Xi: Human rights central to shared future goal

President Xi Jinping said on Monday that China pursues people-centered human rights, and stands ready to work with other countries to promote fairer, more reasonable and more inclusive global human rights governance to build a community with a shared future for mankind.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remark in a congratulatory message to a symposium on the 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights held in Beijing on Monday, global Human Rights Day.

Xi hailed the declaration, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on Dec 10, 1948, as a crucially important document in the history of human civilization, and recognized its profound impact on the development of human rights undertakings around the world.

Noting that the CPC, from its birth, has taken as its goal to strive for people’s happiness and human development, Xi said the achievements of China’s development in the past decades mainly lie in the improvement of the livelihood of its people.

China has consistently combined the universality of human rights with the reality of modern times, and the nation pursues a path of human rights development with Chinese characteristics in line with its own conditions, Xi said.

While remaining committed to people-centered human rights, China considers the right to subsistence and development as primary basic human rights, and coordinates the development of economic, political, social, cultural and environmental rights in order to safeguard social justice and fairness and promote allaround human development, he added.

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, said at the symposium that the country has promoted the progress of its human rights through development.

Over the past four decades since the launch of reform and openingup, China has lifted over 740 million people out of poverty and has established the world’s largest social insurance network, Huang said, adding that the average life expectancy has increased from 35 years in 1949 to 76.7 years in 2017.

Chang Jian, director of the Research Center for Human Rights at Nankai University in Tianjin, said in an interview that Xi’s perspective on people-centered human rights fully embodies the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and also conforms to the actual conditions of China as a developing country.