WANG Ruixue*
Abstract: The right to development is pluralistic with respect to the subjects of rights, type and parties bearing relevant responsibilities. The diverse claims made by the subjects of the pluralistic nature of the right to development need to be deeply safeguarded in Chinese socioeconomic development. The right to development integrates the rights of both the collective and the individual, combines economic, political, cultural, social and environmental rights, and fuses the needs of right to development in varying degrees. The right to development is core to the system of human rights discourse in China. The right to development requires that the concept of "human development" be fully incorporated into the development process, and that the responsibilities for safeguarding rights be shouldered by multiple entities through various ways.
Keywords: development ♦ Right to Development ♦ human rights responsibilities
The term “human rights” has rich connotations. According to the general discussion in academia, human rights are based on human dignity and are the freedoms or qualifications that people should enjoy as human beings.1 The internationally recognized classification model of human rights is the intergenerational division model, respectively “the first generation of human rights formed during the American Revolution and the French Revolution aimed at protecting civil liberties from the arbitrariness of the state; the second generation of human rights formed during the Russian Revolution and aimed at requiring the state to actively interfere in social and economic life and develop social welfare undertakings; and the third generation of human rights formed in the process of opposing colonialism in the second half of the 20th century and aimed at protecting collective human rights such as the right of nations to self-determination, the right to development, the right to environment and the right to peace.”2 Although from the perspective of historical development, these rights are presented in different intergenerational forms, observing today’s society, these rights and related core safeguard mechanisms exist together. Therefore, Professor Luo Haocai and others have proposed that it seems more appropriate to call them three types of human rights instead of three generations of human rights.3 Meanwhile, our country is facing the responsibility of respecting, protecting and developing the three types of human rights, and is facing the demand to strengthen the safeguards for the multiple rights of multiple subjects. Under this background, the right to development has an integrated effect on the multiple rights of multiple subjects, and meanwhile, multiple subjects need to adopt multiple ways to realize it.
I.Connotations of the Right to Development
Article 1 of the Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by the UN General Assembly in its resolution 41/128 of December 4, 1986, clearly states that “the right to development is an inalienable human right. Because of this right, everyone and all people have the right to participate in, promote and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development. In this development, all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized”.4 The right to development is put forward against the background of the international community (especially developing countries) trying to change the uneven development among countries. In the context of domestic law, it mainly refers to the right of individuals and people to develop.
A.Promoting all-around developmentof human beings is the core proposition of the right to development
China has always given top priority to safeguarding people’s rights to subsistence and development. In October 2015, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee put forward the idea of people-centered development for the first time. On November 23, 2015, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out during the 28th collective study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee: “We must adhere to the people-centered development idea, which is the fundamental standpoint of Marxist political economics. We must persist in taking the promotion of people’s well-being, the all-round development of human beings and the steady progress toward common prosperity as the starting point and foothold of economic development. We must firmly adhere to this fundamental standpoint in deploying economic work, formulating economic policies and promoting economic development.”5 On December 10, 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping wrote to the symposium commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, stressing that “we must adhere to the path of human rights development in line with our national conditions and promote the all-round development of human beings”.
The Chinese government’s concentrated interpretation of the right to development is mainly reflected in the White Paper on the Right to Development. On December 1, 2016, the State Council Information Office released a white paper entitled the Right to Development: China’s Concepts, Practices and Contributions (hereinafter referred to as the White Paper on the Right to Development). To mark the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the UN’s Declaration on the Right to Development, the White Paper on the Right to Development summarizes the progress made in guaranteeing the Chinese people’s right to development in various fields such as the economy, politics, culture, society and the environment. It emphasized that the right to subsistence and the right to development are the primary basic human rights and they are being continuously and effectively protected in China. The White Paper on the Right to Development fully explains China’s human rights discourse system with the right to development as the core.6
The right to development injects the essence of “human development” into the development of the economy, politics, culture, society, the environment and other aspects, requiring respect for people’s right to development in the development process of various fields. Under the background of social development, more attention should be paid to human rights. “Human development” is an important human rights dimension derived from “human dignity” in contemporary society, and it is also the core meaning of the right to development. Human development and social development complement each other and promote each other. The root of social development lies in human development.7 As early as the early 1990s, some scholars pointed out that “the process of social development is a process of increasing citizens’ claims and accumulation of rights. Meanwhile, this growth promotes and ensures the healthy and harmonious development of society”.8
B. The pluralistic nature of the right to development
As one of the primary basic human rights, the right to development is characterized by its pluralistic nature.
