GAO Changjian*

 

Abstract: General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important discourses on respecting and protecting human rights constitute the theoretical core of contemporary Chinese perspective on human rights, being considered as the representative discourses and the fundamental guiding ideology of China’s human rights discourse system. The “substantive nature” theoretically signifies the “people-centeredness” of the Chinese path to human rights and contemporary Chinese perspective on human rights. It emphasizes the goal-oriented nature of human rights protection, with its essence lying in the balance of theory and the unity of subjectivity and objectivity of human rights. The “substantive nature” of contemporary Chinese perspective on human rights is primarily manifested in its theoretical opposition to “politicization of human rights”; its emphasis on the theoretical starting point of human rights protection and its focus on truly and effectively upholding human dignity; its proposal of more reasonable and feasible pathways for human rights protection; and its more scientific delineation of the goals and directions of human rights protection. “Living a happy life is the primary human right.” The representative assertion of the “substantive” contemporary Chinese perspective on human rights represents a theoretical transcendence of the “formalistic” Western human rights perspectives.