China's Human Rights

A few years ago, after a vehement round of inner city renewal, I suddenly found many sidewalks in the city proper of Beijing became so narrow that pedestrians often had to compete with bikes and even automobiles for a space to walk. The place where we used to enjoy strolling were given way either to bike lanes or to thoroughfares, or taken for the parking of automobiles that are ever increasing in the city.

Some sidewalks left to pedestrians can only accommodate one foot. You really have to master the skill of walking on the rope or on tiptoe to walk on such a narrow path. Along with the shrinkage of sidewalks are widened roads for traffic, mainly for cars. The streets become so wide in Beijing and many other cities that pedestrians find it a real challenge to cross them. Indeed you often have to struggle to cross a street, either racing against the time lest the traffic lights change before you manage to cross it, or climbing up or down a bridge or tunnel to cross the street – for that you have to take extra walk to find the facility.

While many of us might be unconscious of it, in the narrowed or vanished sidewalks and in the excessively widened streets is the encroachment upon our rights - our rights to space and to public facilities.

If these rights look too trivial to be taken so seriously as rights of the person, then we do witness other cases in which people's living was jeopardized. Some people were forced to move out of their houses in the inner city so that shopping malls, new high-grade residential housings and other profitable real estate projects could take the site. The compensation could not afford the uprooted residents to remain living inside the city and they might have to leave the convenience of commuting to and from work to move into the "sleeping towns" in the suburbs, often far away from their workplace. And even for the housing there they might have to pay out of their years' savings in addition to the compensation. As many of the uprooted residents belong to low-income groups, the added living cost may further reduce their family revenue and marginalize them.

More people, mostly rural dwellers, were displaced by big projects like hydropower conservancies. The dams had their farmland and homes inundated, compelling them to resettle in a totally strange environment or struggle to start a new career. Many became impoverished after such displacement, as the compensation could not sustain them for long. Some projects could introduce pollution and incur health problems to local people before they realize it.

All these are encroachments upon people's right to subsistence, which is a basic human right. And all these violations happened in the name of development, and the right to development is also a basic human right.

This could be puzzling: How could it happen that one basic human right is in contradiction with another basic human right and even jeopardize it?

One simple reply is that the rapid development of modern society has brought about unprecedented diversity, which would certainly result in diversified interest pursuits. While development is people's common desire, different interests of different groups could clash in the pursuit of development.

For instance, almost everyone wishes to have his or her own car and the car population in Beijing is increasing by about 10,000 daily. Of course the car owners want greater space for them to move faster, while the city authorities assume wider streets could help alleviate the traffic congestions. Yet not every citizen in Beijing with a population of over 15 million drives a car everyday. The city planning tilted too much in favor of the car-driving group is likely to neglect or even hurt the interests of the people who don't drive.

In the case of a real estate development project, there also may be different interest groups involved: the real estate developer who aims at profits in the transformation of the area from a habitat of low-income groups into a community of high-income people; those who expect to move in after the project is completed and enjoy all the convenience living in a high-brow quarter; those who have to move out to distant suburbs but might enlarge their living space, though at extra cost; those who used to have business in the area and may have to increase their input to come back and continue their operation after the renovation or could no longer afford the increased charges; and government officials in charge of the area who are eager to add the project to their political achievement. It is possible that some officials could have gains through the deal with the developer. All these groups have different interest pursuits. As Jeffrey Soule, director of the American Planning Association's outreach and international programs, observes in an article about China's city planning: "(Trendy) and selfish architects are often manipulative. Many of the academics, whose advice is sought after, are now making money by either acting as commercial contractors, or joining foreign firms to get design project. This makes them unqualified to give advice in an official capacity because there is a conflict of interest."

Due to these complicacies, failure to balance these differing interests could give rise to violation of certain group's rights and incur their resentments or even social instability.

Aside from diversified interest pursuits, the issue of development itself could be complicated in a modern society and may not always benefit the fundamental interests of the majority of the people. If the development is not sustainable, it could be destructive rather than constructive.

A survey conducted by the State Environmental Protection Administration shows that among the 7,555 chemical or petroleum projects in China, 81 percent are located in environment sensitive areas, such as water networks or densely populated habitats. While these projects have contributed economic profits to the national gross product (GDP), they also created pollution that seriously affected people's life. For instance, at the 500 sections of China's nine major river systems that are monitored for water quality, only 28 percent have water suitable for drinking, while 31 percent have water quality with limited or no functional use.

Pollution has aggravated shortage of water supply in the water scarce north and incurred water famines in the water affluent south. According to the StateEnvironmental Protection Administration, China now faces intensive outbreaks of water pollution incidents as a consequence of negligence of environmental protection over the past decades, with reports of a water pollution incident every two or three days on average since the end of 2005. In the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, where the volume of freshwater resources averages at 330 billion cubic meters a year, rapid economic growth since the 1980s has coupled with pollution to nearly every river course in the urban areas. The pollution has resulted in a water shortage affecting 16 million people of the province. Nationwide, more than 300million people's drinking water security is not guaranteed.

It is obvious that while both subsistence and development are our basic human rights, they may clash with one another if the interest of various groups of stakeholders is not well balanced, with more gains going to certain groups but others on the losing side.

A case at hand is a planned hydropower project on the Nujiang River in Southwest China's Yunnan Province. The compensation program for the peasants to be displaced includes payment of 200yuan for every mango tree to be inundated. However, from each mango tree the peasant originally could earn 400 to 500yuan a year. Such compensation could hardly sustain the displaced peasants' current living standard, which is barely up to the national average.

