Education and Cultural Rights: Social Rights in the Context of Chinese Socialism’s Transformation-- Exploring Education and Cultural Rights

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to explore social rights under the context of China’s socialist transformation, relying on newspaper reports and opinion-editorials as data sources and using textual analysis as the analytical method. The chapter primarily focuses on the status of education and cultural rights, but will also include a discussion of women’s rights and interests in China which, together with the issue of gender equality, are among the most important aspects of social rights. In addition to compiling all relevant news and commentaries regarding China’s education and cultural rights and providing some observations about the protection and implementation of those rights, the chapter notes that China became a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council as far back as 1980. China has also signed several international human rights conventions in the intervening years, although its legislature reacted differently to the different conventions and adopted different measures—in other words, some human rights conventions received the approval of the National People’s Congress, while others did not. There are controversies over the assessment of the human rights situation in China because while political and civil rights of the Chinese people are not guaranteed and the situation may have gotten worse in the Xi Jinping era, China’s protection of social rights for its people— particularly in the areas of poverty reduction and improvements in people’s standard of living—has been hailed by international organizations such as the World Bank as well as by some democratic countries. The chapter concludes with a summary of China’s implementation of social rights and cultural rights in the context of the socialist transformation, and attempts to explain its possible future trends.