A New Model of Political Reasoning by Kanzhen Li

Author:Kanzhen Li
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789813348035
Publisher: Springer Singapore

Cluster 3: Human Rights Content

Illustration China, in this period, emphasizes the priority of the right to subsistence and development.169 While explaining the progress in other aspects of human rights (political and civil, labor, women, and children, religious, etc.), the 1991 and 1995 human rights white papers emphasize the priority of the right to subsistence and development, which are secured by the policy of putting the economic construction as the core position.170 Thus, the Chinese policy elite recognizes all types of human rights, but organizes them in a hierarchical order where the most necessary and urgent rights (subsistence and development) are “the precondition for” other rights.171 As Wan concludes: “The general human rights White Papers treat people’s rights to subsistence and development as taking precedence over civil and political rights in China’s current situation. Economic rights are therefore given priority in all these documents”.172 “All…documents [Chinee human rights white papers]”, Wan observes, “treat political and civil rights in China as an afterthought to economic rights”.173

Strategic Elements Insisting on the priority of the right to subsistence and development grows from an emphasis on material development for China’s domestic social functionality and national material accumulation.174 China’s current condition—i.e. the lack of economic development, a large population with a shortage of natural resources, determines that economic development is necessary for the national strength and material accumulation for domestic needs (i.e., stability, material requirements and attribution).175 As Liu explains: “China is still a developing country with limitations in economic and cultural development. China is now struggling to develop a socialist market economy…such a road can…ensure national prosperity as well as social stability…”.176 The 1991 white paper notes the remaining limitations in national economic development, people’s living conditions, and capacity to respond to an accidental crisis, thus emphasizing the importance of concentrating on economic development based on stability for the Chinese people’s right to subsistence.177 As 1995 white paper emphasizes: “China is a developing country with 12 hundreds of million population and lower per capita resources, and with long-term experience of external invasion, plundering, and oppression. So, enjoying the right to subsistence and development historically becomes the most urgent request of Chinese people”.178

Ideational Elements China’s insistence on the right to subsistence and development is supported by a normative basis and such right’s factual importance for other rights.179 For one thing, based on the UN treaty contents that recognize individuals’ rights for physical security and living as well as the importance of collective rights, the 1991 white paper emphasizes the importance of national independence and development for domestic populations’ subsistence and living condition and argues that such emphasis is essential viewing towards the practices of foreign invasion and unjust economic order that previously and continuously harm many less-developed countries.180 For the other, concerning reality in human rights protection, former President Deng emphasizes that “improvement of economic welfare is a foremost human right and also the prerequisite for other rights”.181 It is recognized that human rights are impossible with a lack of national development: people will lose their fundamental rights when their nation continuously suffers from unjust international economic order.

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