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China registers historic progress in human rights

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-12-09 14:11

All aspects of social activities have laws to go by and all rights of the citizens have been brought under the secure protection of law. In the meanwhile, China is actively and steadily pushing forward its political restructuring aimed at increasing the orderly political participation by citizens, making administrative affairs transparent, intensifying the oversight and checks and balances of power and protecting citizens' political rights by law.

In the rural areas, in particular, grassroots democracy covering elections, policy decision making, management and oversight has been developing apace, enabling hundreds of millions of peasants to enjoy the right of direct election.

--- Economic, social and cultural rights improved incessantly. Since reform and opening up, the Chinese government has adopted various measures to deal with unemployment and re-employment and set up a social security system and strengthened support to education, science and technology, culture and public health and other social undertakings, striving to ensure the economic, social and cultural rights of the citizens on a solid footing.

In 2006, the government scrapped the agricultural tax and agricultural specialty product tax, ending the history of peasants delivering tax for farming the land which had lasted for more than 2,600 years. At present, China has basically popularized the nine-year compulsory education and illiteracy has been eliminated among 99 percent of the young and middle-aged population.

China has already edged into the ranks of countries with a fairly high level of education. From 1978 to 2007, the number of students at tertiary schools increased by nearly 22 times from 867,000 to 18.85 million. The number of public cultural services and facilities has increased considerably.

The public cultural service system covering both urban and rural areas has taken shape. The cultural activities of the people have been enriched. The new rural cooperative medical service that started in 2002 has now covered 730 million peasants or 85.7 percent of the rural population, contributing greatly to the improvement of the health of the rural people.

--- Exchanges and cooperation with foreign countries in the area of human rights expanded. Since reform and opening up, China has, closely following the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, taken an active part in the UN's work on human rights and in drawing up legal documents in this regard, making its due contributions to enriching the concept of international human rights and promoting the development of international human rights activities.

China has approved and joined related human rights treaties and conventions. Up to the present, China is a signatory party to 25 international human rights conventions and treaties and has adopted effective measures to perform its obligations and timely submitted reports on its performance to accept the review by the UN treaty organizations.

China has always advocated for dialogue, cooperation and exchange on the basis of equality and mutual respect in order to make the international human rights cause develop healthily. So far, China has conducted more than 70 human rights dialogues and exchanges with other countries, which helped enhance mutual understanding. China has made positive efforts to promote human rights development in each other's countries.

Q. As you are the head of the State Council Information Office, could you tell us the functions of your unit and what is the role the office has played in human rights?

A. Our office was founded in 1991. The functions of our office can be summarized as "letting the world know about China and making China known in the world." To tell the world about China includes not only explanations about China's domestic and foreign policies, China's history, culture and political, economic and social development but also revelation of the truth and China's stands and views on some major issues on which there are a lot of misunderstandings, deep biases and accusations in other countries so as to remove doubts and enhance understanding and create a good international context for China's peaceful development.

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