Q: When talking about human rights, China always holds that subsistence and development rights are the principal human rights. What are the reasons for this viewpoint? What has China done in solving the subsistence and development rights of the Chinese?

A: Subsistence and development rights are the principal human rights. Without these rights, other human rights have nowhere to start. This is China's basic viewpoint on the issue of human rights, and a basic conclusion that China draws from history and the present situation.

Before 1949 when the People's Republic of China was founded, China had long suffered from invasion and colonial domination. The country lost its sovereignty and the society was in a perpetual state of unrest. Under the oppression of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, common people suffered from invasion and exploitation and 80 percent of them were left in poverty, without dignity let alone basic human rights. After more than a century's struggle, the Chinese people founded their own country and realized their right to subsistence. After 1949, and especially after reform and opening up in 1978, China set economic development as the central task and began pursuing development with undivided attention. Within the past two decades, the number of poor people in China declined from 250 million to 2.61 million in 2004, with more than 1 billion people living a comfortable life. The human rights situation has comprehensively improved and developed. China's achievements in protecting, improving and promoting human rights are praised by all unbiased countries and people.

Of course, because China is a developing country, the Chinese human rights situation still needs to be improved for historic and economic reasons, in particular the unbalanced development between western and eastern areas and the differences between the rich and the poor. However, the Chinese Government and Chinese people are awake to these problems and are trying to solve them. This is a long-term process and these problems can be ultimately solved only with economic development. Development is the foundation for solving the rights of equal development.

The year 2004 is significant in China's human rights development. "The state respects and protects human rights" was written into the Constitution for the first time, so that respecting and protecting human rights became part of the country's values, for the CPC as ruling party as well as one of the country's basic legal principles, developing a more extensive foreground for the comprehensive development of China's human rights undertakings.