Human Rights To Send Human Rights Thinking

Human rights have been an important issue in the history of China's politics in the 20^th century. People have been promoting human rights, which, in most cases, however, are regarded as a means to meet a certain end instead of the goal of mankind, thus, detaching them further from their ideal status. Human rights are considered to be those rights to guarantee individual happiness and dignity. They have to guard against the violation from the country and the government whose primary responsibility is to meet the requirement of human rights. In the late 1920^th and early 1930^th, China saw the birth and development of a politics group "human rights group"(HRG). They launched a human rights movement, interpreting the value and essence of human rights, exposing China's human rights conditions at that time and requiring the government to secure human rights, make laws and adopt democratic politics. This movement is transient;however, it has a far-reaching effect. Even today, when we have written the words "the state respects and secures human rights" into our constitution, some of their human rights thoughts are still valuable to us. Therefore, it is significant to read and introduce their thoughts systematically and assess them objectively. This thesis consists of the following three parts:Part one focuses on "the historical background of Human rights Movement". It seemed that the Human rights Movement sprang up because Hushi had published his article entitled "Human rights and the Provisional Constitution" on the magazine called "New Moon" to express his extreme "great disappointment" at the "Decree on the Protection of Human Rights" by the Nationalist Government, however, actually, this was only a direct reason behind which a profound and complex background of society, politics, ideology and culture was hidden. After the Opium War, changing from rejection to foreigners to agreement with western values, the Chinese people, with the aim of rescuing the dying nation and making the country prosperous, have gradually accepted the concepts such as "people's rights", "human rights" and a series of related concepts. HRG's struggle for human rights was indeed an inevitable outcome of the development of this long process;the formation and perfection of Dr. sun Yat-sen's theories on people's rights, together with the specific practice of politicaltutelage on the grounds of Dr. sun Yat-sen's "party doctrine" and "last instructions", constituted the thoughts and political background of HRG thoughts. The liberalism theory, which was imported into China with the spread of western culture, was the origin of HRG thoughts and foundation of their arguments. The "Ping Society" which was set up freely by the intellectuals with the common pursuit, and its publication "New Moon", had become the platform on which HRG criticized the Three Principles of the People and the theory of communism.Part two introduces the main idea of HRG, including four points: 1. By illustrating their experience and examples, the HRG exposed the poor human rights conditions in China and pointed out the leading violator of human rights were the authorities at varies levels or those in the name of them. 2. HRG interpreted the human rights from a functionalistic viewpoint as "Human rights are all those rights that enable one to be Man". These conditions would change with time and place. Accordingly, they enumerated the 35 items of human rights needed by the Chinese in 1929. In their list of human rights, the right of life and the right of personal security were considered as the most essential human rights. Thus, it was a primary responsibility for the government to protect them. The right of property was a means to realize all rights including the right of life. No rights could be realized without it. HRG also expounded this viewpoint, pointing that at that time in China, the most important thing was to guarantee people's right of financial administration. The HRG, which was mainly constituted with intellectuals, regarded the freedom of thought and speech as the most significant human rights. By means of explaining the characteristics of the freedom of thought and speech, they argued that thought cannot be and was unnecessary to be unified. They also pointed out that it was even more dangerous to suppress the freedom of speech than the freedom of speech itself. The "party education" by Kuomintang (KMT), with the assimilation of the three principles as its content, was actually an extreme autocracy of culture. The freedom of thought and speech as a human right acquired the establishment of "the freedom to criticize KMT and the freedom to criticize Dr. sun Yan-sen". Therefore, HRG strongly opposed the assimilation of KMT and the unity of thoughts. They also exposed the reactionary stand of KMT from the viewpoint of New Culture Movement. 3. Regarding the relations between human rights and country, HRG insisted a country protect the human rights and help to fulfill the well-being ofthe most. To achieve this goal, the democratic politics must be adopted. The party-ruling and the political tutelage should be abolished. Regarding the relations between human rights and laws, HRG argued that human rights were the origin and basis for law and ruling by law was the fundamental guarantee of human rights. Therefore, it was their principle idea that "secure law ruling before human rights and establish constitution before law ruling". On the grounds of constitutionalism theory, HRG strongly criticized "the Provisional Constitution of the Political Tutelage Period of the Republic of China";HRG also expounded the theory of law ruling systematically to fight against KMT's illegal conducts. In a word, constitution and law ruling were the essential guarantee of human rights, on the contrary, the implement of constitution and laws also relied upon the exercise of human rights. 