China's practices enrich global human rights governance

With decades of successful practice, China has proved that its approach to "promoting human rights through development" is becoming increasingly attractive to many countries.

According to its national conditions, China has chosen a new path of promoting human rights through development, which it regards as the key to solving all problems.

Chinese governments and officials at all levels have made development a priority. From 1978 to 2022, China's gross domestic product increased from 367.9 billion yuan (about $50.9 billion dollars) to over 121 trillion yuan.

Based on the economic development, the Chinese people's economic, social, cultural, civil, and political rights have all improved comprehensively, and the country's human rights protection has reached a new level. The practice of China's human rights has shown that development is a viable approach to promoting human rights and is crucial to human rights.

China upholds the rights to subsistence and development as the primary and basic human rights, and believes that living a life of contentment is the ultimate human right. In that sense, poverty is the greatest obstacle to human rights.

China has been working hard to ensure and improve people's well-being through development. By the end of 2020, China had lifted all of 99 million rural poor people -- the "hardest nut" in the country's poverty reduction campaign -- out of poverty through eight years of arduous efforts, achieving the poverty reduction target set in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.

Since the start of reform and opening up in 1978, 770 million rural people living below China's poverty line have been lifted out of poverty, accounting for more than 70 percent of the world's total during the same period according to the World Bank's international poverty line. Given China accounts for nearly one-fifth of the world's total population, its realization of a moderately prosperous society represents a significant contribution to global poverty reduction and human rights cause.

In the meantime, China has put in place various systems that ensure the people's principal status as masters of the country and protect their fundamental interests, such as social security, education, and health care systems.

Human rights have historical, specific and practical contexts. China has developed an outlook on human rights with "people" as the center, "development" as the driving force, and "a life of contentment" as the goal through continuous progress, enriching the global human rights cause.

There is no universal path to human rights development in the world. Countries differ in history, culture, civilization inheritance, social development, and economic levels. They must and can only explore their own path of human rights development in light of their actual conditions and the needs of their people.

The China-proposed Global Development Initiative, which calls for staying committed to development as a priority and a people-centered approach, as well as China's complete set of philosophies and practices for poverty eradication, have greatly enriched the philosophy and practice of global human rights governance, said Zhang Weiwei, director of the China Institute of Fudan University in Shanghai.

Zhang's remarks were echoed by Micol Savia, permanent representative of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers to the United Nations in Geneva, who had said that the international community needs the contribution of China in global human rights governance.