Different cultures show same respect for human dignity
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China.org.cn, September 23, 2011
We believe that in order to improve human dignity, we need to eliminate all social conditions which jeopardize man's inherent nobility and stateliness and subject people to servitude and discrimination. This is to ensure the rights to equal development and equal participation for all members of society. We should make efforts in the following three aspects. Firstly, we should guarantee citizens' liberty and rights according to the rule of law. Every citizen shall be endowed with freedoms and rights in accordance with the constitution and law. We should ensure that all citizens are equal before the law and systematically provided a guarantee of human dignity.
Secondly, we need to clarify China's development goals. We must stick to the "development for the people and by the people and its benefit should be shared among the people". We should clarify that the final development goal of the nation is to satisfy people's growing material and cultural needs.
Thirdly, we should ensure people's free and all-round development. "The free development of each person is the condition for the free development of all" and also the prerequisite for the comprehensive development of the whole society.
Therefore, we should actively create favorable conditions to ensure guarantee individuals' free and all-round development to give their intelligence and wisdom full play. In a nutshell, we should put people first and use scientific development concept and the rule of law to protect and guarantee citizens' happiness and dignity.
2. To protect and promote cultural diversity and cultivate fertile soil for human rights protection
Human rights is a cultural phenomenon. The nourishment of culture is indispensable for human rights protection. Culture is a historical phenomenon and it originates from social and historical development of human beings. Culture is also a social phenomenon. It is closely connected with society. Without society there is no culture. Culture includes outlook of the world, life, values and a multitude of other ideas.
With these ideas, culture affects people's cognition and understanding of other people, nations, nature and society. As a result, it produced certain human rights outlooks and practices. Cultural diversity produces diverse values and outlooks of human rights. The basic human rights values represented by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are the consensus reached by the entire human race, and they are the contribution of all human beings and the result of exchanges and integration of different cultures of the world.
In fact, the modern concept of human rights itself is a product of cultural integration. The concept of human rights originated from the age of Western Enlightenment and flourished and spread widely during the bourgeois revolutions.
After World War II, human rights concept was raised to the level of international politics and became a universal pursuit. Compared with the French Declaration of Human Rights in the 18th century, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights not only largely expanded the outlook of human rights, but also enriched the contents, absorbing and integrating values of the world's major religions and cultural traditions. Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads that "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood". The use of the world "conscience" is a proposal made by Chinese representative Zhang Pengchun and is incorporated in the declaration considering the value of Confucian culture. Historically speaking, the spread and popularity of human rights concept has never been solely determined by a certain human rights culture but, on the contrary, reflected the exchange and integration of various cultures.
The Chinese nation has a history of 5,000 years and Chinese cultural traditions dated back to ancient times. Many thoughts crystallized during the long process of cultural development constituted the source of modern human rights concept. For example, the Chinese civilization has always given prominence to the people. Hundreds of years ago, Chinese pointed out that "people are the root of a country; when the root is firm, the country is in peace" and that "nothing is more valuable in the universe than human beings". The Chinese always put people at the core of social and value systems, which coincides with the basic idea of modern human rights' concept of respecting people and putting people first.
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