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Academics condemn China's human rights record

Academics and human right activists attending a conference in Taipei yesterday said China's progress in improving its human rights record "was rather perfunctory," despite the appearance that it has made improvements in its human rights record over the past few years.

The conference on China's human rights policy was hosted by the Democratic Progressive Party.

"China's human rights policy should be called a `perfunctory human rights policy,' as it is mainly used by the Chinese government to temporize the international community's condemnation of its human rights record," said Li Ming-juinn (李明峻), deputy secretary-general of the Taiwanese Society of International Law.

In recent years, Li said, China has used two strategies to deal with the global condemnation. One has been to introduce "Asian values," a concept that excludes human rights from Asian culture and tradition, to public discourse.

In this system of values, human rights are considered a uniquely Western concept that is alien to Asian countries, Li said.

"This concept is ridiculous because we all know that international agreements including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were signed and endorsed by countries from Europe, Asia and Africa. They were not drawn up by Western countries only," he said.

"What these agreements safeguard is the most basic values shared by mankind and any other region's values should be developed on this premise," he added.

Director of the Department of Business at Taiwan Thinktank Hsu Shu-fen (許淑芬) told the conference that the world should be concerned about Beijing's opposition to the concept of universal human rights because the Chinese government's "Asian values" only includes improvement of people's "social rights" or living conditions.
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