| Wang Chen, Minister of the State Council Information Office
The relationship between human rights and development has long been an important issue of deep concern to the international community. After World War II, the Charter of the United Nations established security, development and human rights as the objectives of the UN.
In the late 1960s, the UN General Assembly adopted the Declaration on Social Progress and Development, which states: "Social progress and development shall be founded on respect for the dignity and value of the human person and shall ensure the promotion of human rights and social justice." The Declaration on the Right to Development adopted in the 1980s emphasized that people play the key role in development and the right to development is an inalienable part of human rights.
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals adopted at the turn of the century clearly established human rights as a core element of development and drafted concrete goals. It deepened people's understanding of the relationship between human rights and development and promoted the mutual progress of development and human rights.
The world economy is now emerging from the shadow of the financial crisis into the post-crisis era. The financial crisis has prompted people to think about which development concepts can better facilitate the harmonious development of the world and universal human rights, and which development models can better help us face new global challenges and create better lives for mankind. It is very significant for us, from different perspectives, to reflect on and discuss the key issues of human rights and development.
China is the largest developing country in the world. Promoting modernization and the progress of human rights has been the unshakable pursuit of the Chinese Government and people. Just as President Hu Jintao pointed out: "Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, with the universally acknowledged progress of Chinese society and earth-shaking changes in the lives of the Chinese people, the cause of Chinese human rights has made historic progress. In particular, during the 30 years of reform and opening up, the Party and government have regarded respecting and safeguarding human rights as important principles of state governance, and solemnly enshrined them in the Constitution of the Communist Party of China and the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. They also have taken concrete and effective measures to promote the development of the cause of human rights. In doing so, they have significantly improved the material and spiritual lives of the people, substantially safeguarded their political, economic, cultural and social rights, and composed a new chapter in the development of Chinese human rights."
In recent years, the Chinese Government initiated the people-centered Outlook on Scientific Development. This tenet emphasizes that people must be put first in the development process. In other words, development must rely on the people and serve them. Likewise, the fruits of development must be shared by the people. Overall, the goal of development is to make society fairer and more harmonious and people's lives happier and healthier.
China coordinates the overall development between cities and the countryside, between different regions, between economy and society, between people and nature, between domestic development and opening-up. It strives to promote the overall, coordinated and sustainable development of the society. It also has enshrined respect and protection of human rights in the Constitution and national economic and social development plans. China also strives to promote full development of the cause of human rights in the country. In 2009, facing the impact of the financial crisis, the Chinese Government resolutely invested 4 trillion yuan to increase domestic demand, safeguard growth, adjust the economic structure and improve the people's livelihood, thus ensuring the stable and fast development of the national economy. Meanwhile, China made and implemented its first National Human Rights Action Plan to clearly specify goals and concrete measures for the promotion and protection of human rights. By doing so, it placed the development of human rights within the framework of China's overall political, economic, social and cultural development, thus substantially improving human rights in China.
The past 30 years of China's reform have seen the development of society and people with new concepts, methods and approaches, made based on accumulated experiences. Over the past 30 years, China has made historic strides. People have gone from having inadequate food and clothing to being well-off. This period of time has seen a big improvement in people's living conditions and the effective guarantee of people's rights to existence and development. From 1978 to 2009, China's GDP increased an average 9.9 percent per year. The country's per-capita GDP increased 12-fold and its economy became the world's third largest. People's quality of life has significantly improved. The Engel Coefficient for urban residents dropped from 57 to 36.5 percent; for rural residents it dropped from 67 to 41 percent.
The Chinese Government attaches great importance to institutionally safeguarding and improving people's livelihoods. China has applied the New Rural Cooperative Medical Care System to its 8 million farmers. It has also started the pilot New Rural Pension Insurance System. It has greatly alleviated the problems of unemployment and poor living conditions for low-income groups, while improving educational opportunities for low-income children. School attendance in China is compulsory for nine years in both urban and rural areas and now covers 99.7 percent of the population. Since 1978, China has lifted more than 230 million people out of abject poverty. This figure represents 75 percent of all people in developing countries lifted out of poverty during this period. Life expectancy has also risen to 73 years an increase of five years since the start of reform.
Throughout the period of reform, China has stuck to the path of political development with Chinese characteristics. It has actively and steadily pushed forward political restructuring, adhering to the rule of law and building the country by the rule of law. It has effectively safeguarded citizens' political rights and freedom on the path of democracy and law. China now has 233 laws, more than 690 administrative regulations and more than 8,800 local regulations. These form a legal system, with the Constitution at its core that safeguards human rights.
In 2009, China's National People's Congress amended the Election Law to clearly stipulate that the urban-rural distribution of deputies to the People's Congress should reflect the actual population ratio of urban and rural areas. The move enhanced the diversity of the deputies, improved the election system and better ensured equality among people, regions and ethnic groups.
