An online seminar on the path of China's Human Rights Development attended by experts and scholars from China, the UK, Germany, Switzerland and other countries. Source: China News Service

Chinese and foreign experts indicate that there is an urgent need to find a better way to interpret the concept and the way of China's human rights development to the world, so as to promote mutual learning between China and the West, and jointly better participate in the promotion of global governance of human rights.

The China News Service (CNS) on Thursday held a symposium on the path of China's Human Rights Development path in Beijing, inviting a number of well-known Chinese and foreign experts and scholars to have in-depth discussions on human rights.

The symposium adopted the combination of both online and offline, and invited seven well-known Chinese and foreign experts and scholars to have in-depth discussions on topics including the concept and achievements of China's human rights development, China's participation in global governance of human rights, and mutual learning on human rights between China and the West, the China News Service reported.

Chen Junjun, president of China News Service, said at the symposium that human rights have increasingly become the focus of the international community, and theories and practices of human rights in different countries are showing different results, which also provides opportunities and impetus for the sound development of the international human rights cause.

"China has historically solved the problem of absolute poverty and guaranteed the basic rights of its people in just a few decades," said Lu Guangjin, Secretary-General of the China Society for Human Rights Studies (CSHRS) and professor of the Law School at Jilin University. The historic achievements made in the development of China's human rights cause have proved the scientific and rationality of China's human rights development path.

The theory and practice of human rights in China is a model of integrating the principle of universality of human rights with China's reality, Zhang Yonghe, professor and executive dean of the Human Rights Institution at Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing, recalled that China's ideas on human rights have evolved with the times and the studies on human rights in China had also experienced significant changes.

The progress of China's human rights is a new breakthrough in the realization of the international human rights cause, and it has also expanded the inherent development path of human rights in the world since the 20th century. China has become the staunchest major country in supporting the UN Human Rights Council and has provided new options for developing countries to recommit to the path of human rights improvement, Wang Wen, a professor and executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China, said at the symposium.

In response to the concerns of some Western countries over the human rights issue in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Zuliyati Simayi, vice-president of Xinjiang University and Dean of the School of Marxism, said, "Growing up in Xinjiang, I have seen with my own eyes a vivid picture of ethnic groups living a better life because of their hard work. All ethnic groups in Xinjiang are free to work and live a happy life and there is no such thing as forced labor."


Michael Borchmann, a German expert on China and former head of the European and International Affairs Division of the Hessen State Government in Germany, quoted former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt as saying that the Western view of human rights is a product of Western history. "As a German, influenced by the traditions of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment, I will defend human rights in my country. But I will never force other countries with different traditions to adopt western views on human rights."

John Ross, former director of Economic and Business Policy of London and senior researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China, said that the more the world understands China's extraordinary achievements in the field of human rights, the more it hopes that the improvement of its own human rights situation will receive equal attention and promotion, and the more it will be able to understand and recognize China.

Harro von Senger, a renowned European Sinologist and Expert on Chinese law at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, pointed out that a view of human rights that only focuses on individuals is narrow. In fact, China and the West have common ground on many human rights issues, and the consensus far outweighs the differences.

Global Times