Word-wise, I first came to know the term "civil rights" much earlier than "human rights." "People" and "people" as the subject, respectively connected with "rights", in the Chinese context, the connotation and extension are different, but the relationship between the two is close. The development of my personal understanding of this issue should be that the former has laid the foundation for the latter to some extent. The first acquaintance with "civil rights" began with the study of the "Three People's Principles." When I started elementary school in 1941, every Saturday afternoon there was a regular "Zhou Ji" or "Weekly Meeting", in which the whole class gathered together to commemorate Dr. Sun Yat-sen. The agenda included singing the Kuomintang party anthem, collectively reciting the "Prime Minister's Testament", three bows to Mr. Sun's posthumous portrait, and finally a speech by the director of discipline or the principal. The first line of the party song is: "Three People's Principles, the sect of our party"; The "Prime Minister's Testament" instructed: "All my comrades must follow Yu's 'Founding Strategy', 'Outline for the Founding of the People's Republic', and 'Three People's Principles'... Continue to work hard to implement it. The "Three People's Principles," that is, the nation, people's rights, and people's livelihood, literally must be recalled. However, the meaning of "people's livelihood and civil rights" was not clear at that time, but it was only for the "nation" to begin to feel its importance. At that time, the iron hooves of the Japanese invading army had trampled into the remote villages of southwestern Yu, and my hometown was being ravaged. Japanese devils burned and looted, planes bombed and strafed, and many people died. During one of the bombings, I was almost taken away from my life. People live in fear all day long, and they really feel the atmosphere of "the Chinese nation has reached the most dangerous time" of the country and extinction. In the countryside, day and night, people often regard green yarn tents and ditches as the safest places. In August 1945, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was won, and the nightmare of humiliation of the Chinese nation ended, and I thought that peace had ushered in and the solution of civil rights and people's livelihood issues would be put on the agenda. However, with the support of American human and material resources, the Kuomintang government launched a civil war. The war in the country has not stopped, soldiers and bandits are rampant in the Kuomintang-ruled areas, prices are soaring, the economy is in ruins, and the people are living in poverty. It was not until the victory of the People's Revolutionary War in 1949, the liberation of the Chinese people, and the independence of the Chinese nation that this situation ended. Although I was still young, my experience of living under Japanese aggression and what I saw and heard in the Kuomintang-ruled areas also planted a strong feeling of love for the nation and the country in my heart, and also laid the ideological foundation for my early participation in revolutionary work and later legal and human rights research. The first acquaintance with "human rights" was in the university's world history class. In the late 50s, the "left" line began to pervade the academic community, "humanism" and "human nature" were criticized, and "human rights" were of course not a problem, and students could only respond to the claim that it was hypocritical and deceptive. After graduating from graduate school in 1964, his first task at the Law Institute was to collect and sort out legal materials in the revolutionary base areas. What is surprising is that in this batch of materials, I saw a batch of legal documents on the protection of human rights issued by the anti-Japanese base areas and liberated areas under the leadership of the Party. Because the spirit of the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth CPC Central Committee was being implemented at that time, the strings of class struggle were further tightened, and it was required to talk every year, month by month, and every day. After the end of the Cultural Revolution and the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, people began to reflect on the fact that previous political movements and human rights violations during the Cultural Revolution began. I wrote an article with Mr. Chang Zhaoru, who had compiled legal system materials in revolutionary base areas, based on data on the protection of human rights in base areas. However, because the domestic mainstream media still believed that "human rights are bourgeois slogans" at that time, when the first issue of "Legal Research" published in 1979, the article could only be titled "Protecting People's Rights is a Fine Tradition of the Revolutionary Legal System". Facts have shown that because some bourgeois scholars have made the issue of human rights confusing, because politicians have constantly used double standards to attack our country under the pretext of human rights, and because we ourselves have not studied Marxist theory on human rights in depth, even under the situation of emancipating the mind and reforming and opening up, there are not many people who dare to dabble in this field. It was not until the early 90s that Jiang Zemin pointed out that "the human rights issue cannot be avoided, and it is necessary to conduct research" that the silence began to break. After Jiang Zemin's instructions on human rights issues were transmitted, the Central Propaganda Department, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Central Party School, and other units quickly took action. As a task, the central government entrusted policy formulation to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, propaganda and education to the State Council Information Office, and theoretical research to the Academy of Social Sciences. Probably because many aspects of human rights protection involve law, President Hu Rope entrusted the specific research task to Wang Jiafu and me, then the director and deputy director of the Institute of Law. Soon, the Theory Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department