China wins praise for contributions to world’s human rights cause
By He Yin
China’s tremendous achievements in poverty reduction and its important contributions to the development and progress of the world’s human rights cause won praise from participants in an international meeting on the role of poverty alleviation in promoting and protecting human rights held on Feb. 26.
As part of the 46th regular session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which is slated to run from Feb. 22 to March 23, the meeting was aimed at facilitating the sharing of good practices and experience in promoting human rights through poverty reduction and fostering technological cooperation concerning human rights in the international community.
Facts have shown that China’s idea of “No human right is more important than the right to a happy life”, which the country has advocated all along, is inspirational to the international community.
The country has adhered to a people-centered philosophy in protecting human rights, combined the universal principles of human rights with the prevailing realities of the country, and pursued a new path of human rights protection based on its national conditions.
China has always regarded the rights to subsistence and development as the primary and basic human rights, which is in accord with the Declaration on the Right to Development of the UN, which stipulates that the right to development is an inalienable human right.
The country is committed to improving the protection of the people’s economic, political, social, cultural, and environmental rights, safeguarding social fairness and justice, and promoting the well-rounded development of individuals.
China has won the war against poverty as planned, and attained the poverty reduction goal set in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule; it has built the world’s largest education system, social security system, medical system and the system of community-level democracy; the average life expectancy of Chinese people has increased from 35 years to 77 years.
Such achievements China has made in protecting human rights have proven that development is the master key to solving all problems and that living a happy life is the primary human right.
China’s human rights philosophy is not only the inherent logic behind its human rights progress, but also the country’s important contribution to enriching and expanding the world’s human rights theories.
Guided by its people-centered approach in human rights protection, China has been able to better protect and promote human rights through effective poverty alleviation actions.
Since 2012, China has organized and launched a tough anti-poverty drive that is the largest in scale and strongest in intensity in human history.
Recently, the country announced that it has achieved a complete victory in its fight against poverty, with the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living under the current poverty line all lifted out of poverty, and all the 832 poor counties and 128,000 poverty-stricken villages removed from the poverty list.
These figures represent stronger guarantee for protecting Chinese people’s rights to subsistence and development.
Eliminating absolute poverty is a historic achievement in China’s human rights progress. Meanwhile, the remarkable achievement has also provided solutions to global poverty problems in both theory and practice.
As a major developing country with a population that accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s total, China has beyond doubt injected strong positive energy into the development of global human rights cause with its great human rights achievements.
Serbian-American economist Branko Milanovic, who works on global inequality issues, noted that China’s poverty reduction and development are of great significance for promoting global equality and progress.
In June 2020, the UNHRC adopted again China’s resolution on “promoting win-win cooperation in the field of human rights”. Later in October, China was elected as a member of the UNHRC for the 2021-2023 term in an election held at the 75th UN General Assembly.
These facts have proven that China’s active participation in global human rights governance has been fully recognized by the international community.
Protecting and promoting human rights is a common cause for all. Global human rights governance should be advanced through consultation among all countries, and the benefits of human rights progress should be shared by people of all countries.
China is willing to join hands with other countries to uphold the common values shared by all humanity—peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, safeguard human dignity and rights, strive for fairer, more reasonable and inclusive global human rights governance, and build a community with a shared future for mankind and a beautiful world.
