Angle Stephen C. - The Chinese Human Rights Reader

THE

CHINESE

HUMAN

RIGHTS

READER

THE

CHINESE

HUMAN

RIGHTS

READER

DOCUMENTS
AND
COMMENTARY
19002000

Stephen C. Angle
and Marina Svensson
editors

AN EAST GATE BOOK

First published 2001 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge

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Copyright 2001, Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Chinese human rights reader: documents and commentary, 19002000 / edited by Stephen C. Angle and Marina Svensson.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7656-0692-5 (alk. paper) - ISBN 0-7656-0693-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Human rights - Chine - History -20th century. 2. Human rights - China - History - 20th century - Sources. 3. Civil rights - China - History - 20th century. 4. Civil rights - China - History - 20th century - Sources. I. Angle, Stephen C, 1964 - II. Svensson, Marina, 1961

ISBN 13: 9780765606938 (pbk)

ISBN 13: 9780765606921 (hbk)

Anonymous

Liang Qichao

Anonymous

Zhinazi (Pseudonym)

Zou Rong

Liu Shipei

Xu Yucheng

Ma Weilong

Zhang Shizhao

Chen Duxiu

Chen Duxiu

Li Dazhao

Gao Yihan

Hu Shi, Jiang Menglin, Tao Menghe, Wang Zheng, Zhang Weici, Li Dazhao, and Gao Yihan

Tan Mingqian

Gao Yihan

Liang Shunting

Sun Yatsen

Anonymous

Zhou Fohai

Hu Shi

Luo Longji

Peng Kang

Wu Jingxiong

Qiu Hanping

China League for the Protection of Civil Rights

Hu Shi

Provincial Council of Shandong Province

Mao Zedong

Zhou Jingwen

Zhang Junmai (Carsun Chang)

China Democratic League

P.C. Chang (Zhang Pengjun)

Pu Zhongwen, He Shifen, and Feng Guojiang

Zuo Ai

Yin Haiguang

Qian Si

Mab Huang

Wei Jingsheng

China Human Rights League

Yu Fan

Du Guo

Xiao Weiyun, Luo Haocai, and Wu Xieying

Lan Ying

Hang Liwu

Xu Bing

Fang Lizhi

Chinese Human Rights Movement Committee, Beijing

Shi Yun

Li Buyun

Wei Jingsheng

Information Office of the State Council

Liberal Democratic Party of China

Zhang Wenxian

Xia Yong

Liu Huaqiu

Liu Nanlai

Liu Junning

Ding Zilin, Lin Mu, Jiang Qisheng, Jiang Peikun, and Wei Xiaotao

Hu Ping

Liu Qing

League for the Promotion of a National Human Rights Commission

Chen Shuibian

Stephen C. Angle is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University. He is the author of Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Inquiry (2002) and of articles on early Chinese rights thinkers and on Confucianism. His work focuses on understanding cross-cultural ethical differences and the possibilities for dialog, and on the relations between Confucianism and twentieth-century Chinese ethical and political values.

Marina Svensson is Assistant Professor at the Department of East Asian Languages, Lund University. She is the author of Debating Human Rights in China, 18991999: A Conceptual and Political History (2002), and of articles on human rights, democracy and Chinese politics. Her work focuses on the theory and practice of human rights in the PRC, legal reform, political and institutional changes, and social and political protests.

First and foremost we would like to thank those who have helped us with the translations in this volume. We are very grateful to Elizabeth A. Cole, Stephen S. Chou, and Zhou Yiyun, who produced excellent draft translations for a majority of the texts in the Reader, This project could not have been completed without their considerable efforts. Special thanks are also due Joan Judge, who suggested and translated the essay by Ma Weilong, and Timothy B. Weston, who suggested and translated the selection from Zhang Shizhao. Tim in turn would like to thank Shen Zhijia and Jia Jinhua for their help with his translation. The editors are responsible for the final state of all translations and for any mistakes that remain.

During this work we have also been helped and encouraged by many other people. Students in various incarnations of the class Human Rights and Chinese Philosophy at Wesleyan University were the initial impetus for a translation project, and we thank them for their comments on the drafts they used. For encouragement and comments on other aspects of the Reader, we would like to thank Chine Chan, Ron-guey Chu, Andrew Nathan, James Seymour, Sophia Woodman, and Peter Zarrow. We are also grateful to Mab Huang and Peter Huang for suggestions and help with texts from Taiwan, to James Whitman for helping us identify a number of German legal scholars, and to Keiko Kockum for help with transcribing the names of Japanese scholars. We would also like to thank Zhu Xiaomiao and Li Jian for assistance with obscure passages in some of the texts.

Some of the texts first appeared in a special issue of Contemporary Chinese Thought for which we acted as guest editors, and we are very grateful to Carine Defoort and Nicolas Standaert for giving us that opportunity, as well as for cheering on the book project. For useful ideas on how to pull off a work like this, we want to thank Michael Schoenhals.

Our thanks, finally, to Doug Merwin and the staff at M.E. Sharpe for working with us to bring this project to completion.

The past decade has seen a vigorous discussion of human rights both within China and between China and other nations. It is easy to think of China as a latecomer to human rights discourse, in part because during most of the post-1949 period, rights and human rights were taboo subjects in the Peoples Republic. In fact, however, over the last one hundred and more years China has had a rich and contested discourse about rights. By translating essays on rights and human rights from throughout the twentieth century, we aim to reintroduce themes from this forgotten discourse into contemporary debates. These essays show that the discussion of rights in China has long been motivated by indigenous concerns, rather than imposed from without, and it has been interpretive and critical, rather than passive and imitative. This introduction aims to situate the essays we have translated by discussing the terms of the discourse and then briefly sketching its history.