China's Practices in Human Rights

Human rights used to be a sensitive topic in China. Before 1991, the Chinese government rarely took the initiative to participate in the formulation of international human rights rules, nor did it present the human rights situation in China from an official perspective, leaving the international community with little understanding of the real human rights situation in China. There was a lack of research and discussion of human rights in China by the government, civil society organizations, and academia. Since 1991, when the Chinese government published its first white paper on human rights, Chinese civil society organizations have gradually become more active in the field of human rights, and academic research on human rights has expanded significantly, with the government, civil society organizations, and academics interacting around human rights and jointly promoting the formation of a model of human rights practice in China. Since the 1990s, through a series of official documents such as white papers on human rights, the Chinese government has expressed its basic position on human rights to the world and introduced the progress of human rights in China in recent years. Since 2009, through the formulation of four national human rights action plans, the Chinese government has gradually coordinated and synchronized the national human rights action plans with national economic and social development plans, etc., and carried out human rights practices with Chinese characteristics. But what is the human rights situation in China? How should it be assessed? There is a certain discrepancy in the perception of these questions not only between the official expressions of the Chinese government and those of civil society organizations and scholars, but also between the views of some foreign governments and media and China’s self-perceptions and expressions. Based on the above, this article does not presuppose its own position, but, on the basis of respect for all sides, transcends arguments and differences, discards moral accusations, and, from the perspective of a scholar in the field of human rights, attempts to highlight more the Chinese perspective to convey to readers the information on how China itself expresses and views China’s practice in human rights in recent years, and to show concretely how the Chinese government, Chinese civil human rights research institutions, and Chinese scholars perceive human rights in China. This article is an attempt to present a more realistic, fleshed-out, three-dimensional, and pluralistic image of China’s practice in human rights to the world, based on an objective and realistic perspective. It should be noted that the books and articles cited in this article mainly include studies done by Chinese scholars using Chinese. In order to enable readers to search accurately and avoid unnecessary misunderstanding and confusion, this paper will take two approaches to present the literature. Literature that can be retrieved directly through the English language provided by the authors will be presented in English, while in other cases, the information of the literature will be presented in its original form using Hanyu Pinyin plus Chinese characters.