The 2025 China-Europe Seminar on Human Rights is held in Madrid, Spain, on Wednesday. CHEN WEIHUA / CHINA DAILY

The 2025 China-Europe Seminar on Human Rights concluded on Wednesday in Madrid, Spain, with a consensus document calling for human rights protection and cooperation in the digital intelligence era.

About 120 Chinese and European experts, scholars, government officials, industry representatives and other stakeholders from the human rights fields engaged in in-depth talks on the subject of human rights in the era of digital intelligence.

The consensus document calls for upholding human rights values to promote the benefits of digital intelligence technologies; ensuring a secure and trustworthy digital-intelligence rights environment; promoting global sharing of digital intelligence rights with openness; promoting universal access to digital intelligence rights and interests through development; ensuring nondiscrimination and timely rights relief with transparency; and building a community with a shared future in cyberspace through cooperation.

Marta Montoro, vice-president and general director of Spain-based Catedra China Foundation, said the meeting will "surely become a milestone" in Europe-China and Spain-China relations.

"Today, we reaffirm this conviction: The future of humanity cannot be written with China left behind. The digital future of mankind is inseparable from a vision of dialogue, fairness and inclusive development," she said.

She said human rights need to be strengthened, expanded and adapted, not weakened in the era of artificial intelligence, robotization and comprehensive automation of life.

She praised China for advocating a cooperation philosophy based on the principles of mutual respect, noninterference and solidarity-driven development assistance.

Lu Guangjin, vice-president of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, said in a video message that the seminar is an important event in the exchange and communication on human rights between China and Europe.

It has been 10 years since the seminar was first launched in 2015 and has been held in various European and Chinese cities. The seminar on Wednesday was jointly sponsored by the China Society for Human Rights Studies and the Catedra China Foundation, which promotes exchanges and understanding between China, Spain and Europe.

Gerardo Pisarello, first secretary of the Congress of Deputies of Spain and a professor of constitutional and political law at the University of Barcelona, said the key question is whether to avoid using AI or to try to develop or research a fairer and more transparent way to use AI so that the entire human society can move forward in a prosperous and fair way.

"China has already demonstrated its strong potential in AI. Throughout the AI development process, China has always adhered to the concept of environmental protection and green development," he said.

Challenge to monopoly

He expressed concern that China's AI development model has been resisted by US companies precisely because China's AI poses challenge to the business models and even military models of US companies, and a challenge to the monopoly it had previously formed.

The 2025 China-Europe Seminar on Human Rights is held in Madrid, Spain, on Wednesday. CHEN WEIHUA / CHINA DAILY

Lin Wei, president of Southwest University of Political Science and Law and dean of the school's Human Rights Institute, said while digital intelligence technologies inject new vitality into human rights protection, they pose unprecedented challenges to the subjectivity of human beings.

"How to safeguard human dignity and rights in the era of digital intelligence is a common issue faced by China and European countries and also a subject that we must jointly address," he said.

Giuseppina Merchionne, a Sinologist and president of the Italy-China Center for Collaboration and Cultural Exchanges of the Silk Road, said Confucius' concept of the brotherhood of man transcends any geographical and cultural distinctions and forms the basis of his revolutionary idea of universal love, which transcends any form of social and natural order.

"It is in this vision of universal love, first expressed by Confucius and Buddhist teachings, that the concept of human rights reaches the highest point of its universal significance in the Chinese cultural tradition," she said.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and president of the Germany-based Schiller Institute, said in the process of applying AI technology, a series of unregulated and unsupervised practices have brought danger to the world.

"At present, there is a trend that the development of intelligent technology conflicts with human development. That is, it is not based on human rights," she said, voicing her concern about the use and abuse of AI technology as a weapon of war in the latest conflict between Israel and Iran.

Chinese Ambassador to Spain Yao Jing said as the world's largest developing country, China pursues a people-centered philosophy, regards the right to survival and development as the primary basic human rights, and strives to promote the comprehensive and coordinated development of economic, social, cultural rights and civil and political rights.

"We have embarked on a human rights development path that suits China's national conditions. It is supported by the people, and conforms to the trend of the times," he said.

The 2025 China-Europe Seminar on Human Rights is held in Madrid, Spain, on Wednesday. CHEN WEIHUA / CHINA DAILY