In the late 1980s China entered a new stage in the debate on human rights. A more affirmative official position, as exemplified by official statements in support of the UDHR on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary, encouraged individual scholars who now dared to express more liberal and positive views of human rights. We here translate one of these relatively liberal articles, written by Xu Bing (b. 1951) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Xu Bing acknowledges that the issue of human rights has hitherto been taboo in China and that there are many misconceptions regarding the idea. He argues against those who see the concept of human rights as an exclusively bourgeois idea, lacking relevance and application to China. According to Xu, human rights refers to those rights that each human being ought to enjoy by virtue of his or her human nature. In contrast to the participants in the official debate of the late 1970s, Xu is prepared to acknowledge that human rights have a supra-class character. He also emphasizes that human rights are different from citizens’ rights in that one cannot be deprived of them, as one could with citizens’ rights.
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