First, the right to development has multiple subjects. Although many rights involve many different types of subjects of rights, the diversity of the subjects of the right to development is still very prominent, which is determined by the diversity of subjects with development needs.9 The subjects of the right to development include not only individuals, but also a wide range of subjects with uncertain extension. For example, regional development strategies such as the coordinated development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and the development of the Yangtze River Economic Zone put forward a regional right to development, which includes the integrated right to development of backward areas in the region, the sustainable right to development of advanced areas, the high-quality right to development of the whole region and the right to development of individuals, enterprises and other individuals in the region. For example, the construction of optimizing the business environment widely implemented in recent years has put forward a new dimension of the right to development of enterprises, especially private enterprises, which includes the right to development of state-owned enterprises, private enterprises, entrepreneurs and a wide range of workers.10 However, no matter how the categories of the right subjects are arranged and combined, the core subject of the right to development is still the individual. The individual’s right to development is embodied in the all-round development of economy, politics, culture, society and the environment, and the types of rights involved are very complex. The diversity of the subjects of right of the right to development puts forward new requirements for the country’s human rights obligations. Diversity requires the country take “human development” as the core consideration in policy formulation and administrative activities.
Second, there are many types of rights in the right to development. The right to development is deeply related to personal rights and property rights. It is said that “the right to development runs through other human rights, which create conditions for human development and the realization of the right to development”.11 The absence of any human right can directly lead to the failure of the right to development, and the realization of the right to development is the result of respecting, safeguarding and developing other human rights.Meanwhile, the concept of the right to development also puts forward higher requirements for safeguarding the traditional type of human rights. For example, the right to welfare is a typical social right, which aims to ensure that the needy can obtain the opportunity to survive and develop. The constitutional right to welfare is embodied in administrative law as administrative supply, which is managed and operated by different administrative agencies. Children, retirees, disabled people, laborers, etc. can obtain administrative supply according to different identities and qualifications and certain standards. Under the background of the right to development, welfare supply requires the government not only to “offer fish”, but also to teach disadvantaged groups “how to fish”. To a large extent, China’s welfare supply is combined with the construction of people’s livelihoods. The safeguarding of people’s right to development is linked with poverty alleviation and the construction of people’s livelihoods. There are many ways to pay more attention to the development capabilities of aided persons, such as precise poverty alleviation and industrial poverty alleviation.12
Third, the realization of the right to development requires different subjects to jointly fulfill their human rights responsibilities. The extremely complex orientation of the right to development requires the state, market subjects and social subjects to share human rights responsibilities. Enterprises, trade associations, social organizations and other subjects, some of which are private, some public and some appointed subjects. It is impossible to simply classify appointed subjects into the single category of being “between public and private”.13 These subjects often play a certain role as governance subjects in the network of public governance and have higher obligations to safeguard human rights than ordinary individuals. Issues such as corporate human rights responsibilities and social organization human rights responsibilities fall into this dimension.14 In short, the right to development not only refers to the positive development of all subjects, but also requires the joint efforts of all subjects.
II. Realistic Backgroundfor the Right to Development
As the integration of many rights, the right to development embodies the individual and collective demands for the right to realize development. The right to development is launched against the background of all-around economic, political, cultural, social and environmental requirements for development. From the development history of international human rights, we can see that with the changes of the times and the development of human civilization, more and more types of rights have been fixed and become rights in the sense of human rights. The country needs to make strenuous efforts to realize the institutional safeguarding of these rights in an overall sense. Different from the division of intergenerational development of human rights in the international field, in the process of reform and opening-up, China is facing the problem of multiple rights demands of multiple subjects and needs to deepen its safeguards. On the whole, the demand for human rights in China are diversified and concentrated, and the national obligations they point to are also numerous and complicated.The focus of national human rights responsibility is not clearly divided into different types of human rights. In the field of criminal law, there is no obvious intergenerational distinction between the claims for safeguarding human rights with suspects as the core, the claims for the safeguarding of civil social rights, the demands for environmental rights and the claims for the safeguarding of collective human rights of different groups. It is urgent to develop all kinds of rights.
