Country's pursuit of public health, safety proves effective amid pandemic

The evolving Chinese philosophy on advancing human rights, as presented by President Xi Jinping, offers a viable approach to tackling difficulties facing the world amid the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, said leaders, officials and experts said.

They made the observation as China has made notable progress in basic elements constituting human rights, including people's livelihoods, health and democracy.

A book collecting Xi's discourses in recent years on respecting and protecting human rights was published this month by the Central Party Literature Press and distributed across the country.

In his articles, remarks and comments, Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, underscored the consistent Chinese philosophy of advancing human rights through development as well as the country's dedication to whole-process people's democracy.

"The ultimate human right is that people can lead a happy life. Since the first day of its founding, the CPC has fully committed itself to the well-being of the Chinese people and human development," Xi wrote in a letter in 2018 to a symposium celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Han Dayuan, a professor at the Law School of Renmin University of China and director of the university's Human Rights Center, said, "In the early days of the founding of the Party, human rights became the goal pursued by the CPC. It can be said that the 100-year history of the Party is the history of exploring and realizing human rights in China."

Siddharth Chatterjee, the United Nations resident coordinator in China, highlighted the country's philosophy on advancing human rights in a recent interview, in which he cited a congratulatory letter sent by Xi on Dec 8 to the 2021 South-South Human Rights Forum.

In the letter, Xi noted that putting people first and taking people's desire for a better life as the goal is the responsibility of all countries, and China is willing to "contribute wisdom and strength to the sound development of the international human rights cause".

Chatterjee said Xi's message was "about people's human rights being an aspect of human civilization and how important it is to adopt a people-centered approach".

"After all, 750 million people were lifted out of poverty in a matter of four decades. The UN has been a part of this journey since 1979 in China," he said.

According to Chatterjee, one of the most important principles of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals is to "leave no one behind", and this principle has been echoed by Xi's message, as well as the Global Development Initiative proposed by Xi earlier this year.

As for human rights in the global context, Xi's discourses stress that the practicing of human rights is varied, and countries around the world should and can choose the development path of human rights that suits their own national conditions.

"In terms of human rights protection, there is no best way, only the better one," Xi said in a congratulatory letter to a forum on human rights in 2015.

Xi's comments were made at a time when "quite a few politicians in some Western countries made paradoxical gestures on human rights", said Tian Dewen, deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of European Studies.

"They ignore basic rights including health and safety while prioritizing political rights. They turn a blind eye to their own country's human rights problems, and they arbitrarily seek unilateral sanctions on other nations using the excuse of human rights," Tian said.

At the heart of all these paradoxical gestures is the Cold War era mentality fixating on confrontation, and "developing countries should shore up their unity in preserving human rights based on the overwhelming public will and needs in their countries, boycott human rights-based diplomacy sought by Western countries and boost their global say in human rights", Tian said.

John Ross, former director of the London Economic and Business Policy Office, said at a symposium earlier this month that fewer than 5,000 people on the Chinese mainland had died from COVID-19, but "the US claims human rights and democracy are better in the US than China".

"What type of absurd reasoning can try to justify such a conclusion, which is in violation of all the facts on literal matters of life and death－the most fundamental of all human rights?" said Ross, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies of Renmin University of China.