The Chinese Government actively promotes the transparency of its administrative affairs. It has promulgated and implemented the Decree of Government Information Openness of the People's Republic of China, thus improving its spokesperson system and ensuring the dissemination of government information according to the law. As a result, people's right to know, participate, express and supervise is safeguarded. In 2009, the State Council Information Office, other ministries and provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities held 1,646 press conferences.
The rapid development of the Internet has allowed Chinese citizens to expand their means of freely expressing their opinions. China now has more than 420 million Internet users with an Internet penetration of 31.8 percent, which is above the global average. China has more than 2.79 million websites, nearly 1 million forums and 231 million bloggers. The Internet has become an important source for the Chinese Government to learn the concerns of the people, to gather their wisdom and to improve its work. By the end of 2009, China had published 43.7 billion newspapers, 3.1 billion periodicals/magazines and 7 billion books. More than 3,000 novels were published in 2009. The country also had 251 radio stations, 272 TV stations and 2,087 radio and TV stations. There were 173.98 million cable TV users, and 62 million cable digital TV users. The overall population coverage of radio and TV broadcasting was 96.3 percent and 97.2 percent, respectively. In 2009, China made 456 feature films and 102 other films, including science and education films, documentaries and animated cartoons.
Actively responding to the initiatives of the United Nations, China has continuously strived to attain the UN's millennium development goals. By 2009—six years early—China had already achieved its 2015 goal of reducing the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 50 percent.
Since 1949, China, adhering to international and humanitarian principles, has consistently done its best to provide sincere and unselfish assistance to developing countries, promoting their economic development and improving people's livelihood. China has also written off 26.5 billion yuan worth of debt incurred by 50 heavily indebted poor countries, among the world's least-developed. In addition, it has provided $10 billion in favorable loans to African countries and offered $15 billion in credit support to ASEAN countries, including Vietnam, in response to the financial crisis. Furthermore, China has built more than 150 schools, nearly 100 hospitals, more than 70 water treatment centers and more than 60 stadiums in developing countries. It has also sent medical teams to more than 70 countries, providing medical treatment to millions of people.
The progress and development of the cause of human rights in China are obvious to all. Of course, to be frank, we admit that the state of human rights in China is not completely satisfactory due to China's lack of development or imbalance in development. In response, the Chinese Government is taking vigorous measures to persistently promote the cause of Chinese human rights to achieve greater progress. China's resoluteness is obvious to all, so we have to point out that it is unjust to recognize only the prosperity and development of the Chinese economy and neglect the vivid reality of the development and progress of human rights in China. We should also point out that, despite being in an era of globalization and cultural diversity, there are always some people in the world who use their customary perspectives and value judgments to look at human rights and development among different countries, ethnic groups and cultures. They always want to willfully impose their "black or white" view on others; or they want to appeal to force or other means to support those people who represent their values and concepts and ignore other countries' law and true public feelings . However, the behavioral concept advocated by Confucius more than 2,000 years ago—"don't do unto others what you would not want them to do unto you, —has been accepted by more and more people in various countries. I believe that those acts of prejudice and particular motives don't benefit the development and progress of human rights in China and the world; they run counter to the current trend of promoting world peace and development and building a harmonious world.
As a developing country with 1.3 billion people and a per-capita GDP ranked around 100th in the world, China has tens of millions of people still living in poverty, a rural population of more than 700 million and more than 800 million people of employment age. This has posed rare difficulties for China in its effort to develop and promote human rights. As it attempts to build a rich, democratic, civilized and harmonious modern country and achieve the sublime goal of fully enjoying human rights, China still faces an arduous long-term task.
In his letter addressed to the China Society for Human Rights Studies on Dec 10, 2008, President Hu Jintao emphasized: "In the process of fully building a well-off society and accelerating socialist modernization, we must, as always, uphold the universal principles of human rights. Meanwhile, according to the basic national conditions, we must ensure people's rights to existence and develop and put them in the first position in the safeguarding of human rights. We must, on the basis of promoting the fast and sound development of economy and society and, according to the law, guarantee the rights of all members of the society to equally participate and develop. The Chinese people will, as always, enhance international cooperation with the people of other countries in the area of human rights. They will make their due contribution to the promotion of the healthy development of the cause of world human rights and the building of a harmonious world of lasting peace and common prosperity. "
We will follow the instructions given by President Hu, and, as we did in the past, strive to promote scientific development and social harmony, while implementing the principles respecting and safeguarding human rights. We will also strengthen international cooperation in human rights. We will learn and draw on the beneficial experiences of various countries to make new and greater efforts in promoting consistent progress for China as it modernizes and develops human rights. |