Ignoring the process of all-around development and sustainable development will do more harm than good to the right to development. For example, if we do not pay attention to environmental protection while developing the economy, we will create an environmental rights crisis. This requires a comprehensive view of the complex orientation of the right to development and an overall consideration of different development demands. It is against this background that the right to development, which is injected with the concept of sustainable development, becomes more and more important. As pointed out in the 2016 White Paper on the Right to Development, “the problems of unbalanced, uncoordinated, unequal and extensive development mode in the development process are all manifestations of unsustainable development”.15 It must be pointed out that sustainable development in the environment, climate and resources is a very important aspect, but it is not the only one. Sustainable development in different economic fields, a fairer and more sustainable social security system, etc. are all the meanings of sustainable development.16 After a long period of practical development, the country has formed a new development concept of “innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing”. The new development concept embodies the shaping of the development process by the right to development. Development is the all-around development of human beings, not one-sided and short-sighted development.17
The right to development is facing the objective requirement of increasing the degree of safeguarding of rights. Although in the traditional theory of human rights law, safeguarding human rights often focuses on realizing the basic protection of life, rather than the high-level realization of rights.18 However, in real life, people’s demands for a higher degree of rights have become an important part of human rights that need to be safeguarded. As pointed out in the report of the 19th National Congress, “After socialism with Chinese characteristics has ushered in a new era, the main social contradictions in our country have been transformed into the contradictions between the people's growing needs for a better life and the unbalanced and inadequate development.” It can be said that the deepening responsibility for human rights directly originates from the deepening demand for rights, which is not only reflected in specific rights and obligations, but also in the holistic and deepening of contemporary demands.19 However, the deepening development of a certain right in contemporary society, where the social joint effect is extremely strong, will not only bring about the realization of this right to a higher degree at the micro level, but also may affect and impair the interests of other competing groups. Those interests that have been impaired may be the so-called contemporary “vested interests”, which generally refer to the interests that should not be protected at the level of justice but are enjoyed by a few people. Meanwhile, the impairment of interests may also means the impairment of legitimate rights in the short or long term, or even the impairment of overall rights. This joint relationship also reminds us that in the process of development, we must always pay attention to the balanced and equal development of rights, the all-around development of human beings and the overall development of society.
The background of multiple and deepening rights demands determines that the right to development is a right that keeps pace with the times. It is difficult to define “human development” accurately in theory, thus it is difficult to form a standardized theoretical system and analysis framework. However, the right to development can play an important integration role and is widely inclusive. Emphasizing that the safeguarding of various rights is aimed at realizing human development provides bridges the tensions between various human rights demands. The reality of the right to development reminds us that development must be people-oriented. In the process of government regulation and public governance, the government, the market and social subjects cannot ignore the influence of policies on people’s right to development, and cannot pursue economic interests or other interests by inhibiting human development.
III. Integration Effectiveness of the Right to Development
Facing the human rights challenges brought about by multiple subjects and multiple rights demands, the solution adopted by our country is to integrate multiple human rights responsibilities into the right to development. “It is the ideal pursuit of human society to have equal development opportunities, share development achievements, enable everyone to develop in an all-round way and realize the full right to development.”20 The right to development is not only the collective right of developing countries to remove structural obstacles in the international economic order that hinder their development, but also the individual right of individuals to benefit from national development and participate in the development process.21 The development path of human rights in our country can be summarized as an overall plan to integrate multiple rights demands into the right to development. Whether it is the strategic objectives of modernization, the institutional contents of building a well-off society in an all-around way and the construction of people’s livelihoods, or the issues outlined in the three National Human Rights Action Plans successively formulated and implemented by our country, the right to development is placed in an important position to protect human rights, and providing the necessary conditions for human development is the basic plan to protect human rights.
A. The right to development integrates collective and individual rights
Collective rights are first represented by the right to development of countries and regions. The legitimacy of the right to development is based on the fact that any country, region or individual hopes to obtain development opportunities and possess development benefits. Therefore, in developing countries where development opportunities have been severely deprived and threatened in history, the right to development is increasingly important.22 Besides, collective rights are continuously subdivided within a country, such as the right to development of ethnic minority groups that are socially disadvantaged and have specific cultures, languages, religions and customs,23 the right to development of relatively disadvantaged groups24 such as the elderly, the disabled, women and minors, and the right to development of different regions and places.25 The individual’s right to development is the basis for the full realization of the right to development. As pointed out in the Declaration on the Right to Development, equal opportunities for development are a unique right of the country and the individuals that make up the country. Any country and any individual that makes up the country have the right to participate in the development and enjoy the fruits of development equally.26 Whether it is national development or collective development, in the final analysis, it must be implemented into human development.
