Chinese speeches on the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Officials and scholars defend Beijing's human rights record.

10 December 2023 marks the 75th anniversary of one of the world's most groundbreaking global pledges: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). While governments and human rights organizations in the West use the occasion to lambast China’s worsening human rights record, Beijing’s China Society for Human Rights Studies, a few days earlier, also commemorated the occasion.

On December 4, 2023, it hosted a seminar on “Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” where Chinese officials and scholars on human rights formulate and expand a distinct theory of human rights with Chinese characteristics. 70 people are reported to attend the event.

The debate surrounding human rights in China is well-known. Below are translations of some excerpts from the seminar which, hopefully, can be useful references. Some of the speeches at the seminar were shared in the Guangming Daily newspaper.

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Li Lin

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)

The contemporary Chinese outlook on human rights, as a philosophy of human rights, adheres to the unity of the universality and particularity of human rights and providing a Chinese model for the world’s human rights cause. China has established the realization of the all-round development of human freedom as the highest value pursuit of human rights protection. China believes that the full enjoyment of human rights is the common ideal of human society, and that respecting and protecting human rights are the common value and common cause of all humanity. We persist in proceeding from China’s actual conditions, take root in the best of traditional Chinese culture, and carry forward the humanism of Chinese civilization.

The contemporary Chinese outlook on human rights features the unity of theory and practice. China fundamentally guarantees human rights with the Party's overall leadership, promotes human rights with high-quality and all-round development, boosts human rights by maintaining security and stability, and protects human rights by promoting comprehensive law-based governance. While making progress in economic, political, cultural, social, and eco-environmental fields, China provides comprehensive, whole-process and whole-chain support for the full realization of human rights. China carries forward and practices its outlook on human rights. It ensures that the Chinese people enjoy extensive, full, true, concrete, and effective human rights in accordance with the law, so that the idealistic human rights put forward in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights documents can be steadily realized in China as realistic human rights. With their achievements and experiences in respecting and protecting human rights, the Chinese people inspire the development and progress of human rights in the entire world.

Fu Zitang

Vice President of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, President of the Human Rights Research Institute, Southwest University of Political Science and Law

On the afternoon of November 27, 2023, when presiding over the 10th group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that China will “actively participate in the reform and construction of the global governance system, promote the development of global governance in a more just and reasonable direction, promote global good governance with good international law, and help build a community with a shared future for mankind.”

There is no doubt that global human rights governance is inherent in this global governance. As early as December 10, 2018, in a letter to the seminar commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed to “promote the formation of a more just, reasonable and inclusive global human rights governance, jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind, and create a better future for the world.” This is the first time that General Secretary Xi Jinping has proposed the concept of “global human rights governance”.

The Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI), and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) together constitute the Three Global Initiatives and are an effective solution to the problem of human rights deficit and the improvement of global human rights governance.

Security is the prerequisite for development and civilization, as without a peaceful and tranquil environment, development and civilization would be impossible. Development is the foundation of security and civilization, as only through prosperity and development can peace be sustainable and civilization make progress. Civilization is the result of security and development, and in turn, it can provide spiritual support for security and development.

Specifically, development promotes human rights, which solves global development problems; security safeguards human rights, which ensures world peace and security; cooperation promotes human rights, which builds a new form of human civilization.

Lu Guangjin

Professor of Law, Jilin University, Vice President of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, former Director-General of the Human Rights Affairs Bureau, Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee

In our times, there are still many conflicts and problems hindering the development of human rights in the world. First, there are numerous challenges to effectively safeguard basic human rights and promote human well-being, such as the large number of refugees due to regional conflicts, the aggravation of poverty as a result of the widening development gap and the COVID-19 pandemic, the violation of the right to life of ethnic minorities due to ongoing racial discrimination, and the unsustainable development caused by climate change and environmental degradation.

Second, some countries are still promoting the so-called universalist concept of human rights, pursuing hegemony in human rights, and politicizing, instrumentalizing, and weaponizing human rights, treating human rights with an attitude of confrontation rather than unity and cooperation.

At this critical historical moment of great changes not seen in a century, China upholds the spirit of inclusiveness for different civilizations. General Secretary Xi Jinping has proposed the major concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind, advocated the common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom for all humanity, and put forward the Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative (GSI), and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), advocating safeguarding human rights through security, promoting human rights through development, and advancing human rights through cooperation. China's ideas, initiatives and propositions have played an important leading role in promoting global human rights governance and the development of the world's human rights cause.

Han Xiutao

Executive Director of the Center for Sci&Tech and Human Rights, Beijing Institute of Technology

As a key catalyst for social change, science and technology not only provide a rich material foundation for improving people’s wellbeing, but also add to the theoretical connotation and practical value of human rights. As intelligent technologies bring convenience to our working and life, we see the emergence and aggravation of risks in science and technology ethics such as personal privacy leakage, lack of data security, algorithm “black box”, deep-fake, information cocoon, big data-enabled price discrimination against existing customers, digital divide, and “data poisoning”, which become a real human rights issue that countries around the world must address.

Currently, digital technology is advancing in leaps and bounds, digital transformation is being accelerated, and a digital society is emerging. China, a digital resource powerhouse, will surely become a major power in digital governance. In July 2023, seven ministries and commissions including the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission jointly issued the Interim Measures for the Administration of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services, which became the world’s first law governing generative AI. Therefore, as the creator of Chinese-style governance of AI ethics, China has become a pioneer in global digital governance, and will lead the governance of science and technology ethics in the digital era.

Tong Lihua

Director of the Beijing Children's Legal Aid and Research Center

The global human rights cause in the digital age faces entirely new challenges. The rapid entry of human society into the digital age has brought entirely new challenges to the global human rights cause. First, the governance structure of human society has undergone fundamental changes. In both the agricultural and industrial eras, power was exercised by the state, and all countries were characterized by a "dualistic model of governance" between the power of the state and the rights of its citizens. In the digital age, platform enterprises, relying on powerful capital and technological advantages, have rapidly become new power holders, and human society has rapidly evolved into a "ternary governance model" of national public power, the digital power of platform enterprises, and the rights of the citizens.

Second, the most immediate impact of this change in national and global governance structures is the issue of users’ rights. Users' rights are fundamentally different from those of consumers in the industrial era. Platform companies, which possess users' data, will not only seriously affect the political rights as well as the economic, social, and cultural rights of citizens but also the rights of vulnerable groups, such as children, people with disabilities, and the elderly, with the use of algorithms, traffic, and other technologies.

Third, in the face of the rapid changes of the times, the governance of human society is far behind. As I pointed out in my address to the 54th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in October this year, unfortunately, the concept of users' rights has not yet been introduced into the human rights discourse of the United Nations. Many people are still entirely unaware of the significant impact of this issue on the cause of human rights. Therefore, how to construct a brand-new human rights idea and mechanism in the complex interaction between the national public power and the platform enterprise's digital power is a brand-new challenge facing human society at present.

Western countries took the lead in launching the Industrial Revolution, constructed a set of ideas, discourses, and systems for global governance after World War II, and played a leading role in defining the connotation and extension of the concept of human rights. In the digital age, China, alongside the West, is at the forefront of the development of the times and should have the courage and self-confidence to turn challenges into historical opportunities and actively promote the new development of the global human rights cause in the digital age.