4. As to HRG, human rights should be realized by means of the criticism of the present system and by means of the gradual social reform while violent revolution was useless to create a new society. From the liberalism views of human rights, HRG took the basic political stand of opposing communism and communist party. They criticized not only the communist theory, but also the practice of workers and peasants movement led by the communist party. Moreover, they blamed the KMT's party-dictatorship as a result of "ally with Russia and integrate the communist party". They argued that to solve the China's problem, China should emancipate thoughts, focus on freedom rather than unity, reform the political system and replace party-ruling with people-ruling.In part three, the thesis evaluated the HRG thoughts and analyzed the social responses at that time in China and its significance in the modern society. As to the social responses of the HRG thoughts at that time in China, there was sympathy, encouragement, support and debate of the intellectuals both in and out of the government, which was the foundation of the existence and development of Human rights Movement There were arguments and attacks from KMT. Last, there was criticism from the communists, who thought the Human rights Movement was only a constitution movement and the notion of "human nature" and "human rights" were abstract words, out-dated subgenus of bourgeois. Opposing Communist Party and the oppression of KMT was true face of HRG. To win the political powers, therefore, Human rights Movement should be a political power movement, not merely a constitution movement After analyzing the reason why HRG were extremely unfrequented in thecontemporary history of China's politics and thoughts, the thesis evaluated the HRG thoughts objectively and impartially. Firstly, the author argues that due to the Human rights Movement, the liberalistic thoughts were able to be inherited in such an autocratic society. The liberalists used their weak strength to struggle reasonably with the state and the government who controlled all the resource of force. This indicated their extraordinary moral courage and resourcefulness. Nowadays, when it has become a shared view that the most important objective of all political combination is to oppose political autocracy, to promote democracy, constitutionalism and law ruling, to emphasize the restrictive exercise of all public powers, and to promote private rights, the HRG's endeavor has been considered as a more typical demonstration and a more substantial contribution. Secondly, human rights, according to HRG, were the means as well as the end. They regarded the fulfillment and guarantee of human rights as the function of law and the highest appeal of mankind. This idea had a world-wide and long lasting effect. Thirdly, the right of life and the right of property, which are the most fundamental human rights in HRG's human rights list, still demand our special attention today. Fourthly, HRG pointed out the value of thought and speech to individuals and society. But because they didn't distinguish the nature of freedom of thought and freedom of speech, they got an overly generalized conclusion "human rights should by no means to be limited and intervened". Therefore, they could not solve the conflict between "opposing thoughts unity" and "wiping out the communists". Last, HRG's ideas of human rights protection had a well-conceived logical system: the major enemy that threatened human rights was the government. As a result, the government's powers should be restricted and guarded against;the constitution, which stipulated people's rights and the government's authority scope, was the foundation to secure human rights;a constitution was simply the beginning of human rights protection and it cannot work automatically to restrict the powers. Therefore, the rule of law, with the restriction of government as its core, should be launched. This theory of human rights protection contained several contents: it contained a close look at the government's legality, i.e. the only goal of government is to realize and to promote human rights;it contained an examination of the difference between a good and an evil constitution, i.e. a good constitution should restrict the public powers so as to guarantee human rights;it contained a supreme appeal for the legitimacy of the government's behavior, i.e. thegovernment shouldn't behave out of the restrictions set by laws. There was not only a reasonable design on the systematic level, but also a persistent pursuit on the ideological level, which interacted with each other to make the protection and realization of human rights possible and provided valuable wealth for the human rights researchers nowadays. In addition, the thesis illustrates the significance of the HRG thoughts to the modern society.HRG=human rights group KMT=Kuomintang...