The Communist Party of China and Human Rights Protection – A 100-Year Quest

White Paper

The Communist Party of China and Human Rights Protection – A 100-Year Quest

(June 2021)

The State Council Information Office of
the People's Republic of China

The Communist Party of China and Human Rights Protection – A 100-Year Quest

Contents

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The year 2021 marks the centenary of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Over the past century, the CPC has invested a huge effort in human rights protection, adding significantly to global human rights progress.

I. For People's Liberation and Wellbeing

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I. For People's Liberation and Wellbeing

The Chinese nation is a great nation boasting a civilization spanning five millennia. China once led the world in composite national strength over a long period of time. But beginning in the middle and latter half of the Qing Dynasty (1636-1911), and especially after the Opium War in 1840, China plunged into stagnation due to a corrupt, incompetent government and ever growing Western aggression.

II. The Principle of Respecting and Protecting Human Rights Embedded in Governance

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II. The Principle of Respecting and Protecting Human Rights Embedded in Governance

As the fundamental law of a country, the Constitution is a written guarantee of the rights of citizens. Under the leadership of the CPC, China has established a Chinese socialist legal system with the Constitution at the core, thus laying a solid legal foundation for ensuring human rights.

III. Ensuring the People's Position as Masters of the Country

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III. Ensuring the People's Position as Masters of the Country

Since the founding of the PRC in 1949, the CPC has established systems that respect China's actual conditions and ensure the people's principal status as masters of the country. The main ones are people's congresses, which form the fundamental political system of China, CPC-led multiparty cooperation and political consultation, regional ethnic autonomy, and grassroots self-governance.

IV. Making Comprehensive Progress in Human Rights

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IV. Making Comprehensive Progress in Human Rights

The CPC upholds the rights to subsistence and development as the primary and basic human rights, and works hard to ensure and improve people's wellbeing through development. The Party makes every effort to achieve comprehensive progress in human rights and ensure the well-rounded development of all the people.

V. Protecting the Basic Rights of Citizens in Accordance with the Law

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V. Protecting the Basic Rights of Citizens in Accordance with the Law

The CPC has integrated law-based governance with human rights protection, promoting both throughout the whole process of socialist rule of law. In advancing law-based governance, sound legislation has created a legal system to protect human rights, strict law enforcement has fostered a good law-based environment for human rights protection, and judicial justice has provided an effective channel for judicial remedy in the field of human rights.

VI. Advancing Human Rights Around the World

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VI. Advancing Human Rights Around the World

The CPC is committed to bringing freedom and happiness to the Chinese people, and peace and progress to the whole of humanity. Its achievements prove that it is a peace-loving political party committed to progress, justice and human rights in the world.

VII. Adding Diversity to the Concept of Human Rights

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VII. Adding Diversity to the Concept of Human Rights

For China, there are no ready models to copy in respecting, protecting and developing human rights. China must proceed from its prevailing realities and go its own way. Applying the principle of universality of human rights to China's national conditions, the CPC has opened a new path of human rights protection, and added diversity to the concept of human rights with its own practices.

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From a small boat on the Nanhu Lake by southeastern China's Jiaxing City, to a giant flagship leading China's national rejuvenation, the CPC has a glorious century. Unruffled by constant change, it has remained committed to building a bright future for the Chinese nation. From revolution, economic development and reform into the new era, it has never forgotten its original aspiration and founding mission.