decided to organize and edit a large-scale "human rights research data series", the State Council Information Office began to draft a white paper on "China's Human Rights Situation", and the Institute of Law held a nationwide seminar on human rights theory, forming a broader mobilization for human rights research. In order to fulfill the tasks assigned by the central authorities, I cannot but shift my main energy from the history of Chinese law to the study of human rights theory. Over the past 20 years, through studying Marxist expositions on human rights, reading relevant human rights literature, conducting investigations in China and in the United States, Europe and South Asia, repeatedly discussing with human rights theorists at home and abroad, and participating in dozens of human rights dialogues, human rights dialogues and seminars, and other forms of exchanges, I have deepened my understanding of human rights issues from various angles. Human rights were the slogans put forward in the early days of the bourgeois revolution against "theocracy" and "royal power", and they were established as important constitutional principles after the victory of the revolution. Marxism fully affirms the historical progressive role of bourgeois democracy, freedom, and human rights, but at the same time points out that it is incomplete. The fact is that after seizing power, the bourgeoisie not only treacherously abandoned its former allies, but even deprived women of its class of the right to vote and participate in political power. Nevertheless, Marxism still believes that the working class should expand its rights "within a democratic republic" and, through constant struggle, when conditions are ripe, "raise itself to the ruling class and win democracy", in order to finally build a "union" in which "the free development of everyone is the condition for the free development of all." The day such a "union" is established will be the time when mankind is completely liberated and human rights are fully enjoyed. The October Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the victory of the New Democratic Revolution in China in 1949 are examples of advancing along this road and toward this great goal. In 1949, the Chinese People's Revolution was victorious and New China was founded, overthrowing the exploitation and oppression of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism, and achieving liberation; The Chinese nation has washed away the great shame imposed on it by Western powers and Japanese militarism, and safeguarded national independence and dignity. People's liberation and national independence are the most important human rights. Subsequently, through land reform, socialist transformation and the initial construction of socialist industrialization, the country's strength was strengthened, people's living standards were raised, and human rights protection was improved. However, since the late 50s, due to the influence of "leftist" ideology, human rights research has become a forbidden area, and in practice the awareness of human rights protection has been weak, resulting in the economic, political, cultural and personal rights of a considerable number of people and cadres being violated in some political movements, especially the "Cultural Revolution". After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the situation began to reverse, and the people's awareness of protecting their rights increased. In 1991, the central authorities proposed to conduct research on human rights, which effectively promoted the cause of human rights protection in China. In 2002, the 16th Party Congress enshrined "the state respects and protects human rights" into the party constitution, and in 2004, the National People's Congress passed a constitutional amendment to enshrine it in the constitution, which has become an important principle for the party and government to govern the country. As a result, on the basis of the existing foundation, China's human rights system has been further improved, and the level of human rights protection has rapidly improved. Although there are still many problems to be solved due to the large population and weak foundation, after years of summing up under the leadership of the party, the direction has been pointed out and the foundation has been laid. It can be predicted with confidence that the prospects for the cause of protecting human rights in our country are bright. China is an ancient civilization with a population of 1.3 billion and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and its GDP has leapt to the second largest in the world in 2010. Due to its important international influence, it is inevitable that the state of social development and human rights construction will be concerned by many countries in the world. As an important initial initiator of the United Nations, my representative participated in the elaboration of the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. After the founding of New China and the restoration of its lawful seat in the United Nations, it has acceded to a series of international human rights conventions. We affirm the universality of human rights and advocate the strengthening of international human rights guarantees within the framework of the International Bill of Human Rights, while also recognizing the special nature of human rights. The human rights protection system established due to the different histories, cultures, social systems and levels of development of different countries should be respected. We oppose the use of certain values and institutional models to measure the protection of human rights in different countries, especially the use of double standards towards countries with different ideologies and provoke confrontation in the international community. It should be recognized that there are human rights problems that need to be addressed in all countries in the development process; In the context of the rapid development of high technology and economic globalization, mankind is also facing many human rights problems. Environmental protection, relief for serious natural disasters, prevention of the