8.3 POLITICAL VERSUS ECONOMIC RIGHTS
As a final perspective on the idea that Chinese and Western conceptions of rights differ from one another, let us now look at whether Chinese ideas of rights, and especially of human rights, put greater stress on economic rights than do their counterparts in the West.
First I will explore the degree to which there is a real difference along this dimension between Chinese and Western rights views. We will see that while there is some truth to the idea, things are considerably more complex and contested, in both China and the West, than this simple dichotomy suggests. Second, I will look at the arguments some Chinese have used to justify putting economic development, as well as national independence and sovereignty, ahead of full-fledged political freedoms. These arguments are rarely taken seriously by Western analysts, who see them as merely excuses for political repression by China’s leaders. Without wanting to deny the possibility of such motives, I will strive to consider the Chinese arguments more carefully, looking to see whether viewing the arguments in the context of China’s tradition of rights discourse helps to illuminate their appeal.8.3.1 Complex Reality
The claim that Chinese rights concepts put more weight on economics than do Western ones is typically put in a very strong form: Chinese views emphasize economic rights at the expense of political freedoms, while Western views focus solely on political rights and ignore economic ones. Each side, according to this understanding of the difference between China and the West, privileges one form of rights over the other. There is indeed a certain amount of truth in this characterization: Numerous representatives of the United States government have downplayed or even rejected the idea of economic rights over the last twenty-five years, and Chinese government documents and spokespeople have argued that “subsistence rights (shengcun quan)” - a primarily economic notion - are more fundamental than political freedoms.
As we look into these ideas, though, we will see both that other participants in Western rights discourse hold views at odds with that of the United States government, and that Chinese views on this topic are complex and internally contested.One of the touchstones for United States governmental policy on economic rights is the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966. The Carter administration made a concerted effort to have the covenant ratified by the U. S. Senate in 1978, with no success. Even though the Carter administration favored ratification, their understanding of the substance of the covenant suggests that they did not view its provisions as rights-claims on a par with political rights. In a variety of forums, the administration argued that the covenant was no more than a “statement of goals to be achieved progressively,” imposing no obligation other than “work[ing] toward the eventual achievement of... minimum standards.”[229]
If the Carter administration implicitly undermined the status of economic rights, the Reagan administration made it explicit. A 1981 State Department memorandum “endorsed the unqualified rejection of economic, social, and cultural rights as ‘rights,’ ” and asserted that “human rights were to be explicitly defined for the purposes of future U.S. foreign policy as ‘meaning political rights and civil liberties’” [Alston 1990, p. 372]. Since 1981, this policy has been repeated and elaborated but has not been significantly changed.
That, then, is the truth in the notion that Western concepts of rights do not include economic aspects. If “West” meant “United States government,” and if we looked only at current views - ignoring, for instance, the “economic Bill of Rights” advocated by the Roosevelt administration in 1944 [Alston 1990, p. 387] - then perhaps the notion could be sustained. Many Americans outside of the government and many leaders and scholars in other Western nations, however, reject the U.
S. government’s conception of rights. To begin with, virtually all Western governments except the United States have ratified the covenant.[230] Economic rights have been championed by many of these states for years, both in international arenas like the United Nations and in domestic legislation. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in addition, makes explicit a variety of economic and other non-political rights, showing no awareness of the idea that economic rights are somehow less than equal partners with their political brethren. A number of Western and (in particular) American scholars, finally, have argued that economic rights are just as important as political rights.[231]Only a quite narrow range of “Western” contributors to rights discourse, in short, endorse the idea that political rights are more important than economic ones.[232] Given the ways in which the U.S. government puts its resistance to economic rights in terms of denying that such “rights” create any obligations, it seems likely that an important motive for the policy is not wanting to foot the bill for realizing the economic rights of the rest of the world. Whatever we make of this reasoning, and whether or not we think it a likely result of recognizing an equal partnership between economic and political rights, I want to turn now to looking at the complexities underlying the Chinese position(s) on this issue.
Most Chinese commentators on rights over the last ten years, both in and outside of government, have said that political, economic, and other rights are interdependent and equal. In his remarks to the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, for instance, Ambassador Liu Huaqiu asserted that “The concept of human rights is an integral one, including both individual and collective rights. Individual rights cover not only civil and political rights but also economic, social, and cultural rights. The various aspects of human rights are interdependent, equally important, and indispensable” [Liu Huaqiu 1995, p.
