Liu Nanlai (b. 1933) is a professor at the Institute of Law and deputy director of the Center for Human Rights Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He was one of the co-conveners of a conference held in Beijing in 1994 between Chinese and Dutch specialists in human rights issues; the goal of the conference was to take stock and assess human rights issues in light of the results of the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights (for the statement of the Chinese representative to that conference, see Text 56). Liu’s article is a detailed and sophisticated account of the position of developing countries on human rights and of their struggle to realize such rights. Liu addresses the issue of the particularity and universality of human rights, and stresses the importance of cultural and historical factors in explaining differences between societies with respect to the understanding and implementation of human rights. But the main thrust of his argument is that different levels of economic development and the heritage of colonialism explain the differences between developing and developed (i.e., Western) countries. Liu does not disparage previous international human rights work and, unlike some official spokespersons, he does not see the UDHR as solely imbued with Western ideas. Instead, Liu goes to great lengths to defend the UDHR as a universal project, describing in great detail the contributions from various countries in the Third World. He even mentions the fact that a Chinese person served as a member of the drafting committee (see Text 33), albeit without mentioning the individual’s GMD affiliation.
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