——A Book Review of Xi Jinping: On Respecting and Protecting Human Rights

Human rights are what we want out of life for ourselves and our loved ones.  

The genius of the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights, co-drafted by a Chinese diplomat Peng Chung Chang, is that it extends the enjoyment of dignity, justice, freedom and peace to everyone, even to people who could have been our enemy. 

Article 1 of the declaration is imbued with Chinese thought: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”  Subsequent articles in the declaration also reveal Chinese sensibilities. 

Peng Chung Chang, as vice-chair of the drafting committee, is credited with providing “the philosophical backbone of the declaration” even by those who disagreed with him. He drew on the ideas of Confucius and Mencius “not because they were Chinese, but because their ideas had universal validity”.  He advocated “harmony instead of sameness” and resisted metaphysics, ideology and theism to ensure that the language used was untainted and represented “universal validity and legitimacy”.   

Vehemently opposed to colonialism, when many still saw empires as a means spreading “superior” Western values, he successfully opposed a clause that would have seen human rights applied differently in states and in their dependencies. He fruitfully advocated that the right to life should extend beyond mere existence to embrace the good life, thus permitting the inclusion of socioeconomic rights within the declaration.  

Today, the right to economic development is opposed by the majority of already developed nations. War crimes, indiscriminate bombing of civilians, are increasingly being committed, supported and, even, advocated in defence of national security. Indeed, human rights themselves risk becoming weaponised, presented as something that likeminded nations support but others abuse.  The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is marginalised, even ignored.   

In such depressing times it is refreshing to engage with the Chinese values that ensured the universality of the declaration. These are reiterated “Xi Jinping: On Respecting and Protecting Human Rights”, the latest collation of statements and documents often known collectively as the Thoughts of Xi Jinping. In this volume, 335 passages are assembled drawn from 160 documents covering the period 2012 to 2021 and organised under nine themes. 

While not written as a book with a linear argument, the passages within sections are in date order, thus revealing the development of Xi Jinping’s thoughts. These are the ideas that underpin Chinese policy towards human rights. Hence, they make essential reading for anyone interested in China’s role in the world. 

The continuity of Chinese values is clear: quality of life; shared values and collective action; harmony of peoples and cultures. The opening chapter is devoted to accounts of how China’s system of multi-party cooperation and consultation, led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), has successfully delivered rights following principles established in the constitution.    

President Xi variously expresses the belief that “the greatest human right of all is the right to a happy life”, explains how the CPC’s “abiding goal” is “to lead the people in building a better life”, notes the need “to adapt to the people’s aspiration...with a people-centred philosophy of development” and describes “the huge progress [made] in the cause of human rights”. 

The chapter explains the ways in which development has enhanced people’s lives, increasing incomes and improving health and safety. Development has been accompanied by political reform with “richer democratic rights” and “enhanced legal guarantees”. Each of these aspects is covered in detail in subsequent chapters. There are additional chapters devoted to “the rights of special groups” and “cultural diversity and worldwide human rights”. 

President Xi describes the progressive realisation of rights, rejecting the Western notion that rights are invariant and prescriptive. In China, he explains, “we understand that human rights protection is an on-going cause, and we are always striving to do better”; “we do not believe there is a best, only better”.   

This improvement is possible because of China’s socialist democracy. This comprises first, the people’s “exercise [of] power by holding elections and voting” and secondly, “exhaustive consultations [that] strive for consensus …before major decisions are made.” President Xi refuses to accept that there is “one rigid model” of democracy that “all should adhere to”. In China, the CPC’s leadership “serves to reflect the unity between democracy and centralism”. 

The progressive realisation of rights is evident throughout the volume. In 2014, President Xi quoted Deng Xiaoping by saying：“poverty is not socialism.” By 2021, common prosperity had become “an essential requirement of socialism and an important feature of modernization”. So, too, had the realization of “social harmony and stability” and the prevention of “polarization”. 

Foreign readers will note with interest that the chapter on special groups includes both women and ethnic minorities. In its entirety, the chapter presents a template for social policy reform.  

The final chapter, the longest, is on global rights and cultural diversity. It reveals the thinking that led China to introduce the BRI and the GDI. “No country can thrive while the rest of the world does not. This requires all countries to help each other and pull toward a common cause…the common development of all countries”. “Only through development can we resolve conflicts at their roots.” 

Robert Walker，Professor, School of Sociology, Beijing Normal University 

Emeritus Fellow, Green Templeton College, Oxford University