By Qi Yanping
We feel a great honor and a heavy responsibility upon the Human Rights Research Center at Shandong University being named one of China’s national human rights education and training bases. In our view, national human rights education and training bases should keep up with the times, bring into full play their advantages of uniqueness and openness, complement each other, make concerted efforts to achieve innovation and vigorously boost the development of Chinese human rights theory and practice. The university center will continue to bring into play its traditional strength in theoretical research and graduate education and work hard to fulfill all the tasks of the center. It will focus on the following work.
1. Human rights research center with global influence
The university center aims to be not only the best research platform for human rights in China, but also to become an internationallyinfluential site for human rights research. The priorities of its work are as follows: First, the university will work on fundamental and frontier issues in human rights law and continue to lead the development trend in China’s human rights law. The center will focus on topics like science and technology and human rights, anti-terrorism and human rights protection, the environment and human rights, culturalrelativism and human rights protection, and ideology and human rights. Such research topics are open to collaboration withresearchers from around the world,this will help expand the international vision of the research. Second, the center will build a large-scale database for human rights legal research, covering all major academic papers and other publications, international and regional human rights treaties and human rights legal cases. Third, the center will further build the capacity of its research teams, attracting five to 10 young experts who have obtained doctoral degrees from overseas higher-learning institutions, two to three foreign experts who have some influence in the academic world and two to three scholars who have work experience in international human rights organizations.
2. Three research platforms
In order to formulate specific goals, the center is going to build three research platforms. First, an interface between traditional Chinese culture and human rights that specializes in the compatibility between Western human rights ideas and traditional Chinese culture. Related topics might include: how to use Western human rights ideas to transform and sustain traditional Chinese culture, how to employ traditional Chinese culture to address the crisis of modernity in Western human rights ideas, and how to integrate the shared views of both traditional Chinese culture and Western human rights ideas into the socialist core value system. Second, an interface between human rights and national development strategy, which specializes in the relationship between human rights and national development and aims to build a general theory and structure for domestic human rights protection and initiate a series of policy proposals on the scientific development of the nation. Related topics include privacy infringement related to the Internet, encroachment of private property and assets, land seizure and house removal related to urbanization, rights of migrant workers, the rising outcry for political rights in response to spreading corruption, environmental protection, food safety and ethics triggered by technological development. Third, an interface between the human rights system with Chinese characteristics and the world human rights discourse system, specializing in dialogue between China’s human rights discourse system and the global system, trying to expose the hypocrisy of Western countries in criticizing China with some universal human rights rhetoric, and helping Chinese legal researchers to compete for the right to expression in international venues.
3. Influential strategic think tank for China’s human rights
The center will improve the capability of its research teams in dealing with key human rights issues and serve as a think tank for national human rights strategies. The center will conduct surveys on human rights development in China, participate in drafting China’s Human Rights Conditions and National Human Rights Action Plan and other national documents, establish a monitoring system for human rights incidents for early warning, and build up a pool of professionals for specific human rights issues and offer policy proposals to government agencies.
4. Showcase for human rights popularization and social education
The center plans to build the national base into a high-quality place for popularizing human rights ideas and exemplifying human rights practices to society. First, the center will use its “HundredLectures by aHundred LegalExperts” activity to popularize the latest achievements in human rights research in order to improve the human rights awareness of the public. Second, the center will cooperate with the Shandong Wenhan Law Firm to set up the Shandong University Legal Assistance Center, which will provide legal assistance to disadvantaged groups who have no means of employing lawyers or people who are legally required to have lawyers but do not have them. Third, the center will cooperate with the Communist Youth League of Shandong Province to push forward the popularization and publicity of human rights ideas through summer internshipsfor college students. Fourth, the center will compile a series of human rights publications to satisfy the different needs of various readerships.
We believe that our goals will be fulfilled with the attention and support of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, the State Council Information Office and the Ministry of Education.
(This is a speech by Qi Yanping, director of the Human Rights Research Center of Shandong University, at the ceremony announcing the second group of national human rights education and training bases.)
