It is easy to criticise China's first 'national human rights action plan' for 2009-2010 made public last week. For one thing, it does not address basic issues, such as giving Chinese citizens the right to choose their government. The Communist Party, it seems, has no plans to relinquish its monopoly on power. The action plan also does not indicate any willingness to allow an independent judiciary free of party control or permit greater freedom of speech or of the press. In fact, the 20,000-word document addresses primarily economic, social and cultural issues rather than political ones.
The document depicts a country steadily moving forward in the human rights field for the last 60 years: 'Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese government ... has made unremitting efforts to promote and safeguard human rights.'
This is a caricature of history, as the first 30 years of Communist Party rule was mostly characterised by a total disregard for human rights, as the party launched one political campaign after another, culminating in the 10-year-long Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, during which unknown numbers of people were incarcerated, beaten, humiliated and killed with no pretence of legal niceties.
Still, the action plan is to be welcomed, since it makes certain pledges that are meant to be carried out by the government, including improved medical care, providing safe drinking water, underwriting basic old-age insurance policies for migrant workers and reform of the household registration system.
But even in the area of economic, social and cultural rights, it is not entirely satisfactory. For example, it says nothing about returning ancestral halls to clans and allowing them to be used for their original purpose of honouring their ancestors rather than turning them into museums. On the positive side, the preparation of such a document by so many government departments means that a wide spectrum of Chinese officials has had to focus on various aspects of human rights for months, if not years. It has become increasingly common for the official Chinese press to openly talk about such things as the need to end abuse of prisoners and torture of detainees.
Articles that appeared in the official press around the publication of the action plan show that there has been development in China's thinking on human rights. One, published in the People's Daily's online edition under the headline 'Improving human rights is for self-advancement' said that, while in the past Chinese were angered by western pressure for change on human rights, now Chinese people 'are increasingly clear that improving human rights is not a show for the western world' but is 'for the sake of the well-being of the Chinese people'.