China News Agency, Beijing, January 2. Question: Why do you say that human rights thought has a long history in China?
China News Agency reporter An Yingzhao
In the 19th century, Leo Tolstoy, who had experienced the flames of war, wrote a famous saying, "Happy families are all alike, and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Times have changed, but human yearning for happiness remains the same. Similarly, the paths to happiness vary from country to country.
As a large country with a population of 1.4 billion, how did China get rid of absolute poverty and achieve continuous progress in the cause of human rights in just a few decades?
The five-episode large-scale TV political film "Human Rights in China in the New Era" showed the world the "happiness code" of Chinese people.
By protecting the human rights of all people, guaranteeing the equal rights of all ethnic groups, and prioritizing the protection of the rights to survival and development, China has embarked on a path of human rights development that conforms to the trend of the times and suits its national conditions.
Behind the continuous improvement of human rights protection in contemporary China, there is deep concern for people in Chinese civilization. Looking back at the history of civilization for more than 5,000 years, we can see that human rights thought has a long history in China.
In 2006, the first "China Human Rights Exhibition" was held in Beijing.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Liao Pan
In the pre-Qin period, Taoism taught that "the sage has no permanent heart, and the heart of the people is the heart." ".
The introduction of Buddhism in the Eastern Han Dynasty gradually evolved the idea of "great compassion without predestined relationship, great compassion with one body".
In the Tang and Song dynasties, Zhu Xi further proposed that "the country is based on the people, and the country is also established for the people." Zhang Zai's famous saying "build a heart for the heaven and earth, and build a life for the people" has become the lifelong pursuit of countless insightful people in China for thousands of years.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, Huang Zongxi issued an appeal in "Ming Yi Dai Fang Lu" that "the world is the master and the guest". This document, which can be called the Chinese version of the "Declaration of Human Rights", was a hundred years earlier than Rousseau's "On the Civil Contract"; In 1948, under the suggestion of Zhang Pengchun, the Chinese representative, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights incorporated traditional Chinese ideas such as conscience, benevolence, loyalty, forgiveness, and tolerance. classic.
Nearly a hundred years ago, Hu Shi wrote in "Which Way Should We Go?
"It is pointed out that China "will eradicate and defeat the five enemies of poverty, disease, ignorance, corruption, and disturbance."
Since then, how to defeat these "five enemies" has become a difficult problem throughout China's modernization, and it is also a frame of reference for testing China's human rights development.
As mentioned in the film "Human Rights in China in the New Era", the Communist Party of China has held high the banner of "struggling for democracy and human rights" since its founding, clearly declaring its proposition of saving the country and the people and fighting for human rights.
During the period of the new democratic revolution, the period of socialist revolution and construction, the new period of reform and opening up and socialist modernization, the CCP firmly grasped the original mission of seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, and promoted the Chinese people's right to survival, The protection of the right to development and other basic rights has been continuously advanced.
In the process, the CCP combined the Marxist concept of human rights with China's specific reality and with the excellent traditional Chinese culture. While summarizing the successful experience of the Chinese people in respecting and protecting human rights, it also drew on the achievements of human civilization to form a model of respecting human rights. The Chinese characteristics of protecting, protecting and developing human rights have enriched the new form of human rights civilization.
Data map: Guangxi Minority Gala.
Photo by Yu Jing
According to statistics from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), China's Human Development Index (HDI) jumped from 0.501 in 1990 to 0.758 in 2018, an increase of more than 50%. , the only country that jumped from "low human development" to "high human development".
Another vivid case is that before the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Dulong people living in the deep mountains of Yunnan still lived a primitive social life of tying ropes to keep records and slash-and-burn farming. Whenever the mountains were closed by heavy snow, they became isolated islands.
As poverty alleviation efforts continue to intensify, the 6.68-kilometer ultra-long tunnel passes through Gaoligong Mountain, making the natural moat a thoroughfare, and the Dulong ethnic group declares that they have lifted themselves out of poverty.
In the continuous development of China's human rights cause, the miracle of "one thousand years" has moved from imagination to reality.
Looking back at Hu Shi's confusion in those years, it is not difficult to find that today's China has found the right path.
"There is no best protection of human rights, only better." Following this path, China's human rights cause will continue to develop, and it will also make new contributions to enriching the diversity of human civilization and promoting the development of human rights in the world.
(use up)