A national action plan on human rights protection released Thursday charts how China intends to improve human rights during the next five years.
The third national human rights action plan was designed to synchronize with the country's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020). Two previous action plans brought substantial progress in human rights development.
From 2012 to 2015, 66.6 million people in rural areas were lifted out of poverty. In December 2013, China abolished reeducation through labor. The latest revision to the Criminal Law has removed the death penalty for nine crimes.
China is not consumed by complacency, but sober-minded that human rights problems remain, including those closely related to the people's central interests.
The new action plan puts protection of the people's rights to subsistence and development at the top of the list. Everything will be done to reduce poverty, and ensure basic housing, clean water, food security, and adequate transportation.
By 2020, 50 million people shall have bade farewell to poverty by developing new industries, by finding new jobs and by relocation to other areas. Another 20 million, principally those who have partially or completely lost their ability to work, shall be covered by welfare programs. No county will be called a "poverty county" by then.
By prioritizing people's basic rights, China has combined the universality of human rights with the actual situation in the country, and is committed to human rights with Chinese characteristics.
Apart from poverty alleviation, the plan covers everything from legal and political rights to environmental rights, devising specific and feasible targets, including numerical goals such as a one year increase in average life expectancy by 2020, and an extension of the average years of schooling for the working-age population to 10.8 years.
Such a national initiative with detailed and feasible plans demonstrates the Communist Party's and government's commitment to, and confidence in, the human rights cause.
The period covered by the new plan is crucial to China's building of a moderately prosperous nation in an all-round way by 2020.
Fulfilling the action plan is vital to realizing that goal, and ultimately, the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation.