production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and countering international terrorism all need to be resolved through dialogue, exchange and cooperation on an equal footing. To this end, the dialogue on human rights equality advocated by my Government in the early nineties has been widely echoed by the international community. The practice of nearly 20 years has proved that through dialogue, mutual understanding has been deepened, misunderstandings have been eliminated, experiences have been exchanged and cooperation has been carried out, and the results have been good. We fully believe that continuing to adhere to the principle of equal dialogue will further promote the cause of international human rights protection and promote the building of a harmonious world. Perhaps because of his many years of practice and love for legal history, when answering a question from an American friend at Harvard in 1991, he said without much thought that I would study human rights from a historical and cultural perspective. Over the past 20 years, whether it is human rights theory, human rights practice, Chinese rights construction and exchanges with foreign human rights, it has been based on the reality of human rights in China, in connection with international human rights conventions and relevant rules of conduct, and explained the issue historically, and strived to put forward a more scientific view on the past, present and future of Chinese rights. Because this book talks about the development of China's human rights cause from many angles, although it is not a history book, it is still titled "Sixty Years of New Chinese Rights Protection and Development". The monographs, reports and speeches included in the book are divided into three parts: first, the comprehensive essay, which is a comprehensive exposition on human rights theory, history, especially the development of the protection of new Chinese rights, basically arranged in the order of internal logic; Second, the sub-discourse is a specific discussion of various rights in the field of human rights, which are arranged according to economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights in the 1966 Covenants on Human Rights; Third, the foreign exchange chapter is the report, speech and important speech that I still have in my hand to participate in foreign exchange, and this part is arranged in chronological order. In addition, a declassified internal report written by me is included as an appendix. Although the whole book has become generally systematic, because it is published separately in different years and has its own chapters, it is combined together, and it is inevitable that the discourse part and related quotations will be repeated; Moreover, due to the rapid development of human rights construction in our country, the relevant materials cited are all the situation at the time of the publication of the article, and it is neither appropriate nor necessary to revise it now. Without amendment, it can reflect the development course of China's human rights cause. The content of human rights is broad and complex, and the concept of human rights is even more diverse. A well-known professor at the University of Berkeley in the United States once told me that there are as many human rights scholars as there are human rights concepts in the United States. This statement is obviously exaggerated, but to a certain extent, it also reflects the characteristics of American scholars in understanding human rights issues based on the capitalist free economy. China's history, culture and social system are different from those of the United States. However, under the situation of social transformation, rapid development of market economy, and decentralized interests, the benevolent and wise people also have different views on human rights. Although the articles included in this book have a certain span of age, the basic views are the same. Please do not hesitate to criticize any inadequacies in the views and contents. The title of this book was inscribed by Comrade Zhu Muzhi, who is over 90 years old. Comrade Mu Zhi is a well-known Marxist theorist and journalist in China, as well as an excellent calligrapher. He inscribed "China's destiny is determined in this village" for the Xibaipo Revolutionary Memorial Hall in Pingshan County, which is a precious revolutionary cultural relic in itself. I knew Comrade Mu Zhi in the late stages of preparations for the trial of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing Group in 1980. At that time, he was the president of the Xinhua News Agency, and I was in the drafting group for legal documents in the two cases, and at a news report meeting on research, I accompanied the leaders concerned to brief him on the situation. In 1991, he became Director of the Information Office of the State Council and presided over the drafting of the White Paper on the Human Rights Situation in China. The Law Institute provided information on the legal framework for this purpose, and Wang Jiafu and I participated in part of the drafting work, and we have had more contact since then. Comrade Mu Zhi's overall conception of the white paper and the preface he personally wrote, as well as his many subsequent speeches on human rights issues, explained and developed Marxist human rights theory in light of the domestic and international situation, which deeply enlightened me. His inscription and message for the book is a spur and encouragement to me. In many years of research and practice, I have deeply realized that it is not easy for people's minds to be imprisoned, and it is even more difficult to emancipate their minds in certain fields, as is the case with human rights theory. Comrade Zhu Muzhi has set an example for us in emancipating his mind, especially in developing Marxist theory of human rights. The development of my understanding of human rights has benefited from the teachings of my revolutionary predecessors such as Mu Zhi, and from the enlightenment of the views of the academic circles, especially colleagues in the Institute of Law. At present, the understanding of many issues still needs to be deepened, and I will continue to work hard. Author: May 5, 2011（AI翻译）