A. The right to development combines economic, political, cultural, social and environmental rights
The purpose of the right to economic development is to ensure the development of various subjects in the economic field and to solve outstanding practical problems that hinder fair competition and fair distribution and affect the realization of the economic right to development.27 The political right to development requires the state to provide institutional guarantee and ability cultivation for citizens’ political participation.28 The right to cultural development is the right of individual citizens and their aggregation, including the protection and development of the culture owned by a nation, region and country, and thus to benefit from it.29 The social right to development refers to the improvement of the level of social security and the development of various social undertakings. The environmental right to development is more special and important. The objective tension between environmental protection and development requires the inclusion of the concept of sustainable development in the process of realizing the right to development. The right to development does not only exist in a certain field. Biased development will inevitably bring harm to other rights, thus harming the overall realization of the right to development. In particular, this requires us to inject the essence of human rights into the process of economic development and guard against the tendency of economic development to neglect development in other fields. The right to development also puts forward higher requirements for the rule of law model. Taking the theory of administrative law as an example, Professor Yu An put forward the academic concept of “coordinated development-oriented administrative law”, advocating that administrative law should make systematic and directional adjustments, limit any improper preference for GDP and one-sided pursuit of economic growth in the legal system, and realize the right of all members of society to participate and develop equally.30
B. The right to development fuses different degrees of claims to safeguard rights
Different levels of development will lead to different goals for the realization of the right to development. The right to development focuses on the development of different individuals, but it does not pursue the unity of development results. For example, even under the development strategy of regional integration, different regions in the same region must cooperate and coordinate with each other based on respecting the basic conditions of history, geography and people and respecting the basic laws of the market and society, instead of homogeneous development and unified development, which is similar in other domains. Professor Luo Haocai and others have described the balanced state of human rights law, pointing out that “in terms of results, the balanced human rights law embodies the maximization of human rights safeguarding performance in a specific time and space”.31 The right to development, which integrates different rights safeguarding claims, pursues the maximization of human rights safeguarding performance in a specific time and space, to promote individual development, collective development and national development to the greatest extent, and to realize the coordinated and all-round development of economy, politics, culture, society and environment.
The right to development places individuals and collectives in the overall network of national governance and social governance. It no longer emphasizes the negativity of the right to freedom or focuses on the enthusiasm of the second generation of human rights. The state, as well as market subjects, social subjects, families and individuals, are all responsible for the development of individuals under specific circumstances. Such networking and association more appropriately show the connection between the development of human rights and the state, society and other subjects in today's world.32 In general, the right to development integrates multiple rights demands. The right to development integrates collective rights and individual rights, economic, cultural, social and environmental rights, and also integrates the rights development needs of different generations through the concept of sustainable development.
IV. Paths to Realize the Right to Development
In view of the multiple attributes of the right to development, its realization path is also a very complicated topic, which requires both top-level design and situational analysis on a case-by-case basis. This article discusses from three dimensions: basic concepts, responsible subjects and realization methods.
A. Running the concept of “human development” through the whole process of realizing the right to development
The right to development is not equivalent to the development itself. It requires that the concept of “human development” be fully injected into the development process to achieve balanced and sustainable development. The basic concept of the right to development can be understood as respecting, protecting and developing people’s all-round development ability, creating conditions and providing support for their development. In the process of realizing the right to development, there are often situations of conflicts of rights. On the premise of fully respecting the market, social autonomy and individual autonomy, the government must cultivate the ability of different subjects to develop well. The realization of the right to development needs to implement the values of subject dignity, equality and tolerance in the whole government regulation and public governance system, and needs to take human dignity and development as the essence of policy objectives.33 The right to development requires all public policies to take respect for “human development” as the core consideration. For example, in today’s era when connectivity is extremely convenient, the use of negative information disclosure to impose sanctions has become a cheaper and more convenient means.However, since reputation is an important part of personality rights, it is also an important resource for individuals and enterprises to continue to develop in the social community and the market community. Therefore, from the perspective of benefiting the right to development, it has gradually become a consensus in the academic circle to restrict government power, pay attention to protecting the image of individuals and enterprises, and perfect negative evaluation procedures in the process of implementing the social credit system.34
B. Highlighting the capacity for active efforts of the State as the responsible subject of the right to development
Under the background of public governance, the subjects with public authority and providing public services are becoming more and more diversified. Therefore, social subjects, market subjects, families and individuals must play a role in the network of human rights safeguarding and assume corresponding responsibilities. In particular, the realization of the right to development needs to give full play to the autonomy of different subjects, and meanwhile requires different subjects to respect personal development as the basic requirement when playing the role of public governance. On the one hand, the state has adopted a series of laws and regulations to protect rights, confirming various rights and clarifying the rights and obligations between different subjects. The state not only bases itself on adjusting the basic order of the whole social life, but also focuses on the continuous improvement of the degree of safeguarding of rights. Through a series of programs and mechanisms, the state mobilizes as many subjects as possible under the framework of public governance to promote the higher realization of rights. On the other hand, through institutionalized incentives and constraints, the state urges enterprises to assume more human rights responsibilities, cultivates and encourages social organizations to play a more important role in the development of human rights, and plays the role of other governance subjects such as trade associations and charitable organizations. For example, it has become an important trend in recent years for the government to urge enterprises to assume more environmental and social responsibilities through incentives such as green finance, tax incentives, rating and ranking, and for the public to promote enterprises to assume more environmental and social responsibilities through supervision by public opinion.35 The human rights responsibility in contemporary society is no longer closed, but has the characteristics of openness. The open human rights responsibility has at least two dimensions: horizontal and vertical. On the one hand, the human rights responsibility deepens continuously, that is, to a higher degree of realization. On the other hand, human rights responsibilities continue to expand, that is, to more subjects to share the responsibility. This is not only the development trend of human rights responsibility, but also the meaning of the right to development.
