Soon after the crackdown on the Democracy Movement in June 1989, the Chinese government began to sponsor academic research into the subject of human rights. Some of the fruits of this research are essays that appear elsewhere in this Reader. In November 1991, the official view of human rights was summarized and presented in the White Paper on Human Rights in China, soon to be followed by other White Papers addressing more specific issues, such as prison conditions, the situation in Tibet, religious freedom, and so on. In the 1991 White Paper China officially and unambiguously endorsed the language of human rights and praised the development of the international human rights regime. At the same time, though, the document argues that the specific contents of human rights vary with “differences in historical background, social system, cultural tradition, and economic development.” In addition to making this relativist argument, the White Paper also dwells at length on the priority of the “right to subsistence” (shengcun quan) over other human rights, and furthermore argues that said right cannot be secured except by independent, sovereign nations. China’s most important goals, then, are the collective goals of national strength and independence, followed closely by national economic development. One explicit aim of the White Paper was to refute foreign criticism and present an alternative and more rosy picture of the situation in China. And to this end, it presents a detailed overview of the atrocities committed by the imperialists in China before 1949, while keeping silent on disasters since then, such as the great famine of 1960–61 and various political campaigns that have also resulted in the deaths of millions of people. We reprint here the preface and first section of the White Paper.
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