Capitalist theoreticians regard rights such as to food, shelter, and clothing as "aspirational" and neither genuine nor enforceable. Hence, our country has refused to sign off on the human rights protocols mentioned earlier.
By way of contrast, under socialism, the rights prioritized by U.S. capitalists are far down their list. In fact, rights such as private property and religious expression (in the light of European weaponization of religion in the service of colonialism) are often seen as inimical to the rights that socialism seeks to guarantee.
Policies towards Muslims
This brings us to the subject of human rights violations. They represent a point of convergence between China's system and our own.
Sadly, both systems are comparatively unrestrained in their oppressive policies supporting the human rights they prioritize. This leads both to transgress the UN Declaration's prohibition of torture and unfair detainment as well as the right to a free trial and to democracy.
Both forms of transgression (theirs and ours) are illustrated in the way the two systems deal with shared problems around Muslim dissidents, rebels, and terrorism.
China deals with those problems especially in its northwestern Xinjiang province by confining Uyghur Muslims to what they describe asl "re-education centers." There, according to U.S. media, Muslims are said to be interned in desperate conditions. They're forced to take propagandistic classes about the error of their ways. They're also allegedly mistreated in manners, by the way, that would be familiar to blacks and Hispanics interned in the U.S. prison system and in the concentration camps at our southern border.
Apart from the general fact that the U.S. imprisons a greater percentage of its population than China, and that it maintains those just-mentioned concentration camps for refugees and asylum seekers, Americans deal with their Muslim problems by imprisoning Muslims in detention centers such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and in "black sites" throughout the world. In extraterritorial locations like those, our government has unilaterally decided that human rights (even such as habeas corpus) enshrined in the western tradition since the Magna Carta, simply do not apply.
But detention centers are not the central element of U.S. strategies for dealing with Muslim dissidents and rebels. Killing them is. Since 9/11 2001, the U.S. has bombed and droned in a host of Muslim countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Ethiopia. In Iraq alone, by some estimates, "America" has caused more than one million Muslim deaths. In contrast, Chinese apologists are quick to point out that the last time China bombed any foreign country was more than 40 years ago.
Conclusion
Thankfully, the 2021 Olympics in Beijing are providing us with a window onto China, its socio-economic system, culture, and values particularly as they impact human rights. Great effort however is required to see all that through the haze of the MSM's anti-Chinese bias.
Those who make that effort can draw some perhaps salutary conclusions that include the following:
- (As if we needed reminding) the western MSM is biased and propagandistic.
- It is particularly unbalanced in its approach to questions of human rights in China.
- No nation observes all human rights.
- Arguably, as a country emerging from Third World status, China's prioritization of poverty elimination, education, housing, and health care makes more sense than adopting the preferences of the United States and Europe.
- China's prioritization would be welcome even in the United States which (alone among industrialized nations) refuses to recognize universal health care as a human right. (In other words, it violates that right.)
- China's health care precautions are helping Americans see the life-saving effects and other benefits of a centralized and coordinated universal health care system.
- In the process, thoughtful Americans might be moved to reconsider the meaning of the phrase "pro-life." Discounting any connections with abortion, "pro-life" in China entails adoption of aggressive measures to eliminate poverty and to keep the number of deaths due to COVID as close to zero as possible.
- Its achievements in doing so are remarkable to say the least.
- Somehow re-education of Muslim dissidents seems preferable to killing them.
- The same might be said for the display of China's human rights priorities. That is, the right to food, shelter, clothing, health care, and dignified retirement might be more important than those to private property and respect for contracts.
Postscript
For years I worked for a Latin American studies program in Costa Rica. It served evangelical students from the U.S. doing their term abroad in San Jose. Each semester we took them to Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Cuba.
Before going to Cuba, the topic of "human rights" always came up. I'd ask the students to define the term. Eventually, they'd get to an understanding that a human right is what's due a person simply in virtue of being human.
I'd them ask them to share what they considered the most important human right. Many said "the right to life" - and they weren't talking about abortion.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