214]. Similar statements can be found in Chinese academic discourse, as when a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences writes that “Developing countries hold that [civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights, on the other] are interrelated and interdependent and both necessary for safeguarding personalities” [Liu 1996a, p. 122; see also translation in Liu 1996b, p. 110].Despite the fact that Chinese analysts, by and large, claim equal importance for the various kinds of rights, government spokespeople and most academics go on to argue that in China’s particular situation, some rights must be pursued before others. Liu Huaqiu adds, immediately after the passage quoted in the previous paragraph, that “For the vast number of developing countries to respect and protect human rights is first and foremost to ensure the full realization of the rights to subsistence and development” [Liu Huaqiu 1995, p. 214]. The government’s white paper on human rights of 1991 similarly says that “To solve their human rights problems, the first thing for the Chinese people to do is, for historical reasons, to secure the right to subsistence” [Information Council 1991].
Before pausing to consider what exactly the “right to subsistence” is, it is important to see that the official argument does not stop here. The white paper maintains that “Without national independence, there would be no guarantee for the people’s lives” [ibid.], while Liu Huaqiu says that “As a people that used to suffer tremendously from aggression by big powers but now enjoys independence, the Chinese have come to realize fully that state sovereignty is the basis of the realization of citizens’ human rights” [Liu Huaqiu 1995, p. 215].[233] The argument is: Without the right to subsistence, no other human rights; without national independence, no right to subsistence; without state sovereignty, no national independence - and the white paper throws in “national strength” and “national stability” as further necessary conditions [Information Council 1991].
What should we make of this?8.3.2 Analysis and Engagement
In light of the foregoing, the following questions present themselves. First, can a good case be made for the U.S. government view that economic rights are not genuine rights? Next, what exactly is the “right to subsistence”? Third, can a good case be made for its being, at least in the particular circumstances of China and other developing countries, the “first thing” to which Chinese people should attend - especially in light of the commitment, acknowledged by all who make that claim, to equal and interdependent political and economic rights? Finally, if the importance of the right to subsistence is sustained, can a similarly strong case be made for linking it to national independence and state sovereignty?
Arguments against granting economic rights the status of rights fall into three categories: first, those based on the political effects of such a recognition; second, historical arguments; third, conceptual arguments. In the first category belong considerations like charges that a recognition of economic rights will confuse international human rights discourse, take attention away from the real priorities of political rights, and allow rogue regimes to excuse political rights violations in the name of promoting economic rights.[234] In general, these seem simply to beg the question against economic rights. If there are such rights, shouldn’t they receive our attention?
Historical arguments to the effect that rights emerged out of the Anglo-American ethical and political tradition, which did not countenance economic rights, are problematic for two reasons. First, economic rights can be found in that earlier tradition, and certainly in more recent documents like the Universal Declaration. Second, as I have demonstrated throughout this book, even though historical research can be invaluable in clarifying how concepts should be understood, it is nonetheless true that concepts within normative traditions can and often should change over time.
Conceptual arguments, finally, tend to be based on the distinction between “negative” and “positive” rights. The former are supposed merely to involve leaving people alone, as when we refrain from torturing them; the latter require positive action on our part, as when we provide someone with an education. Positive rights have been criticized both for requiring government infringement on people’s private domains and choices, and for identifying rights without clearly specifying the people or bodies who hold the duties to fulfill those rights.[235] This distinction between positive and negative rights has been effectively criticized by Henry Shue, who demonstrates the ways in which virtually all rights have both positive and negative aspects [Shue 1996 (1980), ch. 2]. Joseph Raz’s understanding of rights, discussed earlier at some length, emphasizes the ways in which rights can generate different sorts of duties in different contexts, which undermines the objection that there is no single, clear duty-holder in cases of positive rights [Raz 1984, p. 212]. I conclude that there is little to be said for the view, currently affirmed by the U.S. government, that economic rights are not genuine rights.
