Human Rights Thoughts In Modern Age Of China

The focus of this paper is on the rise and down of the human rights thoughts in modern age of China.The principles of liberty, democracy and human rights in the west, which have streamed into China since modern age, produced profound influence on China. However, because of the differences in political and cultural background between China and the west, Chinese intellectuals of the modern age comprehended these principles differently from the west.In the view of human rights theory in modern China, at least three major topics should be discussed:Firstly, the discovery of the idea of modern human being, secondly, the introduction of the concepts about rights into China, and thirdly, the focus on constitutionalism---the reconstruction of the power of government.In this way, the main body of this essay is divided into three parts. The attention of the first chapter is paid to the idea of the"modern human being", which is the first step to the rise of human rights theory in modern China. In the second chapter, we discuss how the concept of rights was introduced into china, which lack the tradition of rights theory. And then, in the third chapter, we argue that the reconstruction of the new power of government is also very important to the human rights theory in modern China because without the correct understanding of the constitutionalism, the respect to human rights would put to no use.Until the appearance of the works of Shi Hu and Longji Luo, there was no systematic human rights theory introduced into the modern age of China. Although the debates of the main elements of human rights theory can be seen in the papers, diaries and other works of the groups of the enlightening intellectuals, there are difficulties in grasping the keynotes comprehensively by others. The main ideas of the human rights theory rests on the balance between individuals and government. The relationship among individuals, rights and governments is very complex; individuals are the final owner of rights, which is also the shield from the unlimited power of governments. So the arguments about these three parts compose of the main structure of the human rights theory in the modern age of China.