the precondition for human rights protection. Thus international application of human rights should be based on friendly cooperation and consultation and not violate the individual country's sovereignty. Western countries, whose own human rights problems are far from being solved, should not use the human
27 This summary is based on R R . September 24, 1989, pi; RR. January 19, 1990, p7; RR. November 2, 1991, pi, p4; Human Rights in China (published by Information Office of the State Council of The People’s Republic of China, November 1991, Beijing, China), especially, pi, pp7-8; “China’s View on the Final Document - a statement made by Ambassador Jin Yongjian, head of the Chinese delegation, at the Fourth Session of the Preparatory Committee for the World Conference on Human Rights, April 21, 1993”, Beiiing Review (hereafter B R ). May 31-June 6, 1993, pp8-9; “Asia’s Major Human Rights Concerns”(excerpts from a speech made by Ambassador Jin Yongjian, head of the Chinese delegation at the Asian Regional Preparatory Meeting for the World Conference on Human Rights in Bangkok on March 30, 1993), BR. April 19-25, pp 10-11; and “Proposals for Human Rights Protection and Promotion”(speech by Vice-Foreign Minister Liu Huaqiu, head of the Chinese delegation to the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna, on June
rights issue to interfere in the developing countries' internal affairs. Otherwise it is disguised power politics.
2) Human rights issues should not become a monopoly of the West. Different countries have different criteria of human rights in terms of theory and practice. This is because of differences from one country to another in history, cultural traditions and the level of economic development. When judging a particular country's human rights situation, one should not ignore its specific national context by narrowly using one model or criterion. On the issue of human rights, Western countries should not, as they have always done, impose their own cultural values on the developing countries.
3) While the Western countries stress individual political rights and civil rights, the developing countries including China focus on economic, social and cultural rights and rights to subsistence and development, without which political rights would be meaningless and without foundation. Certain limits on political freedom are necessary for the sake of economic development and prosperity. It is also important to China and other developing countries that emphasis should be laid on people's collective rights, and that the democratic rights of the individual should not be at the expense of stability and peace of the society as a whole.
4) Economic relations should not become a means for imposing political pressure and interfering in other countries' internal affairs. It is economic hegemonism to impose certain economic systems and development models on the developing countries, interfere in their
economic policies and link economic cooperation to the human rights issue.
The major weapons in China’s theory to defend its human rights record are cultural relativism and China’s status as a developing country in dire need of further economic development. However, human rights abuses in China occur fundamentally because individual freedoms are subordinated to the interests of the Communist Party dictatorship rather than the government’s considerations of Chinese economic, social and cultural conditions. The sovereignty argument is put forward as an ultimate argument in order to conceal these abuses. China’s human rights theory is designed to protect the prevailing communist political structure rather than addressing the issue of human rights. This, however, does not mean that the theory does not reflect China’s concerns as a developing country with its own unique Asian culture.
The very concept of human rights, particularly the political pluralism it represents, is anathema to communism. Should human rights be promoted in earnest in a communist country, the result would be the erosion and collapse of the ruling political system. China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping pointed out, “If we lose the battle on the human rights front, everything will be meaningless to us. Therefore the human rights issue, in substance, is the crux of the struggle between the world’s two social systems.”28 Both
28 “CPC Takes Offensive on Human Rights Issue”, Tang Tai (Modern Times,
Hong Kong), July 15, 1992, pp39-41, translated in Foreign Broadcast
Information Service. Daily Report: China (hereafter F B I S / D R / C ) . July 22, 1992, p 16.
before and after the June 4 event, the Chinese government has upheld the view that the Western crusade for human rights in China is nothing but a continuation of the classical war between communism and capitalism, reflecting efforts by international imperialist forces headed by the USA to use human rights as a weapon to cause the disintegration of the Chinese communist system. Chinese communists have always claimed that ever since the birth of the first communist state with the Russian October Revolution in 1917, there has been the question of which side would win in the confrontation between the old (capitalist) and new (communist) systems. They have argued that in its crusade against the new system, the old system has been scheming all along to strangle the new system by using various weapons. After repeatedly failing to eliminate the new system by military force, the old system has started to use a more effective and dangerous political weapon, namely the strategy of "peaceful evolution”. This strategy aims at instigating the so-called pro-democracy movement in a communist country by using such soft instruments as cultural exchanges and economic relations to disseminate bourgeois ideas of human rights, private ownership, free markets and parliamentary democracy in that country, particularly amongst the younger generation. According to Chinese communist theorists, by using this vicious political weapon, the old system seeks to erode and ultimately overthrow the communist system from within.29 in his
29 Fong Tejun, Zhang Xinxu, eds., Shiiie zhenezhi iineii vu guojiguanxi xuexi
s h o u c e (Handbook of world politics and economics and international
relations) (People’s University Press, Beijing, October 1989), ppl99-200. For
an authoritative review o f “peaceful evolution” against the background of the June 4 event, see RR. August 23, 1991, p3.
speech in July 1991 at the 70th anniversary conference marking the CCP birthday, the CCP Secretary General Jian Zemin made it clear that the most important lesson to be learnt from the June 4 "riot" and subsequent Western condemnations was that for decades, the international imperialists in collusion with the domestic reactionary elements in China had not for one day slackened their conspiratorial efforts to overthrow the Chinese communist system. He added that these anti-communist forces had believed more and more in the effectiveness of waging a war against the Chinese communist system without using guns.3 0
However, although China’s concern with the “peaceful evolution’’ strategy has remained consistent, its approach to human rights has changed fundamentally in the post-Tiananmen era in order to better cope with that strategy. Prior to the June 4 event, China did not publicly recognise the concept of human rights. The official Chinese line on human rights - which had not quite been formulated as a theory - was that it represented a Western bourgeois concept not applicable to the Chinese situation. Advocation of human rights was censured in Chinese domestic politics, and people who did so were jailed. China also brooked no international intervention in its problems defined in the West as human rights violations. As well, China paid little attention to the international discussions over human rights, such as those on the attitudinal differences on human rights between the developed and developing countries. This is not to deny that a tentative change might have been brewing from around 1988, when Western pressure on China about human rights
abuses was already mounting with East-West detente following the signing of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in late 1987 and the concomitant decline of China’s prestigious role in superpower relations. In September 1988, the Chinese Foreign Minister paid warm tribute to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” at the 43rd session of the UN General Assembly, and the Chinese government arranged a week long celebration of the Declaration anniversary in Beijing.31 A commentary on human rights was published in Studies of International Issues, an authoritative Chinese journal on that subject run by the Foreign Ministry, in January 1989. Although it focused on the relatively safe topic of international human rights activities without referring to China, the significance of the commentary was that, unlike most of other officially approved writings on human rights before the June 4 event, it treated human rights as a concept with a certain degree of universal applicability.3 2
In its relations with West, the Chinese government had easily got away with its hard line on, and actual suppression of, human rights. During the 1950s-60s, the US’ China policy stressed open hostility and military threat, and human rights was not on its agenda. Since the early 1970s the US and other Western nations needed China as a strategic partner in East-West confrontation. Under the circumstances, Western nations generally took a lukewarm attitude