Op-Ed Contributors

Promoting human rights

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-21 07:51

The rapid development of the Internet has allowed Chinese citizens to expand their ways to freely express opinions. At present, China 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 and 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, 2,087 radio and TV stations. There were 173.98 million cable TV users, and 62 million users of cable digital TV services. 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 popular science films, documentaries, and animated cartoons. The rapid development of the press and publishing industry has provided strong support and guarantee for the fulfillment of the increasingly growing needs in the spiritual and cultural lives of the people.

Actively responding to the initiatives of the UN, China has always strived to attain the millennium development goals. It has already achieved the goal to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water by 2015, six years early. Since 1949, China, adhering to international and humanitarian principles, has always done its best to provide sincere and unselfish assistance to developing countries, promoting their economic development and improving people's livelihoods. So far, China has written off debts worth 26.5 billion yuan from 50 of the least-developed countries and poor countries with heavy debts, and it has provided $10 billion in favorable loans to African countries and offered credit support worth $15 billion to ASEAN countries, including Vietnam, to help them cope with the financial crisis. China has built more than 150 schools, nearly 100 hospitals, more than 70 water treatment centers and more than 60 stadiums for developing countries and sent medical teams to more than 70 countries, providing medical treatment to hundreds of millions of patients.

The progress and development of the cause of human rights in China are obvious to all. Of course, to be frank, we admit that as a result of the lack of development or imbalance in development, the state of human rights in China is not completely satisfactory. The Chinese government is taking vigorous measures to persistently promote the cause of Chinese human rights to achieve more. The resolution of China is also obvious to all, so we have to point out that it is incomplete and unjust to only recognize the prosperity and development of the Chinese economy and neglect the vivid reality of the development and the progress of human rights in China. We should also point out that, despite the fact that we are now in an era of globalization and cultural diversity, there are always some people in the world who use their accustomed perspectives and value judgments to view the human rights and development of different countries, different ethnic groups and different cultural backgrounds. They always want to willfully impose their "black or white" view on others, or appeal to force or other means to support those people who represent their values and concepts and ignore the law and true public feelings in other countries. However, the behavioral concept of "don't do to others what you wouldn't like them to do to you", advocated by Confucius more than 2,000 years ago, has been accepted by more and more people in various countries. I believe that, these acts of prejudice and certain motives don't benefit the development and progress of the cause of human rights in China and the world and 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 ranking around 100th in the world, China has tens of millions of people still living in poverty, a rural population of 713 million and more than 800 million people of employment age. This has posed rare difficulties for China to develop and promote human rights. In its efforts 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 and at the same time, according to the basic condition of the country, substantively put safeguarding the people's rights to live and develop first 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 in human rights and with the people of other counties, make their due contributions for 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, like we did in the past, strive to promote scientific development and social harmony, and implement the principles respecting and safeguarding human rights. We will also strengthen international cooperation in human rights, learn and draw on the beneficial experiences of various countries to make new and greater efforts in promoting consistent progress for China to modernize and develop human rights.

Ladies and gentlemen, friends:

Despite the fact that we are from different countries with different cultural backgrounds, languages and viewpoints, we share a common wish: to contribute to the development and progress of world human rights. I sincerely wish we can use the Third Beijing Human Rights Forum to express views and opinions and put forward proposals with wisdom that will usher in a better future for world human rights and development.

Finally, I wish the Third Beijing Human Rights Forum success!

(China Daily 10/21/2010 page8)