Peter Wilson

China: Human Rights Report

The Foreign Office's annual human rights report comes out today.  It includes material on China, where we have a number of concerns.  We raise these regularly with the Chinese Government, at high level.  We have both bilateral and EU dialogues on human rights.  It is important that these work well.

Chinese leaders say that they want to see improvements in human rights.  They also point out that social and economic rights have improved a great deal over the last thirty years.  That is true - and China has lifted more people out of poverty in a shorter time than any other country in history.  But it is also not the whole story.  On civil and political rights, progress has been slow.   A timetable for ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,  which  China signed in 1998 , would be welcomed round the world.

We point this out not because we do not want China to succeed, or because we want to use this as a card to play in diplomacy, or a tool to keep China down.  It's the opposite.  We have an increasingly large stake in China's success.  And as China changes so rapidly, it - and the relationship with us - matter more to people in the UK, not less.  Better human rights contribute to long term stability.  Universal values are not a Western invention, but something we are all signed up to through our membership of the UN.

Posted at 16:51 26 March 2009 by Peter Wilson  |  Comments[2]