Beijing human rights forum shows Xi Jinping’s Chinese dream is ready to become the Asian dream
Peter T.C. Chang says China as the Asian economic superpower has the capacity to spread its grand vision of a common destiny across the region, and a jointly created set of human rights would help to allay socio-economic and civil-political concerns
Many of these countries are still developing, to be sure, but China stands out as the economic superpower. And the Chinese are eager to induct the rest of the “third world” into Beijing’s latest grand vision, that is, the quest for a community of common destiny, framed in terms of human rights development.
At the end of this inaugural global human rights forum, the Beijing Declaration was issued, reasserting China’s stance on the perceived conflict between socio-economic and civil-political rights. This promulgation signals an economically dominant China’s readiness to take on the West on the ideological front.
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To some extent, it echoes the 1993 Bangkok Declaration on human rights and the ensuing “Asian Values” debates.
Today, however, instead of the Southeast Asians, the Chinese are the main protagonist. And, this time around, China may well possess the political clout and economic muscle to deliver and bring about substantive social and economical uplift to the developing world.