Readers applaud Xi's discourses on protection of human rights

A book with extracts from President Xi Jinping's discourses on respecting and protecting human rights demonstrates how China conducts its people-centered approach to human rights protection with solid actions, officials and experts have said.

It also provides guidance for a wide range of developing countries to find their own paths toward human rights protection according to their own domestic conditions, they added.

"Only the people have the right to judge a country's progress on human rights protection," said Jiang Jianguo, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

By always putting people first, China has achieved long-term economic development and social stability over the years, and its people are satisfied with the achievements, Jiang said on Tuesday at a meeting where Chinese and foreign readers shared their views on the book.

"China's human rights progress is due to the leadership of the CPC and the advantages of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics," he said.

"But the United States and some other Western countries are obviously dissatisfied with China's approach and even attempted to deny it and used the human rights issue as an excuse to interfere in China's domestic issues," he said.

However, Jiang said that the concept of human rights boasted about by Western countries, including the United States, is centered on the needs of the capitalist system, and has little regard for people's lives and health, particularly amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gregory W. Adedigba from Nigeria, a researcher at the CGTN Think Tank, said that the book provides a solid framework for approaching human rights issues for anyone intending to understand why developing countries tend to be dismissive of charges of human rights abuses frequently leveled against them.

"China's critics, and indeed, those of many developing countries would benefit from reading this book because it presents the case for respecting the unique cultural, historical and economic realities of every nation in their pursuit of human rights," he said.

The book, published this month, includes 335 discourses extracted from over 160 reports, speeches, congratulatory letters and instructions by Xi.

The discourses date from Nov 15,2012 to Oct 30, 2021, and many of them are published for the first time.

The book will also be published in foreign languages, including English, Russian, French and Japanese.