China's Efforts in Advancing Human Rights: At Home and Abroad

The Communist Party of China and the Chinese government have included respecting and protecting human rights as a key part of national governance, and thanks to this, China's human rights cause has delivered historic achievement.

In today's China, the lack of food, clothing and medical services is long gone. Since the beginning of the reform and opening up drive more than 40 years ago, the per capita disposable income in China has increased by more than 180 times. Some 770 million rural Chinese have been lifted out of poverty and live a moderately prosperous life. The average life expectancy has risen to 78.2 years.

Under the leadership of the CPC, the fate of countless people has been changed. A new chapter has been written in the history of China's human rights by the earth-shaking changes in the Chinese society, and the country has seen achievement in the human rights cause on all fronts. China deems the rights to subsistence and development as the primary basic human rights. The CPC is an active promoter and staunch defender of the human rights cause, and has always included respecting and protecting human rights as a key part of national governance. The country has formulated and implemented national human rights action plans and other special plans, to promote human rights development through protection, and to advance the human rights cause through development. It made step-by-step achievements of raising the living standards of its people from poverty to bare subsistence, from moderate prosperity in general to moderate prosperity in all aspects. The country has embarked on a journey of pursuing a higher goal of common prosperity, and is committed to providing a happy and dignified life for some one fifth of the world's population.

Mass poverty on an enormous scale was once the biggest obstacle in China's human rights cause. Before the launch of reform and opening up, nearly 800 million people were impoverished, unable to meet their basic living needs. By 2012, there were still 98.99 million people living in poverty in China. China made a nationwide effort to promote "targeted poverty alleviation," so that the remaining poor population could access sufficient food and clothing, while their other basic human rights such as compulsory education, basic medical care and housing security, were also promoted and protected. By the end of 2020, after more than 30 years of fighting poverty, the largest and strongest such campaign in human history, China had lifted over 770 million rural poor out of poverty. The country met the poverty eradication target of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule. With the highest number of people lifted out of poverty, China has contributed to over 70 percent of global poverty reduction.

Also, every kind of human rights is interrelated and mutually reinforcing. By safeguarding people's rights to subsistence and development and promoting the comprehensive and coordinated development of economic, social and cultural rights as well as the civil and political rights of its citizens, China has advanced the cause of human rights with a holistic approach.

Although China has finished building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and become the world's second-largest economy, "unbalanced and inadequate" development is still a salient challenge the country faces. In the pursuit of fairer and more comprehensive protection of human rights, China upholds the "bottom-line guarantee" of ensuring basic living standards, and at the same time pursues the "high-line goal" of common prosperity, striving to strike a balance between fairness and efficiency in economic development.

While advancing its human rights cause at home, China also actively fulfills its responsibilities as a big country, by vigorously promoting the common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom, by engaging deeply in UN human rights affairs, and by extensively carrying out international human rights cooperation, thus continuously promoting global human rights governance and effectively promoting international human rights development and progress.

The vision of "a community of shared future for mankind" put forward by China has been written into the resolutions of the UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council and the UN Human Rights Council on multiple occasions. A series of propositions put forth by China, including the concept of "promoting human rights through development," have been introduced into the sphere of international human rights. China also facilitated the formulation of a number of important documents on human rights, such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The country has continuously offered the world Chinese wisdom and solutions to promote the global cause of human rights.