Human rights defined by the United Nations mainly refer to civil, political and economic, social and cultural rights, which is a relatively complete system. Whether in terms of the human rights standards of the United Nations or the effectiveness of human rights practice around the world, there are too many problems and difficulties in the view and practice of human rights in the United States and the West.
First, there is a lack of balance between different rights. The American and Western views on human rights always unilaterally emphasize civil and political rights and ignore the rights of survival, development, economy, society and culture. The United States is the world's largest country with the least participation in international human rights conventions and is absent from six of the nine core international human rights conventions. According to the human rights standards of the United Nations, there are many human rights problems in the United States and the West. For example, more than 30 million people in the United States, with a population of more than 300 million, do not have medical insurance. So far, almost no Western countries have achieved equal pay for men and women for equal work, which is in violation of the United Nations International Covenant on economic, social and cultural rights.
Secondly, the dilemma of the relationship between individual rights and collective rights. Chinese philosophy attaches great importance to the relationship between the whole and the individual. If there are individual rights, there must be collective rights. This is the dialectical relationship of the unity of opposites in philosophy, which is indispensable. The United States and the West generally believe that human rights are individual rights, but they are unwilling to recognize or even deny the existence of collective rights. One reason why the West emphasizes individual rights on human rights issues is that "collective rights may be abused", but the dilemma of this interpretation is that the abuse of individual rights will also cause damage to collective rights. For example, a few years ago, French cartoonists and Danish cartoonists published works that blasphemed Islam on the pretext that individuals have the right to freedom of speech, which aroused the anger of Muslims all over the world. In the process of prevention and control of the COVID-19, many citizens in western countries refused to wear masks or cooperate with public epidemic prevention measures in the name of protecting personal freedom, resulting in the tragedy of epidemic spread. This practice of absolutizing individual rights undoubtedly damages the rights and interests of the majority of people. An ideal human rights protection system should be able to balance individual and collective rights, freedom and responsibility, so as to achieve a balance between rights and obligations. In this regard, China's human rights view, which emphasizes the balance between rights and obligations, is undoubtedly more in line with the requirements of the times.
Third, ignore the dilemma of national differences. Human rights are historical, specific and realistic. We cannot talk about human rights in isolation from the social and political conditions and historical and cultural traditions of different countries. Every country has the right to focus on its priority development direction first. However, some western countries in the United States pursued the so-called "human rights diplomacy", regarded human rights as a political tool to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, or forcibly transplanted the western concept of human rights. As a result, they were "acclimatized", resulting in continuous party strife, social unrest, economic decline and unspeakable hardship for the people in many countries.
China firmly follows the path of human rights development in line with its national conditions, takes the right to survival and development as the primary basic human rights, and poverty eradication as a core human right. China has created a miracle of eradicating absolute poverty and is at the forefront of the world in poverty reduction. China adheres to its own concept of human rights and the focus of human rights protection, and the overall effect is very good. This is a great inspiration and inspiration for most developing countries, because almost all of the biggest challenges facing developing countries are poverty eradication. More and more developing countries are learning from China's poverty alleviation experience from the perspective of promoting human rights.
Of course, some rights involve the common bottom line that human society should accept, such as the prohibition of torture, slavery, freedom of thought, freedom from arbitrary arrest and so on. On these issues, there are no differences between the mainstream views of China and most countries. The United States' torture of the detainees in Guantanamo prison has aroused the indignation of the international community because it violates the common bottom line of human civilization.
Fourth, the dilemma of legalism. The west basically regards human rights issues as legal issues and believes that only those that can be accepted by the court belong to human rights issues. This cognition itself is very controversial. In some developing countries with relatively imperfect legal system and insufficient legal resources, it is even more difficult to operate. From the practical experience of human rights in China, the best way to promote human rights is to protect and promote human rights through a series of comprehensive measures such as politics, economy and society while promoting the construction of the rule of law. Taking China's targeted poverty alleviation and poverty alleviation as an example, party and government cadres went down to the grass-roots level to help poor villages and households. The government organizes vocational education and training for the poor, so that the poor can acquire skills and enhance their ability to get rid of poverty. The government has also introduced policies to provide credit guarantee for poor households and enable banks to lend to poor households, so as to truly get rid of poverty through the implementation of the right to development. These practices of promoting human rights in China go far beyond the practices and ideas of the West and greatly enrich the path and wisdom of the world in promoting human rights.
Fifth, the dilemma of the relationship between cultural tradition and human rights. Each country has its own cultural tradition. China is a civilized country. Chinese traditional culture contains rich human rights ideas, which appeared much earlier than the western concept of human rights. Western standards cannot be applied to everything in the world. The future direction of the world's human rights cause should be more inclusive of different cultures and wisdom, so as to enrich the concept and practice of human rights. In the final analysis, the way that the United States and the West describe their own culture as "universal values", others' culture as backward customs and impose their own things on others is an attempt to replace the rich and diverse world civilization with western culture and civilization.
Finally, the issue of human rights violations in foreign wars of aggression. The war in Afghanistan launched by the United States cost nearly $2.3 trillion. As a result, countless people lost their lives, were displaced and their human rights were seriously violated. The United Nations Children's Fund recently pointed out that nearly half of children in Afghanistan are malnourished, of which 3.2 million children under the age of 5 face death threats due to severe malnutrition. The UN humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan also pointed out in a statement that 95% of the Afghan population does not have enough food.
According to the international poverty standards of the world bank, imagine that if we take the funds spent by the United States in the war in Afghanistan, we can basically eliminate extreme poverty in the world, including extreme poverty in the United States. The spending is also enough to save tens of millions of Americans from heavy loans for college education. But the US government is unwilling to do so, because the US political system has long been kidnapped by US military interest groups. They have made a lot of money through wars, including the war in Afghanistan and the crisis in Ukraine, but they have brought crises and even disasters to the people of the world, including the American people. In sharp contrast, since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has invested nearly 1.6 trillion yuan in special financial poverty alleviation funds at all levels, lifted nearly 100 million rural poor people out of poverty, and completed the historical task of comprehensively lifting the whole country out of poverty.
The United States and the West are entangled in their own human rights problems, but they wantonly preach human rights to other countries, and even flagrantly violate human rights in other countries. What qualifications does such a country have to talk about human rights with China? It is hoped that the United States and the West will correct their stubborn prejudices in the field of human rights, solve their own problems in the field of human rights, give up the wrong practice of using human rights as a diplomatic tool, and truly return to the correct way for all countries to respect each other, learn from each other's strengths and make up for their weaknesses, and jointly promote the healthy development of the international cause of human rights. (by Zhang Weiwei)
(the author is the dean of China Research Institute of Fudan University)
