On October 23, 2024, the Institute for Global Governance Research (GGR) hosted a workshop on “Human Rights as Recognized by the PRC / CCP,” inviting two China specialists from the Czech project research team “Sinopsis,” Dr. Olga Lomová and Ms. Katerina Procházková. Workshop attendees included around 30 scholars and students in international relations, China studies, and other relevant fields to understand the speakers’ views on PRC/CCP perspectives on human rights.
As a founder of Sinopsis, journalist Ms. Procházková presented the project’s work. She began by introducing the origin and motivation for the project, and referred to partnerships with other institutions, projects, publications, and other outreach activities. She also presented the team’s main research accomplishments on contemporary China and on its impact in the world, including bureaucratic systems, propaganda, United Front, foreign affairs, and so on.
Secondly, Dr. Lomová introduced the discipline of Sinology and Sinopsis’ unique approaches to China studies. She emphasized the project’s focus on linguistic competence and “context and perspective,” arguing for the need for an integrated approach in understanding China. She highlighted their efforts to distance themselves from hard-core international relations and political science, and instead to comprehend Chinese perceptions of the world from various viewpoints including linguistics, literature, contemporary history, politics, society and so on. She encouraged the audience to step out of their field to more broadly comprehend the issue.
Dr. Lomová then addressed the rationale behind the Sinopsis team’s research on China, underscoring the divergence between the Czech Republic and China on human rights matters. She highlighted the significance of human rights as a defining aspect of the Czech Republic’s post-communist identity and a fundamental tenet of its foreign policy, suggesting that Czech citizens may have misperceived the implications of the country’s enhanced ties with China.
In her subsequent remarks, Dr. Lomová presented her research on the formation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through archival studies. Documents from the period indicate that, during the drafting of the Declaration of Human Rights, representatives from European, Muslim, and communist countries engaged in a debate regarding the relative primacy of human rights, state, religion, and duty. She highlighted the contribution of Chinese diplomats named C. L. Hsia (夏晉麟) and P. C. Chang (張彭春) in including a Chinese voice in the discussion. According to her findings, the Chinese representatives changed the order of the contents of the Declaration in order to better harmonize different cultural traditions, which resulted in a document acceptable across cultures. They also contributed to the hierarchical arrangement of the text – starting with general principles defining all other specific rights, in simple and nontechnical terms. This resulted in the individualistic and universalist narratives of the Declaration.
She concluded by discussing the discrepancy between the universalist efforts of Chinese representatives in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the contemporary Chinese perspective on roles and positions. In the present era of China, it is posited that the diplomats advanced the Confucian value of human dignity, which is identified with the contemporary Chinese Communist Party project of human rights with Chinese characteristics. Consequently, China played a pioneering role in the process of drafting the UDHR, proposing solutions to the protection of human rights on a global scale. In light of this assertion, China continues to uphold the CCP’s interpretation of human rights as a fundamental tenet of its discourse on decolonization, maintaining its current stance on global human rights governance.
During the Q&A session, a lively discussion ensued on such topics as the difference in China policy of Czech and Hungary, the use of Confucianism in the Chinese human rights discourses in diplomacy, the promotion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in China, and the implementation of UDHR in a time of geopolitical and religious tensions.
Dr. Lomová emphasized the importance of reviewing the historic and outstanding contributions made by Chinese representatives in the early days of the Declaration in order to grasp the initiative and dominance of human rights discourse in global governance. She also noted the construction of China’s human rights discourse system as a window of possibility for China‘s participation in global governance.
【Event report prepared by】
KISHI Akihito (Bachelor’s student, Faculty of Law，Hitotsubashi University)
