Human Rights in China: The Interplay Between Political and Socioeconomic Rights

Abstract

The late 1986 upsurge of student demonstrations in China and the government's response have underscored the difficulties in understanding Chinese attitudes and conduct with regard to human rights. The demonstrations called attention to three major issues that need to be addressed in the study of human rights: definition, methodology, and changes in standards for human rights conduct. While the students' calls for broader democracy emphasized political rights, human rights are defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as including both political and socioeconomic rights.' Moreover, the democracy envisioned by the student demonstrators did not entail full political pluralism but assumed the continued dominance of the Chinese Communist Party.2 The differences between this view and American and European concepts of political democracy raises all-important definitional questions that must be addressed in discussions of human rights in China. The students demanded the right to put up wall posters expressing their views,3 a right protected by a People's Republic of China (PRC) constitutional provision that was deleted by the Chinese government in 1980. This raises the methodological issue of whether constitutional provisions are genuine indicators of human rights principles and practice. Finally, the fact that the calls for broader political freedoms came from university students, should draw our attention to the relationship between