities have given greater prominence to respecting and protecting human rights in building a socialist country under the rule of law, and placed human rights under the full protection of the rule of law through strengthening legislation, law enforcement, administration of justice, and observance of law.

A global community of shared future as a way to improve global human rights governance. China is a supporter, practitioner and promoter of the sound development of the international human rights cause. Since reform and opening up China has pursued common development across the world, aiming for a better life for the Chinese people and the peoples of other countries. China has developed rapidly by taking advantage of opportunities created by a peaceful international environment. It has in turn upheld and promoted world peace and common propensity through its own development, and made an outstanding contribution to the cause of international human rights. China calls for inclusiveness, exchanges, and mutual learning between cultures and between countries to advance human rights together. International human rights issues should be resolved through consultation. Building a global human rights governance system needs the participation of all countries, and progress in human rights benefits all peoples in the world. All member states have the responsibility to abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, uphold the principle of sovereign equality, and engage in human rights exchanges and cooperation in a constructive way. China conducts extensive and in-depth cooperation on international human rights, and promotes a fair and equitable global system for human rights governance by working together with other countries to build a global community of shared future.