Sharing the China Dream in the area of human rights

Tom Zwart, a human rights professor with Utrecht University in the Netherlands, has recently expounded in an article on China's human rights philosophy that guides its assistance to African nations, noting that only approaches anchored by deeply rooted values and social institutions are applicable and effective in local human rights protection.

The full text of the article is as follows:

Recently, China held an interim review meeting on the National Human Rights Action Plan (2012-2015) that raised a lot of attention.

In August 2012, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, who at that time was the Secretary of State, gave a speech in Dakar, Senegal, in which she stated that the U.S. is promoting democracy and human rights as part of its cooperation with African states. She advised the Africans not to work with states which are only interested in economic gain and therefore ignore human rights. It was clear to here audience which country she had in mind. Therefore, during a speech delivered in Tanzania, President Xi Jinping declared that relations between Africa and China are about fairness and extending justice.

This commonality is self-evident to the Chinese and the Africans, and therefore does not require explaining. This is different, of course, as far as the relations between Western countries and Africa are concerned. The Western worldview in some ways is so alien to Africans that it has to be pushed by tying strict conditions to aid. There are no such political strings attached to Chinese assistance, as President Xi Jinping again made very clear in his Tanzania speech. This is because the Sino-African cooperation is based on equality.

China and Africa perceive their cooperation in their own common philosophical terms, and they therefore do not necessarily resort to the Western vocabulary of human rights. In the West, human rights are usually perceived through the lenses of legalism and liberalism. In this view only legally enforceable individual rights, which may be invoked against the Government, if need be in law suits before courts of law, may be called human rights. In addition, these human rights have to reflect liberal values, like individualism, personal autonomy, and rationality.

However, in China and Africa values and social institutions have emerged over centuries and sometimes millennia which can be described as human rights, and which meet the requirements of human rights treaties. They include principles like friendship, virtue, reciprocity, harmony, benevolence and loyalty, which characterize Sino-African relations, and which serve as very important building blocks for human rights protection.

This is also the core assumption of the so-called receptor approach to human rights, which is being developed by a group of academics including scholars from the International Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Law School of Shangdong University. This concept assumes that the state's duty to implement a particular human rights obligation can be matched by values and social institutions other than law. Underlying this approach is the idea that international obligations can be performed while taking the local cultural, social and political contest into account. The concept is based on the idea that human rights will only be effective if they spring from local values.

This calls for a bottom-up approach, which emphasizes the importance of local values and culture, while being complemented by the international legal order. This bottom-up approach matches the Chinese perspective on Sino-African relations. As President Xi made clear during this Tanzania speech, China supports the efforts made by African countries to solve their own problems using their own home-grown remedies, while respecting their autonomy and their dignity. This angle allows Africa to remain in charge of its own fate.

That human rights play a very important part is also demonstrated by the way in which Sino-African relations are put into practice. When the Sino-African cooperation began during the 1950s, China assisted liberation movements to fight colonialism and to implement the right to self-determination. China is investing in the right to education by sending schoolteachers to African classes and by extending scholarships to African students, allowing them to enrol at Chinese universities. China secures the right to health by sending doctors and nurses to treat patients in Africa. And, last but not least, through its investment in the economy and the infrastructure, it brings jobs and reduces poverty.

China should not only address African, but also Western audiences. China's more active engagement in the human rights discourse, by showcasing its human rights philosophy as well as its record, needs to be welcomed. Therefore, China should not keep its ideas and concepts to itself, but make them known to others by bringing them to the international marketplaces of ideas. The China Dream deserves to be shared with people outside China as well.

Such efforts will be supported by the "Cross-cultural human rights center", which is being set up in The Hague, in The Netherlands. The Center is a collaborative effort of scholars from all courses of the world, mainly from China and Africa, who share the idea that local culture is an important building block for human rights protection. The role of the Center will be to highlight Chinese and African views on human rights in a way which will encourage Westerners to pay attention to them.

Tom Zwart

Professor of Human Right, Utrecht Univers