The next question is what the Chinese mean by a “right to subsistence.” The Chinese term is the right to “shengcun,” which in various contexts can be translated as “subsist,” “exist,” or “live.” “Live” and “exist” do not fit the contexts in which the right to shengcun is discussed. The right to shengcun is not about merely existing or merely being alive. It is about living in a fuller sense: having food, shelter, clothing, access to health care, and even, in some formulations, some considerable political and cultural opportunities. It is glossed in publications like the 1991 white paper as including both “the basic guarantee of life and security” and a guarantee of the “basic means of livelihood” [Information Council 1991].[236]
The importance of such a right, with particular focus on its economic aspects, has long been recognized in China. I discussed one of the earliest formulations of “shengcun quan” earlier, in the context of Gao Yihan’s view of rights. I believe we have seen ample evidence that even before the term “shengcun quan” was coined, participants in Chinese rights discourse tended to view material well-being as an important part of people’s rights. Before explicit rights discourse began, the Confucians on whom I focused in Chapter 4 were very cognizant of people’s need to fulfill their legitimate desires. Economic matters were at the heart of most nineteenth-century discussions of quanli. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Liang Qichao stressed that we ought to struggle for our ethically legitimate interests, among which subsistence concerns must surely rank highly. Liu Shipei argued for the importance of a right (and responsibility) to work in order for people to be “self-standing people.” Chen Duxiu, finally, put increasing stress on the need for individuals to have economic, in addition to political, independence. Unlike some contemporary analysts, therefore, I believe that concern with something very like “shengcun quan” has a rich and strong connection to the prior tradition of rights discourse in China.[237]
My third question is whether a good case can be made for the priority which writings like the white paper put on the right to subsistence. Given my answer to the question about whether we ought to recognize economic rights as rights, the issue here is not whether there is a right to subsistence, nor even whether such a right is of extreme importance. I shall presume that it is. Instead, we need to ask whether the realization of other rights should be put on hold while the right to subsistence is pursued single-mindedly.The white paper asserts that “It is a simple truth that, for any country or nation, the right to subsistence is the most important of all human rights, without which the other rights are out of the question” [Information Council 1991]. The text then argues that thanks to a long period of semi-colonial exploitation, among other reasons, China today is not yet in a position to guarantee the “basic means of livelihood” to its people, and so it must focus its efforts on realizing this goal.
The argument’s first premise, that without subsistence guarantees, the enjoyment of other rights is impossible, calls to mind the following argument of Gao Yihan’s. Gao endorses the idea of a right to choose one’s own work, but adds that without provision for training and the free time to seek a job, such a right is meaningless to many. He writes that “Pulling a rickshaw is in itself an inhumane job, but under the conditions of today’s China, there are those who cannot even find work pulling rickshaws. Isn’t telling such people to freely choose their work like telling those so poor that they haven’t enough to eat to go and choose the finest delicacies for their nourishment?” [Gao 1921, p. 5]. In Chapter 7 we also looked at the early Marxist Tan Mingqian’s assertion that proletarians gained no political rights from the bourgeois political revolutions because there was not a genuine equality of opportunity. In the main I find these arguments compelling: Without the level of economic wellbeing sought via the right to subsistence, it is difficult or impossible to enjoy in practice political rights to which one might be entitled in principle.
This does not yet lead to the conclusion sought by the white paper, however. That argument turns on what arrangements are likely to lead to the actual enjoyment of rights, which opens up the question of whether a single-minded focus on satisfying subsistence needs is likely in practice to lead to the realization of the right to subsistence and subsequently to other rights. Here the claim made by members of the U.S. government that economic rights can serve as an excuse to avoid political rights takes on more relevance: It is not a good argument against economic rights being rights at all, but it can also be interpreted as a plea that we look with suspicion on any reasons advanced for failing to satisfy political rights. Even so, it still does not amount to an argument against the white paper’s conclusions.
To assess the claims in the white paper, we need instead to ask: Does the articulation and enforcement of political rights, to one degree or another, help or hinder the realization of basic economic rights? Answering this question is of course an enormous undertaking, requiring both careful theoretical work and extensive empirical research. Amartya Sen is famous for his argument that famines do not occur in democracies, since pressure from the free press and opposition parties leads to steps being taken to alleviate possible famines - even in cases where food shortages are much more severe than in non-democratic countries that have experienced famines.[238] China’s horrendous famine during the Great Leap Forward of 1959-62 is arguably a case in point: Under pressure from, or in the grip of, ideological goals, information about production did not flow freely, leading the government to take no action to mitigate food shortages until far too late. Sen notes that Mao Zedong himself said in 1962 that
Without democracy, you have no understanding of what is happening down below; the situation will be unclear; you will be unable to collect sufficient opinions from all sides; there can be no communication between top and bottom; top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues, thus you will find it difficult to avoid being subjectivist; it will be impossible to achieve unity of understanding and unity of action, and impossible to achieve true centralism. [Quoted in Sen 1999, p. 182; see Mao 1976, pp. 277-8]
Mao’s understanding of democracy is obviously a far cry from multiparty, participatory democracy, nor does he suggest that any political rights are needed to carry out his vision of democracy. In light of discussions earlier in this chapter, it is interesting to see him endorsing “unity” as his ultimate goal. Sen, on the other hand, believes that more than information exchange is needed; rights to political participation lead to officials having incentives to act on the information they receive, or else risk the wrath of the electorate.
