China's rights progress not enough

Indeed, as is says in the foreword to Charter 08 — a dissident manifesto issued two years ago whose main author, Liu Xiaobo, is serving an 11-year prison term, — China “has a constitution but no constitutional government.”

Ms. Fu was careful not to name any names in the interview, but she characterized people like Liu Xiaobo as “political extremists” who “put forward demands impossible to meet.”

But Mr. Liu and other signatories were simply exercising the freedom of speech guaranteed by the constitution. How can that be construed as making demands impossible to meet and deserving of imprisonment?

However, the intriguing lady diplomat was not totally negative. She divided China's attitude towards human rights into three chronological stages, beginning with the end of the Qing dynasty, when prominent scholars tried to reform the Chinese feudal system. But at the time, she said, “westerners were unwilling to make Chinese their equals in human rights. The first wave of China's human rights movement went nowhere.”

The second wave, she said, was actually embraced by the Communist Party but, because of the blockade against China instituted in 1950, “many western concepts including human rights were rejected.”

Now, she said, China is in the third — and most successful— wave. Many laws have been introduced, such as the Labor Law and the Property Law and, while they may not be perfect, they “still represent a big step forward for the development of China's legal system.”

China, she said, is not rejecting the idea of human rights but is “learning gradually and absorbing ideas that can be planted and grown and prosper on Chinese soil.”

So while human rights are still regarded as an alien concept that should not be imposed on China, there are aspects that can be transplanted that may flower on Chinese soil. But such a theory does not explain why rights promised to the Chinese people more than 60 years ago remain nothing but promises.

Frank.ching@gmail.com

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