RIGHTS DISCOURSE HAS CONTINUED to develop in China since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949.
As we might expect, given the ambivalent attitude that Marxism has toward rights, the developments have been neither simple nor continuous. In addition, while we have certainly seen some tensions between different ideas of rights in the pre-1949 period, contestation over who has rights, and what rights are, becomes even more prominent in the years since then.
Be that as it may, most participants in Chinese rights discourse continue to conceive of rights in ways that will be familiar from earlier in the century.This chapter has two goals. To begin with, I aim to assess the extent to which recent Chinese thinking about rights substantiates the first of Liu Huaqiu’s claims, with which the book began: Do we in fact find in China today a distinctive conception of rights? Chapters leading up to this one have made clear that Chinese discussions of rights emerged and developed in a distinctive way, sharing some but not all features with developments outside China. Among other factors, concerns over the satisfaction of legitimate desires, the construction of a nation within which individuals could flourish, and the protection of individuals’ abilities to develop their personalities all played important roles in the Chinese discourse. Here I will argue that this distinctiveness continues down to the present day. I will look at three aspects of Chinese rights discourse, each familiar from previous chapters, and show the extent to which each continues to be an important, if not uncontested, part of the way in which rights are conceptualized. The three aspects are (1) the ways in which rights are related to interests, (2) the degree to which different people’s rights are can be harmonized, and (3) the interrelation between economic and political rights.[209]
We will find variation and argument within each aspect. Recall that such differences can reflect two quite different processes.
On the one hand, the way that our many commitments are interwoven tells us that we should always expect differences in meaning, though these differences need not, as we saw in Chapter 2, stand in the way of communication. On the other hand, this successful communication depends in large part on cooperating within the communal structure of norms. When communities fracture and central dimensions of people’s commitments become contested, a second kind of difference in meaning arises, this latter kind with the potential to jeopardize successful communication, particularly if some parties to the disagreement resist recognizing the formation of different linguistic communities. Although we will see some hints of this latter process, it will nonetheless appear against the background of considerable consensus.Not only is there considerable consensus within Chinese rights discourse, but there is also more cross-cultural similarity than is often recognized. Calling Chinese rights discourse “distinctive” is very different from calling it “unique.” We have seen in previous chapters that Chinese rights thinkers have regularly drawn on and interpreted various Western writings and concepts; I argued in Chapter 7, for instance, that there was a significant convergence in 1920s rights discourses, East and West. A strong version of Liu Huaqiu’s first claim, according to which Chinese rights discourse is fundamentally different from Western treatments of rights, cannot be sustained. On the other hand, Chinese rights discourse is not merely an imperfect attempt to mirror Western ideas. If we reinterpret Liu to be saying simply that Chinese ideas about rights have developed in accord with Chinese concerns and practices, and that Chinese concepts of rights over the years have differed in important ways from many Western conceptions of rights, and finally that there are important continuities within Chinese rights discourse, even down to the present day - if we understand Liu thus, then we should affirm the first of his claims.
In addition to cautiously affirming the first of Liu Huaqiu’s two claims, this chapter continues the process of dealing with his second claim - namely, that foreign conceptions of rights should not be imposed on China. As I have just suggested, Chinese rights discourse is not now, nor has it ever been, as sealed off from other cultures’ rights discourses as Liu Huaqiu might believe. Chinese rights discourse has a coherent history and is made up of Chinese concepts and concerns, but this does not have to mean that Chinese and Western rights discourses are “isolated” from each other, in the sense introduced in Chapter 3. In fact there are significant grounds for cross-cultural dialogue, and perhaps for mutual learning, within each aspect of rights discourse on which I focus. This chapter demonstrates that genuine engagement is both possible and desirable.
Before turning to my three specific aspects of recent Chinese concepts of rights, it may be helpful to rehearse rapidly the historical settings in which these discussions have occurred. As I have been throughout the book, I continue to be very selective about which individuals and texts I have chosen to discuss; my goal is to illustrate important themes - often in some depth - rather than to write a complete history. Explicit discussions of rights over the last twenty-five years have taken place in several contexts. Best known are the two political movements which were subsequently suppressed by the government: the Democracy Wall movement in the winter of 1978-79 and the Tiananmen democracy movement in the spring of 1989. The United Nations serves as the focus of a second set of contexts. China has played roles there which include criticized aggressor (e.g., for its role in Tibet in 1959), leader of non-aligned and Third World nations in their efforts to move beyond colonial legacies and develop as independent nations, and participant in efforts of Asian nations to shape international human rights discourse through their notion of “Asian values.” It was primarily in this last role, in fact, that Liu Huaqiu made the statement with which this book began. A third context is academic discourse, principally since 1990. These writings cover a spectrum, ranging from those which have informed or closely followed the government’s position, as articulated in its white paper of 1991, to a variety of less orthodox positions, some rather critical of the official stance. I will draw on several essays that fit into this category in the analysis to follow.[210]