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First Letter: H

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Human Rights

Written by Malin Oud on .

Brief

Human rights are rights intrinsic to all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion, or any other status. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was adopted in 1948 as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and nations”. International human rights law lays down the obligations of governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts in order to promote, protect and fulfil the human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups.

For political reasons, when the rights listed in the UDHR were codified into legally binding instruments, they were divided into two separate covenants: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

China has ratified the ICESCR, but not the ICCPR, maintaining that sovereignty and non-interference trump the notion of universal human rights. Instead, China considers human rights to be a country’s “internal affairs” rather than a legitimate concern of the international community. China promotes a state-centric and relativist conception of human rights “with Chinese characteristics”, according to which stability, harmony, subsistence and economic development take precedence over human rights, especially civil and political rights.

Analysis

China published its first White Paper on Human Rights in 1991. Issued in response to international criticism of the government crackdown on protesters on Tiananmen Square in 1989, the paper states that China has a different understanding of human rights than the West due to its different national and historical conditions. The paper nevertheless marked a shift in government policy away from outright rejection of human rights as a “bourgeois” concept to a position of partial and reluctant acceptance of international human rights standards and principles. China has ratified six of the nine core human rights conventions, but has at the same time always maintained that the “right to subsistence” (生存权, a right which does not exist in international human rights law) and the right to development (发展权) are the “foremost human rights”. At the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna at the end of the Cold War to affirm the universality and indivisibility of all human rights, China stated:

For the vast number of developing countries to respect and protect human rights is first and foremost to ensure full realisation of the rights to subsistence and development. The argument that human rights are the precondition for development is unfounded. When poverty and lack of adequate food and clothing are commonplace and people’s basic needs are not guaranteed, priority should be given to economic development. Otherwise, human rights are completely out of the question. 

Confidence in “the Chinese model” was boosted by the global financial crisis in 2008. At the same time, so-called “colour” revolutions in a number of countries in the early 2000s gave rise to a heightened sense of external threat in Beijing. In 2013, a notice issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s General Office called for strengthened Party leadership and management of the “ideological battlefield”. The document, commonly referred to as Document 9, cautioned against seven perils seen as threatening to undermine the Communist Party, including the promotion of universal values.

In the last ten years, Beijing’s approach to the international human rights system has shifted from a defensive attitude to a more proactive strategy. China has become an international norm entrepreneur that is seeking to “break Western human rights hegemony” (打破西方人权霸权) and change “international human rights governance”. In a series of high-profile speeches at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and at the United Nations in Geneva and New York in 2017, Xi Jinping launched the concept of “a community of shared destiny for mankind” (人类命运共同体), a vision for a world order that emphasises sovereignty, respect for different political systems, and “win-win cooperation” (合作共赢) among states.

In 2017, the concept of a “community of shared future” was inserted into a resolution adopted by the UN Human Rights Council entitled “The Contribution of Development to the Enjoyment of All Human Rights”. In June 2020, the council adopted a China-sponsored resolution entitled “Promoting Mutually Beneficial Cooperation in the Field of Human Rights”, advocating an international human rights system based on cooperation between states, rather than accountability and the rights of individuals.

History

Written by David Bandurski on .

Brief

According to one globally shared view of history, its study informs human behaviour. Even in China, George Santayana’s famous words, “hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, have the familiar ring of truth. But history’s constant exploitation is also a fact across much of the world. Following the tradition of “correct” history writing laid down in the Soviet Union under Stalin in 1938, China’s ruling Communist Party has long viewed the shaping of history as a crucial means of justifying and defending the regime. Under Xi Jinping since late 2012, the emphasis on the Party’s official vision of history as a source of power and legitimacy has only strengthened.

Analysis

Since its origin in the 1920s, the Chinese Communist Party has adhered to a materialist conception of history,[1] a doctrine of linear historical progress proceeding through class struggle. Armed with this socialist historiography, Mao Zedong established himself as China’s revolutionary leader in the 1940s, and in the decades that followed this conception of history legitimised the CCP as a revolutionary and ruling Party. In the CCP’s first formal resolution on history in 1945, Mao Zedong summarised the key political lessons since the Party’s founding in 1921. The resolution, which followed Mao’s successful purging of his political opposition, focused criticism on the supposed damage caused in the preceding decade by “left-leaning opportunism”, and formalised Mao’s supremacy, laying the foundation for catastrophic failure of the Cultural Revolution – a decade hugely destructive to China’s cultural heritage.

After Mao’s death, the CCP set off on a new path of reform and opening. A new consensus on history was required to explain the failings of the Mao era and consolidate the foundation of power under the reform agenda. This came in 1981 with Deng Xiaoping’sResolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the PRC (关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议), which served to reframe the reform project and settle the question of the “erroneous theories and practices” of the Cultural Revolution, while not undermining Mao’s revolutionary role, insisting that Mao’s “contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes”.

Similarly, the CCP’s third resolution on history, the November 2021 Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experiences of the Party’s Hundred-Year Struggle (中共中央关于党的百年奋斗重大成就和历史经验的决议), declared a new direction for the CCP and reconsolidated its claim to power under the leadership of Xi Jinping. The resolution, which established Xi as the pioneer and charismatic leader of a “New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” (中国特色社会主义新时代), cemented his power and legacy. Xi’s “New Era”, a period covering less than one-tenth of the CCP’s 100-year history, occupied more than half of the resolution text. 

Under Xi Jinping, the CCP has sharpened its focus on the Party’s revolutionary history. It has spoken in the official media of “red genes” (红色基因), referring to the revolutionary spirit and Party’s history as a political and cultural inheritance of the Chinese people, and has even sought to safeguard its revolutionary legacy with campaigns against “historical nihilism” – meaning denial of the Party’s official history and its materialist historical development – and legislation against the defaming of heroes.  Also under Xi Jinping, there has been a renewed focus on China’s “excellent traditional culture” as a resource of Party legitimacy, seen particularly in Xi’s 2012 notion of the “Chinese Dream of a great rejuvenation of the Chinese people”. This idea posits China’s return, after more than a century of humiliation at the hands of the West, to the centre of the world stage – a position, according to current CCP historiography, that Chinese civilisation held for much of its own history.

[1] L. Pang, “Mao’s Dialectical Materialism: Possibilities for the Future”, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, vol. 28, no. 1, February 2016, pp. 108-123.

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