(East and West Questions) Short Commentary: Why is human rights a common pursuit of mankind?
China News Agency, Beijing, June 6th: Why is human rights the common pursuit of mankind?
China News Agency reporter An Yingzhao
Human rights are the symbol of the progress of human civilization and the common pursuit of human beings regardless of race, color, gender or nationality.
After decades of exploration, China has learned from the outstanding achievements of human civilization and has embarked on a human rights development path that conforms to the trend of the times and suits its national conditions.
It is generally believed that the concept of "human rights" originated in the modern West.
Having experienced the critique of "theocracy" in the Middle Ages and the advocacy of "humanism" during the Renaissance, European jurists and philosophers began to look for the legal basis for "human rights" from the ancient Greek natural law, and gradually gained momentum in the Enlightenment movement. Form a systemic human rights thought.
In 2021, a symposium to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the white paper "The Situation of Human Rights in China" will be held in Beijing.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Tian Yuhao
In the 17th century, the Dutch jurist Grotius clearly put forward the concept of "human rights" in his famous book "The Law of War and Peace", and used a special chapter to discuss the "universal rights of man"; at the same time, Spinoza further proposed and discussed the concept of "human rights". Arguing the "right of nature".
The British philosopher Locke's "Theory of Government" and the French thinker Rousseau's "The Social Contract Theory" systematized the theory of human rights and advocated that all people are born free and equal, and the relationship between man and the state is generated through a social contract, making rights the same as freedom, democracy, etc. Together with the concept, it has become the core value of Western "modernity".
In fact, the idea of human rights has existed in China since ancient times, and there are many things in common with the West.
Western philosophers such as Leibniz, Voltaire, Diderot, etc., also drew wisdom from traditional Chinese texts, especially the Confucian ideas such as "benevolence" and "forgiveness", which were "transmitted from middle school to the west", and in the 18th century Europe emerged as a "hundred-year-old". "China Fever" provides an important reference for the "Declaration of Human Rights and Citizenship", the first official human rights declaration in human history, in the future.
In the middle of the 19th century, Marx and Engels abandoned the classic Western human rights theory and criticized the limitations of the bourgeois concept of human rights, which prompted the further development and improvement of human rights theory.
As Marx pointed out, human rights are the product of history and commodity economy, not the so-called "innate".
Marxism pursues "man's liberation" and emphasizes that social revolution can no longer resort to "historical rights", "but only to human rights", and that the full realization of human rights is the "most noble and world-historical purpose" of human beings.
The No. 39 Primary School in Urumqi City, Xinjiang held an entrance ceremony for the first-year freshmen with the theme of "Enlightenment, Enlightenment, Wisdom and Virtue".
The picture shows the teacher giving cinnabar to the first-year freshmen.
China News Agency reporter Liu Xinshe
The socialist concept of human rights with Chinese characteristics is the product of the combination of the basic principles of Marxism with China's specific reality and with the excellent traditional Chinese culture.
In the past ten years, China has insisted on respecting and protecting human rights as an important task in state governance. It has not only promoted a series of historic achievements in China's human rights cause, but also made important contributions to the development of human rights theory and the progress of human rights in the world.
Human rights protection is not the best, only better.
The development of China's human rights cause reflects the combination of the universality of human rights and China's specific reality. It once again proves that the theoretical and practical paths of developing the human rights cause in different countries are different, but the pursuit of human rights and the yearning for a better life are similar.
China, which accounts for nearly one-fifth of the world's total population, has historically solved the problem of absolute poverty, built the world's largest medical and health system, and built the world's largest higher education system... As the world's only continuous development and implementation of four As a major power in the national human rights action plan in the current period, China has made important contributions to the development of human rights in the world, and has also injected valuable stability into the turbulent world under a century of change.
Shihe Village, Baima Township, Guang'an District, Guang'an City, Sichuan Province introduced a professional agricultural cooperative to plant 2,000 mu of Jiangjin Jiuyeqing pepper in the village, driving the villagers to continue to increase their income and helping the rural revitalization.
Photo by Liao Xiaobing issued by China News Agency
As the largest developing country in the world, China has successfully blazed a path of human rights development that conforms to the trend of the times and suits its own national conditions, and created a new form of human rights civilization. An important option that works.
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