If we look into the miscalculated city renewal projects and those polluting enterprises which now make people suffer, we could see they share one thing in common: Public participation was missing in the process of decision-making on all these projects. In the absence of public participation, decision makers who were preoccupied with the solutions to some pressing problems are likely to neglect many people's long-term interest. Then the result could benefit some people at the expense of others' welfare, as in the case of narrowed sidewalks for pedestrians to give more space to automobiles.

Suppose the decision makers are influenced by selfish advisers who have personal interest involved in the projects, the result could be worse.

Therefore the public should have a say in decisions about actions that affect their lives. Through the process of interactive and constructive dialogue, different stakeholders – officials, designers, citizens, scholars, young and old, rich and poor, could sit together and communicate their interest. Although the final decision may not satisfy everyone's expectation, it should be a compromise acceptable to all, since it would address to all the concerns.

In fact, public participation is not just a procedure to democratize the decision-making process but an essential means to honor and guarantee our human rights. Article 21 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights adopted by the United Nations 60 years ago provides that "everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country;" "everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country;" and "the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." This lays the principled ground for public participation as a human right.

Our own experiences, positive and negative, have proven the necessity of involving the public in policy or decision-making on issues concerning their own life. This guarantee of their rights is also for the sake of social justice and equity.

To date China has ratified five of the seven major international human rights treaties. All of them require the public consultation in the preparation of periodic reports on their implementation to the related UN bodies.

While the Universal Declaration gives an emphatic provision of election and suffrage for the public to take part in the government, public participation is not confined to electing chief public servants. In modern society featuring complicated interest pursuits, no single person, however democratically elected to a leading position, can represent all the interest groups on all issues at all time. Although the system of people's congress – the legislature in China – embodies the public will in many aspects, it is only one of the many forms of public participation, although it is a very important form and channel for the public to participate in politics.

Another form is the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which as an advisory body with extensive representation of various social strata has played a positive role in democratizing the decision-making process. However, both the People's Congress and the CPPCC function more in the mapping of major national or local policies. It is impossible for them to address every specific issue involving clashes of interests of different stakeholders.

In the past few decades, governments at various levels have invited scholars in various fields to be their advisors, and would consult them before an important decision is made in the hope to guarantee the rationality of the decision. This marks a progress in democratization of decision-making process. But in reality, the "dissidents" among the experts are often excluded from the consultation. And the advice from an exclusively expert panel may not be representative enough of all stakeholders' rights.

In this context, another form of public participation has emerged, which is the public hearing on issues concerning the public benefits. Up to the end of 2005 more than 2,000 hearings had been held across China on matters ranging from bus ticket or cooking gas pricing, income tax threshold, ban on fireworks, to renovation projects of public properties. It has become a platform for ordinary Chinese to present their voices on issues they are concerned about, and help make the final decisions more scientific. And the public policy will be more popular if ordinary people have contributed in its making process.

Public participation is also necessary in the supervision of the implementation of public policies and law enforcement. Many government departments in recent years have designated people of different occupation as supervisors of their work, to monitor commodity prices, performance of government officials, and so on. This kind of public participation proves effective to improve the government work and guarantee people's rights.

Despite the progress China has made in expanding the public participation to democratize the decision and policy-making process, there are still obstacles to more adequate public participation.

A foremost obstacle is the inadequate legislation. It is encouraging that state leaders have urged government officials at various levels to promote public participation, and several laws have incorporated public participation as essential in policy or decision making, including the Law on the Environmental Impact Assessment, the Law on the Administrative Punishment, the Law on Administrative Licensing and the Law on Pricing. Yet the move is rather sporadically written in some specific laws, and the public participation is mostly witnessed in hearings on pricing, legislation and some administrative moves, but is absent in many projects immediately affecting people's life, like land leasing, neighborhood renovation and city renewal projects.

And the selection of representatives to hearings may not be scientific and democratic enough so that every group of stakeholders can have their voice heard. In some cases, the representatives are randomly designated by the sponsor at their own will, whose independence is questionable.

Another obstacle comes from some officials' resistance to the process for fear of possible inefficiency it may incur. For a long time there is the misconception that efficiency should be given priority while equity should be secondary to it in the drive to accelerate China's modernization. Actually, however, the efficiency is not what the decision making process should pursue – numerous decisions made rashly have led to disasters and even human rights violations in reality. What a desirable decision making process is fair and just, with opinions of different stakeholder groups fully aired before an agreement or compromise is reached to reflect interests of all the groups. This process might be prolonged, but the result is more likely to bring about efficiency.

The lack of necessary information is also an obstacle to the public participation. This problem involves another human right - the people's right to know. The effective and genuine public participation must be informed participation. Or it may be reduced into simply a showcase. Then the people have the right to know what their representatives have presented at the public participation sessions, which means minutes and memorandums of such meetings should be made public.

On their part, the public should be made more conscious of their rights to participation and become capable to do so. A problem in China is that there are not many interest groups capable to present a different voice, and there is the tendency that those whose voices are louder may receive greater attention while the rights of the silent majority can be neglected.

By all means, the public participation is not so alien to us. Decades ago, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong put forth the mass line of "from among the people and to the people," which mobilized and motivated millions of Chinese to pool their wisdom and strength to win the liberation and independence of the Chinese nation. Only in recent years that some in the leading position forget this fine tradition of ours and turn a deaf ear to the broad masses at grassroots. If we are going to pursue comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development that features mutual improvement and common development of material, political and spiritual civilizations; balanced growth between urban and rural areas, different regions, economic and social undertakings; and fosters a harmony between man and nature, we must do an earnest job to observe the people's rights to participate in decision making on matters concerning their welfare.

The author is Former Executive Editor of China Features, Xinhua News Agency.