Teaching Comparative

Universal values with Chinese characteristics

A dozen years ago, there was a public discussion about whether the UN Declaration of Human Rights is a description of universal rights. The definition of human rights commonly accepted in the USA is not as extensive as the list in the UN declaration. The official Chinese concept of human rights is as different as the US one. Because the topic was in the news so much, my students chose it as the focus of a special unit.

The topic is back. This time the debate is going on in China, often in coded statements. The controversy might offer a framework within which to understand Chinese politics and the leadership transitions that are coming.

The debate over universal values

ON JULY 19th the graduates of one of China’s leading business schools settled down in their academic finery to listen to a farewell address by Qin Xiao, the chairman of a state-owned bank. They little expected what they were about to hear. Instead of rallying them to further the cause of China’s socialist modernisation, Mr Qin urged them to resist the lure of worldly things and to pursue “universal values” such as freedom and democracy.

Mr Qin’s speech to an audience of 2,000 people in Tsinghua University’s sports centre fanned the flames of an ideological debate that has been smouldering in China for the past two years. A philosophical question of whether universal values exist has turned into a political fight, dividing scholars, the media and even, some analysts believe, China’s leaders. The schism is likely to become more apparent as the Communist Party prepares for a sweeping change of leadership in 2012. Liberals will try to goad incoming leaders into making their views clear…

The term “universal values”, or pushi jiazhi, is a new one in Chinese political debate…

[C]onservatives fear that embracing universal values would mean acknowledging the superiority of the West’s political systems. [T]he party’s own mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, weighed in. A signed article accused supporters of universal values of trying to westernise China and turn it into a laissez-faire economy that would no longer uphold “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

The debate picked up in December 2008 when hundreds of liberal intellectuals and out-and-out dissidents signed a manifesto in support of universal values, known as Charter 08. China faced a choice, it said, of maintaining its authoritarian system or “recognising universal values, joining the mainstream of civilisation and setting up a democracy”. This was a step too far for the party leadership. Recently, Chinese officials have been issuing warnings about diplomatic trouble if the Nobel Peace Prize, due to be announced on October 8th, goes to the charter’s organiser, Liu Xiaobo. Mr Liu, who is the bookies’ favourite to win the award, is serving an 11-year jail term for his role…

But the rival camps are still at daggers drawn. Liberals see the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, as a champion of universal values…

Conservatives… were encouraged by a speech on September 1st by Vice-President Xi Jinping, who is all but certain to take over from Mr Hu as party chief in 2012 and as president a year later. Mr Xi’s speech was peppered with references to values, but did not come close to suggesting that any were universal…

See also:

• Not Hu, but Wen
  
• More reform noises from Wen Jiabao
  
• Behind the veil

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Labels: change, China, political culture, politics

posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:22 AM