Welcome to the World Wide Web Home page of Road to East Asia
Written by students of FC1750.06
at Founders College, York University
Vol.2, no. 2, January-February, 1997
Although China is a signatory to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which demands the "interdependency and indivisibility" of all human rights, China's practices give prominence to the social, economic, and cultural aspects of human rights over the political and civil (Donnelly, 250-51). In its own defense, China stresses the concept of diversity, and argues that each nation's perception of human rights is affected by its historical and cultural experiences.
"The concept of human rights is a product of historical development," says Liu Huaqui, a Chinese delegate to the 1993 convention in Vienna. "It is closely associated with specific social, political, and economic conditions, and the specific history, culture, and values of a particular country. Different development stages have different human rights requirements....different historical traditions and cultural backgrounds also have a different understanding and practice of human rights" (214). China's appeal to diversity basically is a defense of its assumptions about human nature and social relationships, the foundation upon which all of its political ideologies rest.
Prior to the peace of Westphalia and the establishment of the modern European state system in 1648, political and civil rights were also severely limited in the West. European nations were subject to the hegemonous rule of the Catholic Church. The cherished values of political freedom and civil liberty were only established after centuries of discussion and social tension. During the 17th, 18th, and l9th centuries, certain political philosophers, beginning with Thomas Hobbes and ending with J. S. Mill, postulated certain assumptions about human nature that questioned the authority of the established political systems of their day, and, in doing so, laid the theoretical foundations for all modern western liberal democracies. Each thinker based his conclusion on the assumption that people, by nature, are rational autonomous beings with individual rights in pursuit of their own self-interests (Pollis, 4).
However, most western liberal democracies did not recognize complete civil and political freedom for all of their citizens until the twentieth century. (Some may argue that they still have not done so.) The United States, for example, which gained independence in 1776, did not allow women to vote until 1920, and African Americans, at least freely, until 1965 after the voting rights act "suspended literary tests and other voter qualification devices which kept them out" (Wong, 244).
Conversely, China has had different historical experiences from western liberal democracies, and, as a result, has developed not only antithetical assumptions of human nature but also different perceptions of political and civil rights. For prior to the twentieth century, Chinese society was regulated by Confucian ideology and governed by a dynastic political system, which subjected all Chinese people to the absolute power of an emperor,women to men, and juniors to elders. Thus, from the start, Chinese society was hierarchic and anti-egalitarian. "The Confucian philosophy that sanctioned this hierarchic order became orthodoxy," says John Fairbank. "It was supported and perpetuated . . . through doctrines of superordination and subordination summed up in the Three Bonds (san-kang) governing the relations of benevolence and obedience, respectively, between father and son, husband and wife, and prince and minister" (5-6).
In traditional China, the concept of an autonomous individual with inherent, inalienable rights was therefore meaningless in traditional China, just as it was meaningless in the west prior to the writings of the modern political philosophers and the European states' emancipation from Catholic hegemony. Furthermore, after the PRC's communist victory in 1949, China has continued, to emphasize social values or rights over individual . China' s perception of political and civil rights changed very little from its dynastic Confucian ancestors because, by adopting a Marxist political paradigm, China also adopted Marxist assumptions that prior to civilization people were social beings, whose rights and duties were "inextricably interwoven" (Pollis, 9-10).
In this paper, I have attempted to identify three important criteria for the realization of political and civil liberty in China. First, the Chinese people, as a whole, or at least a significant majority, must realize that the established beliefs and values of their culture are not infallible 'truths' but simply based on a paradigm that is detrimental to their civil and political freedom. Second, they must perceive themselves as autonomous individuals who have inherent rights that are not subject to the collective. Third, they must actively assert these rights as a people, or, to reiterate, at least as a majority. If they remain conformably docile, they will never be able to participate in the decisions of their government, or be able to express freely their thoughts and opinions. In other words, until the Chinese people, as a nation, view themselves as individuals who participate in society at the behest of their own free will, political and civil freedom in China will remain but an intangible dream.
Donnelly, Jack. "Human Rights in the New World Order." World Policy Journal. 9.2 (Spring, 1992).
Fairbank, John K. "A Preliminary Framework." The Chinese World Order: Traditional China and Foreign Relations. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968.
Liu, Huaqiu. "(a) Statement by Liu Huaqiu, Head of the Chinese Delegation, Vienna, 17 June 1993." Human Rights and International Relations in the Asia Pacific. Ed. James T.H. Tang. New York: Pinter, 1995.
Pollis, Adamantia. "Liberal, Socialist, and Third World Perspectives of Human Rights." Toward a Human Rights Framework. Ed. Peter Schwab and Adamantia Pollis. New York: Praeger, 1982.
Wong, Kan Seng. "Statement by Wong Kan Seng, Minister of Foreign Affairs ofthe Republic of Singapore, Vienna, 16 June 1993." Human Rights and International Relations in the Asia Pacific. Ed. James T.H. Tang. New York: Pinter, 1995.
Illustration by Julie Shim