——The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Chinese Culture

Yang, Jian-li

Speech II at III International Conference on Human Rights

Warsaw, Poland, Oct.14-16, 1998

Fifty years have passed since the Universal Declaration of Human rights was first issued. In the course of the fifty years, numerous former totalitarian and authoritarian countries have turned into democracies that intrinsically respect and protect their people’s basic rights as specified in the Declaration. To me, this is the most wonderful and the most valuable thing that has ever happened in the human history, especially in the history of the twentieth century. As this century draws to a close, as a Chinese, I cannot help feeling rather unfortunate since today seeking to exercise one’s basic rights is still generally banned in China, and in many cases results in severe persecution, imprisonment, and even killing by the Chinese government.

Why China? The question is hard to ask and hard to answer as well. Many people, both pundits and laymen, point to the Chinese culture, arguing that the Chinese culture, indeed all East Asian Cultures, is not commensurable with the values of human rights and democracy. It is, as the theory goes, not only understandable but also necessary for the Chinese government to demand that the international community set special standards on its human rights records. This assertion carries much political weight when it is articulated in government rhetoric and official statements. In asserting this, as we have clearly seen in the past ten years, the Chinese leadership has created a convenient tool for silencing internal and external criticism and fanning anti-Western nationalist sentiments.

As a scholar, I cannot help but ponder the questions as to how much the current situation in China is due to cultural reasons and how much to political ones, why all leaders of developed democracies, from Clinton, Blare to Lee Teng-hui, Kim Dae Jung, both East and West, stress the universality of human rights while all leaders of authoritarian states, from Jiang Zemin, Mahathir to Castro, both East and West, emphasize the cultural specificity? China’s 1991 White Paper “Human Rights in China”, for example, states “Owing to tremendous differences in historical background, social system, cultural tradition and economic development, countries differ in their understanding and practice of human rights.”

Scholars examining China’s political development from a historical or cultural standpoint have been enamored of constructing theories based on historical data to explain current political issues and predict future directions. For instance, some scholars contend that China could not possibly break away from authoritarianism in its political development, because Chinese society has traditionally valued authority, is strongly group-oriented, lacks individualism, and, in summary, does not respect human rights. While this kind of opinion can of course be analyzed in depth as an academic issue and carries with it some scholarly substance, it must also provide a reasonable interpretation of the actual situation if it is to be acceptable. Clearly, most theories based on Chinese history and traditional culture cannot adequately explain Taiwan’s political development over the last ten years. Taiwan is of course a part of the greater Chinese cultural system.

For over two thousand years, the Chinese political order involved a government of centralized power headed by an emperor. It lacked the features of Western-style democracy and a parliamentary system. These are all facts of history. We should not be surprised when we see few social elements on the surface supportive of the idea that “power rests with the people” in an autocratic state because it is a major natural tendency of autocracy to eliminate such elements. Nor should we forget that democracy, once established, rapidly produces democratic culture regardless of the original culture where it is built. More often than not, the obstacle to the introduction of democracy is more political than cultural. The question is often not whether the people can establish a democracy but whether they are allowed to.

You may go to China, indeed any of the existing autocracies in the world, and ask any person you meet using the language they can comprehend whether or not they want to enjoy the rights specified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In most cases, you will hear the answer “yes”. I would like to share with you the idea of my friend, Li Xiao Rong, on Interculture Conversation. Imagine an intercultural conversation about the validity of human rights taking place among people with different cultural assumptions, say Chinese and Americans. It is a conversation that proceeds by opening those assumptions to reflection and reexamination. Its participants begin with some minimal shared beliefs: for example, that genocide, slavery and racism are wrong. They accept some basic rules of argumentation to reveal hidden presuppositions, disclose inconsistencies between ideas, clarify conceptual ambiguity and confusion and expose conclusions based on insufficient evidence and oversimplified generalizations. In such a conversation based on public reasoning, people may come to agree on a greater range of issues than seemed possible when they began. They may revise or reinterpret their old beliefs. The plausibility of such a conversation suggests a way of establishing universal validity. If the concept of human rights can survive the scrutiny of public reasoning in such a cross-cultural conversation, its universal validity will be confirmed. It is my firm belief that the concept of human rights embodied in the Declaration will survive such a scrutiny. It is very interesting to note that the human rights specified in the Declaration are almost entirely incorporated in the written constitution of the People’s Republic of China. This is also more or less true for North Korea, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore whose leaders all claim that Asia has a unique set of values which provide the basis for Asia’s different understanding of human rights and justify the “exceptional” handling of rights by Asian governments. If they are so sure that some of the basic rights are not necessary in, or even contrary to, their culture, why do they bother to promise to safeguard them in their written constitution?

There can be one and only one explanation: there must be a set of similar values that can be found in all cultures. It is so pertinent to human nature

that even dictators cannot denounce it , publicly or deep in their conscience. Human beings all over the world need freedom and security to realize their full potential. The longing for a form of governance that provides security without destroying freedom goes back a long way. That is at the core of the set of universal values. In fact, the degree of civilization in a country can only be measured by the degree that the set of universal values is cherished and promoted by the social, economic, and political systems in the country.

My intention here is not to deny problems with the Chinese culture altogether. Rather, while admitting the existence of many unfavorable elements in the Chinese culture, I want to emphasize the universality of basic rights that transcends all cultures, in time and in space, and at the same time, want to point out that what we think of as human rights also has a basis in Chinese tradition. To illustrate this, I first cite a popular Chinese saying originated by Mencius, a student of Confucius and one of the most influential thinkers in the Chinese history, “The people are of supreme importance; the altars to the gods of earth and grain come next; last comes the ruler” . Many other examples can be cited, but perhaps one more will suffice. At this point, I would like to draw your attention to what one of the Confucian classics, the Tso Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, has to say about the endowment of human nature by the Creator. The context proceeding my quote has to do with a popular revolt against the ruler of the state of Chin. Interestingly these words are put in the mouth of a court musician advising his own ruler:

Shih K’uang was attending the ruler of Chin. The latter said, “The people of Wei have driven out their ruler-what a terrible thing!” Shih K’uang replied, “Perhaps it was the ruler himself who did terrible things. …Heaven gave birth to the people and set up rulers to superintend and shepherd them and see to it that they do not lose their true nature as human beings. … Heaven’s love for the people is very great. Would it then allow one man to preside over them in an arrogant and willful manner, indulging his excesses and casting aside the nature Heaven and earth allotted them? Surely it would not!”

Thank you.