Even this brief discussion of the relevance of political rights to subsistence makes clear the complexity of the issues involved. Are political rights the only solution to famines, or would a solution like Mao’s notion of democracy have been enough? Do other factors about the relevant societies matter? We can also turn these questions on their heads: Are there ways in which the pursuit of political rights impedes the realization of economic rights, as the white paper’s argument implicitly assumes? How are these balanced against whatever economic gains might come from enforcing those same political rights? There should be ample room for engagement here between scholars both East and West on issues that to one degree or another matter to all of us.
Before we leave this issue, I must add that there is an essential difference between being provided with subsistence and having a right to subsistence. Slaves, to borrow a trope from earlier Chinese rights discourse, may be given the means to subsistence by their masters, but they have no rights. Free people, according to one common formulation, have moral claims to that which each of them needs “to be a person.” The need to stand up and claim one’s due, rather than passively waiting for things to be given one, has been a theme of Chinese rights discourse throughout the twentieth century. As we have seen throughout this book, Chinese rights theorists have almost always placed significant importance on political rights. Whatever we eventually discover about the relation between political rights and economic development, it may well be that to enjoy a right to subsistence requires the ability to claim things, and that political rights are necessary preconditions for such abilities.
My final question in this section is whether a case can be made for the linkage which many contemporary Chinese writings on rights seek to establish between the right to subsistence, on the one hand, and national independence and state sovereignty, on the other. Whether or not subsistence can be justified as the sole pursuit of China’s human rights policy, pursuing the right to subsistence is surely of extreme importance; indeed, economic development is a central goal of almost all contemporary states. If its realization depends on national independence or state sovereignty, then we should concur with some, if not all, of the conclusions of the white paper. I have just noted the difference between merely enjoying subsistence and enjoying the right thereto; China’s experience with imperialism and colonialism suggests that we need to consider this distinction not just with respect to individuals, but also for the Chinese people more generally. Chinese intellectuals have long felt that, like slaves, the legitimate interests of the Chinese people as a whole were paid little heed by their European “masters.” National independence was and still is seen, therefore, as a route to securing not simply subsistence, but the right to subsistence.
A second and related theme has been the reciprocal relationship between an individual and his or her group. Unlike nineteenth-century rights discourse, Chinese rights thinkers in the twentieth century have consistently recognized the importance of individual rights. They tend nonetheless to stress the mutual entailment of individual and group rights. Individual rights are only operative in a well-functioning group, so each individual’s rights depend, in part, on the fulfillment of his or her responsibilities to the group. In this regard it is especially important not to conflate the state with the nation, nor to ignore the various intermediary groups which are also important to individual and larger-group flourishing. State sovereignty may well contribute to national independence, but nothing in the current argument suggests that the power of the state should be seen as an end in itself.As Gao Yihan argued in 1915, the state is a means to people’s ends, and must always be assessed in this light.
Taken together, the considerations in the previous two paragraphs make a case that in today’s world, national independence and state sovereignty are required for people to enjoy the right to subsistence. If they are necessary conditions, though, they are not sufficient on their own.An all-powerful state in which the people have no voice may provide no guarantee of their right to subsistence. We can agree that political rights without subsistence rights are empty, but effective subsistence rights seem likely to depend on political rights. We may well agree with the white paper that groups’ rights are essential to securing the equally essential right to subsistence, but I suspect most will dissent from its relegation of political rights to a secondary status.
In each of the main sections of this chapter, I have engaged with positions put forward by contemporary Western and Chinese rights theorists. At the same time, though, I have agreed, at least in part, with Liu Huaqiu’s claim that Chinese conceptions of rights are distinctive - not simple imitations of one or another Western idea. If the concepts are at least somewhat different, on what grounds was I able to engage with both? From what perspective was I arguing? These are the questions that I will endeavor to answer in the book’s final chapter.