C. The ways to realize the right to development include the multiple ways adopted by multiple subjects
The government not only directly fulfills its obligation to protect the right to development, but also exerts the power of other subjects to jointly protect the implementation of various rights. For example, in terms of welfare supply, the way the government directly performs the responsibility of safeguarding rights helps to realize the stability of safeguarded rights, but it also greatly reduces the efficiency of welfare supply, and meanwhile reduces the participation and enthusiasm of the market and society. Therefore, governments at all levels are increasingly purchasing social services to promote the quality of welfare supply and protect the rights to subsistence and development of different groups and individuals. The tentacles of administrative power have withdrawn from the direct performance of responsibilities to regulatory responsibilities, with more emphasis on the autonomy of market players and the role of social organizations. This is also a key issue in the transformation of public administration and public law. As mentioned earlier, the realization of the right to development requires different subjects to jointly fulfill their human rights responsibilities.However, it is difficult for different subjects to automatically form a cooperation mechanism to protect human rights in many situations. Actors are likely to choose the most favorable behavior mode for themselves from their interests, directly or indirectly damaging the rights to development of others. Therefore, no matter to what extent the responsibility for safeguarding human rights spreads to private subjects, the government should assume the responsibility for protection and supervision and take “human development” as the core consideration in policy formulation.36 It is worth mentioning that, the government must discharge its responsibilities with full respect for the market and society, especially in today’s society where science and technology are developing with each passing day, When the government encounters regulatory problems with regard new technologies, newindustries and new models outside the existing legal framework, it should strengthen exchanges and communication with market players and social players, consider factors such as safeguarding individual rights, industrial development and social development as a whole, and formulate regulatory policies to maximize the performance of human rights safeguarding.37
V. Conclusion
The right to development is one of the core concepts in China’s human rights discourse system, and its core intention lies in the all-round development of human beings. Facing the human rights challenges brought by multiple subjects and multiple rights demands, China is integrating many rights into the realization process of the right to development, integrating individual and collective economic, political, cultural, social and environmental rights under the concept of sustainable development, and striving for a higher level of safeguarding the rights of diverse subjects. The basic idea of the right to development is to respect, protect and develop people’s all-around development ability. Its realization needs the joint efforts of market subjects, social subjects, families, individuals and other multiple subjects under the leadership of the state.
4. United Nations, “Declaration on the Right to Development”. Article 2 of the Declaration states that “human beings are the main body of development and therefore should become active participants and beneficiaries of the right to development”. Article 8 states that “States shall take all necessary measures at the national level to realize the right to development and to ensure, inter alia, equal opportunities for all persons in access to basic resources, education, health services, food, housing, employment, equitable distribution of income, etc. Effective measures should be taken to ensure that women play an active role in the development process. Appropriate economic and social reforms should be undertaken to eradicate all social injustices.”
12. Luo Haocai, “China’s Human Rights Construction with People’s Livelihood as the Priority”, Human Rights 3 (2013): 2-6. In addition, Professor Zhang Yan pointed out that the recognition relationship between people is governed by three basic fields: friendship, law and achievement. The recognition corresponding to these three fields is respectively emotional recognition, legal recognition and social recognition. By recognizing the relationship, human rights safeguarding and people's livelihood construction can be unified. When we say that the safeguarding of human rights is to recognize the qualification and legitimacy of human beings, it must include the construction of people's livelihoods and offer care and assistance to people. Zhang Yan, “Human Rights Safeguarding and People's Livelihood Construction”, Legal Daily, April 24, 2013.
20. The State Council Information Office, The Right to Development: China’s Concepts, Practices andContributions, December 1, 2016.
32. Qi Yanping, “On the Institutional Safeguarding of the Right to Development”, Learning and Exploration 2 (2008): 99-106.
36. Wang Ruixue, “On the Types and Mechanisms of Multiple Subjects Sharing Human Rights Responsibilities”, Zhejiang Journal 2 (2018): 137-143.
