Coordinating human rights development

China Forum | Cai Mingzhao

Editor's Note: Cai Mingzhao, director of the State Council Information Office of China, addressed the opening ceremony of the 7th Beijing Forum on Human Rights on Wednesday. The following are excerpts of his speech.

President Xi Jinping proposed to "realize the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation" in November 2012. He emphasized that the fulfillment of the Chinese Dream about the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is just the realization of the country's prosperity, the nation's rejuvenation and the people's happiness. The Chinese Dream is the people's dream after all. President Xi has specially pointed out the Chinese Dream that we want to achieve is just to offer to the people better education, steadier employment, more satisfactory incomes, more reliable social security, better medical services, more comfortable dwelling conditions, and more beautiful environment, make children grow better, work better and live better, and enable everyone to develop himself and make contributions to the society, share the opportunity for a shining life, share the opportunity to achieve the dream, and share the opportunity of equal participation and equal development.

In order to fulfill the Chinese Dream, we established our two "centuries" goals. To be detailed, we are going to completely build up a well-off society by 2020, with both the GDP and the per capita incomes of urban and rural residents doubled in comparison with in 2010; and a modernized socialist country with prosperity, democracy, advanced civilization and harmony, realizing the great revival of the Chinese nation. Around this goal, many new measures involving human rights protection have been proclaimed in succession since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and the cause of human rights in China has experienced its new development.

Economic, social and cultural rights have been further guaranteed.

In recent years, people's living standards have been steadily improved, the cause of social security has rapidly developed, and the equalization of basic public services has taken a new step. Accordingly, the people's rights to existence and development have been better guaranteed. In 2013, the deprived population in the rural areas of China reduced by 16.50 million, and the registered unemployment in cities and towns remained at 4.1 percent, a relatively lower level than the 6 percent average global unemployment rate proclaimed by the International Labour Organization. The national new social old-age insurance in rural areas and the old-age insurance for urban residents have covered all the population, preliminarily forming the largest social security system in the world. By June 2014, more than 1.32 billion of the population has taken part in the medical insurance system for urban employees, medical insurance system for urban residents and new rural cooperative medical care system. Educational resources and public cultural services have been further equalized and extended to more people, the State has emphatically supported the rural areas in middle and west China, the regions occupied by ethnical minorities and the areas in poverty to improve their poor schooling conditions, and also, much more attention has been paid to the transference of public cultural resources to the substratum society.