During the 1940s, Zhang Junmai (1887–1969) was a leader of the China Democratic Socialist Party and an important figure of the so-called third force in the struggle between the CCP and the GMD. Zhang kept himself informed about discussions on human rights in the West and the work in progress in the United Nations on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He also took part in the San Francisco conference which adopted the UN Charter. During the 1940s, Zhang discussed human rights in the magazines Zaisheng and Minxian; we translate parts of one of these articles here. In other writings, Zhang introduced and translated discussions of human rights in the West, such as the declaration of human rights adopted by the French organization Ligue des droits de l’homme in 1936, and a human rights manifesto written by H.G. Wells in 1939. Both these declarations were fairly radical in nature and called for economic rights, including the right to subsistence.
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