[1]Photoshop image from the Stand News.
Ahead of the 70th anniversary of the People Republic of China, the Chinese State Council Information Office issued a white paper on China's human rights conditions on September 22, 2019. Titled “Seeking Happiness for People: 70 Years of Progress on Human Rights in China” [2], the paper defines human rights as people’s rights to happiness and development.
While China claimed that it has become a true democracy and a champion of human rights, international press freedom watchdog Reporters without Borders slammed [3] the report as a “smokescreen” intended to mask China’s “horrendous record” when it comes to human rights and freedom of the press.
The Chinese government supported its achievement in human rights with a large number of statistics on economic and social development, such as poverty reduction figures:
Between 1978 and 2018 the number of rural poor fell from 770 mln to 16.6 mln calculated against China's #poverty [4] line set in 2010.
Here is the full text of the white paper: Seeking Happiness for People: 70 Years of Progress on #HumanRights [5] in China.https://t.co/WYEB7hyAlG [6] pic.twitter.com/1zBH30w2D9 [7]
— China SCIO (@chinascio) September 23, 2019 [8]
Despite severe international criticism [9] over human rights conditions in Tibet and Xinjiang [10], the paper claimed that the rights of ethnic minorities are well protected, again citing GDP growth in five autonomous regions of Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, Tibet, Ningxia and Xinjiang.
Cédric Alviani, head of Reporters Without Borders’ East Asia office, urged [3] the international community to not be fooled by “a text that purposely confuses development with human rights as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which China is a signatory but violates daily”.
In its press release, Reporters Without Borders stressed:
China is the biggest prison in the world for journalists, with at least 115 detainees, who may suffer the same fate as late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and blogger Yang Tongyan, who both died in 2017 due to untreated cancers in detention. The 850 million Chinese internet users are also kept out of the global community by a system of censorship and technological surveillance which limits their ability to inform themselves freely.
Twitter users outside of China observed that the Chinese report omitted any mention of the country's humanitarian disasters:
"The tragedies and miseries that the Chinese people and other minority nationals suffered under the Great Leap Forward movement and the famine, atrocities of Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacres are all missing"
China’s white paper… #HR [11]https://t.co/3ZTfrxY73R [12] pic.twitter.com/VZR2akyGAm [13]— clara (@clara111) September 25, 2019 [14]
Many mocked the Chinese propaganda with memes like Chinese president Xi Jinping’s online lookalike, Winnie the Pooh:
#929globalmarch [15] #929GlobalantitotalitarianismMarch [16] https://t.co/O9jf9zfW98 [17] pic.twitter.com/7TomRPR9L7 [18]
— なれはて ☔ 未来を指す羅針盤を手に (@NarehaT) September 23, 2019 [19]
As anticipated, the official stance has been echoed on Chinese social media platforms, all of which are under strict censorship control. Below are some responses on one of the news threads [20] on Weibo:
亲身感受:安居乐业，繁荣安定就是世界上最大的民主!
Personal experience and feeling: Wellbeing, prosperity and stability are the greatest democracy in this world.
中华文明和西方普世价值是两个完全不同的概念，人权定义完全不同，也是从最近的香港暴乱事件中领悟到的，祝愿国家长治久安，越来越先进。
Chinese civilization and western universal values are two different sets of concepts. The definitions of human rights are different as well. The riot in Hong Kong has taught us a lesson. Wish this country will always be stable and advancing.
中国的人权情况中国人才有资格发言！
Only Chinese people are qualified to talk about human rights in China.
Such an echo chamber on Chinese social media has generated a belief that China's political and economic systems are more advanced than the rest of the world, as reflected in the widespread discourse of China being a “strong country” (強國）. Political cartoonist Rebel Pepper is troubled by this “rosy reality” constructed by the Chinese Community Party, and compared the political propaganda to feeding drugs to the people:
我和少數人被大部分中國人認為是不可理喻一味“為黑而黑”的人，因我們看到更多真相，而大部分人僅僅看到眼前的繁華大道，中共已自信到發佈70年人權白皮書，幾年前你能想像嗎？越發顯得反共反華的人不倫不類，恐怕不是“吃飽了撐的”，多半是因為沒吃飽才這麼恨中國。這樣的輿論困局如何化解需要好好研究 pic.twitter.com/OgRLy60io6 [21]
— 变态辣椒RebelPepper (@remonwangxt) September 25, 2019 [22]
The majority of Chinese people see me and other minority dissidents as unreasonable critics just eager to discredit China. We see more than the majority of Chinese people. What they can see is economic development and now the CCP has the confidence to issue a White Paper on 70 years of progress in human rights. We can’t even imagine that just a couple of years ago. In the past, China said only those who were well-fed would point their finger at China. Now the mainstream public opinion (in China) is that only losers who can’t make a good living are resentful of China. How should we address such a popular belief?
The question raised by Rebel Pepper is shared among the Chinese overseas dissents – as all media platforms in China is under strict censorship and the great firewall has blocked overseas information from majority of the Chinese people, it is almost impossible to have open debate on the “reality” as depicted by official propaganda that orchestrated by a massive number of online patriots.