New thinking on human rights cooperation
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Thirdly, both sides should not only strengthen the dialogue about the connotations of human rights but also enhance cooperation and innovation in social management that aims to improve the real status of human rights.
Western societies mainly pursue protecting and enlarging human rights through checks and balances as well as by laws, while Chinese traditions emphasize enhancing social harmony and prosperity through promoting social fairness, responsibility, morality, and education.
Both sides can learn from each other if they maintain an open mind. In a recent speech, Chinese President Hu Jintao called for safeguarding the rights and interests of Chinese people and for improving their livelihood through strengthening China's social management mechanisms. And Premier Wen Jiabao's regular chats with the public via the Internet, which resembles US town hall meetings, shows the determination of Chinese leaders to improve human rights through social and political innovations and their ability to learn from Western experiences in social management.
Perhaps President Obama and American politicians could study the Chinese government's recent regulations in controlling real estate prices and inflation, increasing social welfare, and narrowing various socioeconomic gaps and could be inspired to enact reforms for financial, social security, and Medicare in the United States.
In addition, both sides should also upgrade previous exchanges and cooperation in governance and self-governance to a more detailed and pragmatic level. Both American and Chinese people deeply understand that their human rights have to be protected and improved through law and order and that a Cultural Revolution style "great democracy" will only jeopardize human rights and bring anarchy and chaos.
Furthermore, China and the United States should expand the range of participants in the human rights dialogue by promoting people-to-people exchanges and by following a new perspective of building up a "community of common interests" initiated by Chinese and American leaders and senior strategists. Although individuals have their own views on human rights that might contrast from what government officials, distinguished scholars, media, think tanks, and nongovernmental organizations have advocated, the more people-to-people exchanges, the deeper human rights communication at the grassroots level.
People-to-people exchanges could enhance the perspective of a "community of common interests" that could in turn strengthen the foundation for human rights cooperation. The international disaster relief for China's Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, the Chinese government's humanitarian withdrawal from Libya of more than 21,000 citizens from 12 countries, and the Chinese rescue efforts for the victims of the recent earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan have shown the strength and potential in protecting and improving human rights under the perspective of a "community of common interests."
The author is an Adjunct Fellow of the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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