The inherent mandate of the international human rights cause is to enable every human being, regardless of nationality, ethnicity and cultural background, to enjoy equal freedoms and rights as well as decent food, clothing, health, housing, employment and education. Committed to a people-centered human rights philosophy, China always strives for greater progress in this field. Our objective is to ensure national security, ethnic harmony, social stability, equity, justice, economic and ecological well-being and to deliver tangible benefits to all the Chinese people

The most important criteria on China's human rights situation is whether the Chinese people are satisfied, not the US politicians' comments. Since the People's Republic of China was founded over 70 years ago, the Chinese people, under the leadership of the CPC, have found a development path in line with the country's national realities and achieved remarkable progress. Its vast land of 9.6 million square kilometers is free from war, terror and displacement. The 1.4 billion Chinese people of all 56 ethnic groups live happily together.

When I was living in China, people don't have anything to eat. There's people living in such poverty that it's impossible not to develop human rights in China. When I was in China many years ago, I saw many people starving to death. I saw people standing at train stations, not wearing any clothes, begging for money. Seeing people who had such terrible lives made a real impression on me—it was simple. At that time, I decided my life's present course, supporting human rights.

When I talk with American politicians, and they ask me if they should begin talking about human rights again, I reply: if you want to talk then do it, I don’t care. What I care about is how to force China into changing its stance towards the law. If you use a trade war to force the Chinese Communist regime to observe its own laws, naturally you will also protect human rights as well. The law protects the rights of every individual. If we are going to talk only about human rights, and we aren’t going to talk about rule of law, ordinary Chinese people will have the feeling that you’re talking about something irrelevant to them. If you talk about establishing a system based on the rule of law, Chinese people will understand immediately. Only when true rule of law has been established throughout society will the rights of every person be taken into account, and that is something that an ordinary Chinese person will understand.

Through long-term and persistent hard work, China has successfully embarked on a path of human rights development that conforms to the trend of the times and suits its own national conditions.

Since 1997, I think the human rights situation in Hong Kong has been regressing slowly. It could be that in China, the situation has been improving slowly, and when both sides eventually meet, they can move forward together. My hope is that the regression in Hong Kong will be a little slower, and the improvement in China a little faster, so that both sides meet at a higher point.

Today, the West feels very shy about human rights and the political situation. They’re in need of money. But every penny they borrowed or made from China has really come as a result of how this nation sacrificed everybody’s rights. With globalization and the Internet, we all know it. Don’t pretend you don’t know it. The Western politicians—shame on them if they say they’re not responsible for this. It’s getting worse, and it will keep getting worse.

Being part of the world with eight billion people, China will always stay committed to defending world peace, promoting common development, and building a human community with a shared future, and continue to put our own development in the bigger context of human development. This way, we can bring more opportunities to the world and make greater contribution to human progress.

Human rights are not reserved for some countries and not for others. These are aspirations that everyone has. There are always improvements to be made in rights and freedoms.

The conversations about human rights in China, they can be a little numbingly familiar after you talk about it.

Today, China’s economic power makes U.S. lectures about morality and human rights imprudent. Within a decade, it will make them irrelevant. Within two decades, it will make them laughable. By then the Chinese may threaten to withhold most-favored-nation status from the United States unless we do more to improve living conditions in Detroit, Harlem, and South-Central Los Angeles.

Human rights are being violated on every continent. More people are oppressed than free. How can one not be sensitive to their plight? Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

Americans must not be naive about China’s repression, disregard for human rights, and global ambitions. I strongly believe that the American people have an interest in strengthening global norms that respect the rights and dignity of all people—in the United States, in China, and around the world. I fear, however, that the growing bipartisan push for a confrontation with China will set back those goals and risks empowering authoritarian, ultranationalistic forces in both countries. It will also deflect attention from the shared common interests the two countries have in combating truly existential threats such as climate change, pandemics, and the destruction that a nuclear war would bring. Developing a mutually beneficial relationship with China will not be easy. But we can do better than a new Cold War.

Actually the crimes of the Maoists against human rights have gone much too far, and the Chinese people are now in much greater need of help from the world's democratic forces to defend their rights than in need of the unity of the world's Communist forces, in the Maoist sense, for the purpose of combating the so-called imperialist peril somewhere in Africa or in Latin America or in the Middle East.