China’s human rights progress highlighted
Achievements result of comprehensive approach, experts say
GENEVA — Chinese experts outlined the progress made on human rights on Monday during a meeting held in the Swiss city by the China Society for Human Rights Studies and the Chinese Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva.
Zhang Yonghe, executive director of the Human Rights Research Institute of the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, said that as one of the basic rights, China’s anti-poverty achievement is the result of a comprehensive approach, including the high priority given by the government, growth-driven poverty reduction and a strong policy support system.
Over the past 40 years of reform and opening-up, more than 700 million people in China have been lifted out of poverty, and the rural poverty rate in China has fallen from 97.5 percent in 1978 to 4.5 percent in 2016.
Zuliyati Simayi, deputy dean of the College of Politics and Public Administration of Xinjiang University, said at the meeting that employment is the biggest welfare for people’s livelihood, and the right to work is an important part of the right of human development.
At present, she said, through the focus on those poverty-hit areas, investment promotion, training and other models to improve the employment rate, the overall situation of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang has been improved.
Li Changlin, a professor at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, said that in the past 30 years, China has gram should be viewed as a constructive practice to help eliminate the soil that breeds terrorism and extremism.
He said that the trainees under the vocational education and training program are only limited to those who are influenced by terrorism and extremism, suspected of minor criminal offenses and can be dealt with leniently.
For those people, he said, Xinjiang has provided them with free vocational education and training to help improve their ability to obtain more knowledge and information through mastering the country’s common language, acquire legal knowledge to distinguish illegal behavior, and get jobs through attaining vocational skills.
Wu Wenyang, a lecturer at the Institute of Human Rights at the China University of Political Science and Law, said that China has taken various measures to actively eliminate poverty, which has not only fundamentally improved people’s living standards, but also provided more access to education, knowledge and information for the poor, helping them participate in a richer and more diverse spiritual and cultural life and create a safer and more stable social environment.
About 50 diplomats and officials from the relevant international organizations attended the meeting, before which Chinese experts on human rights held discussions with diplomats from the European Union, Denmark, Ireland and Egypt.