Setting the Stage: Universal Values With National and Ideological Characteristics

For a long time some in the international human rights community appeared to share two core assumptions about the human rights project generally, and more specifically to its application in the context of human rights abuses in economic activity. The first was that human rights were capable of being understood  in a single correct and true way, from the most general expression of its principles to its application in the most granular setting. As the Australian Human Rights Commission explained: “They are based on principles of dignity, equality and mutual respect, which are shared across cultures, religions and philosophies.”  The second was  that the trajectories of global development would inevitably converge, or must be made to do so, under the leadership of a guiding elite situated (physically and certainly by training and cultural-ideological affiliation) to OECD states, the liberal democratic imaginaries from which their project was given form and legitimacy. Leading human rights organs, including the UN Human Rights Council, could be viewed as operationalizing that principle. The European Union’s “Brussels Effect” might be understood as striving toward roughy similar objectives. 

Those two assumptions might be said to continue to describe the dominant path for the business and human rights project as well: and it remains a powerful and valuable one.  While it may still be argued that human rights remains an apex set of organizing and operational premises  around which social relations may be structured, the notion of convergence appears to have frayed. Nonetheless the orthodoxy of a converging singular interpretive universality is now more forcefully challenged; with China a critical challenger. This short contribution offers a glimpse at China’s quite distinctive Marxist-Leninist  “Socialist Path” towards an ultimately Communist goal.  The realization of  human rights in business functions along the Socialist Path is sensitive to context (historical, stage of social and economic development, and stage of political development) to be developed and applied under the leadership of the Communist Party at the center of a Socialist whole process people’s democracy. It is a path that is distinct from either that emerging within the U.S. or the much more energetic European regulatory compliance-frameworks, and from other Marxist-Leninist approaches (on the old Soviet European verson here). It bears recalling that while one speaks here of diverging paths, they all tend to be pointed in the same destination—the realization and fulfillment of human rights in economic activity as part of a larger human rights framework that is contextually meaningful. The diverging pathways, however, have produced a sometimes sharp response from traditional actors, Human Rights Watch, for example. 

From Socialist Internationalism to Socialist Human Rights

The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee bimonthly Journal Quishi nicely essentialized the Chinese approach to human rights in 2022: “China’s people-centered human rights philosophy adheres to the central tenets of Marxist historical materialism and builds on Marxist theories on human rights.” This approach has three princal elements:

 “First, we ensure that the people run the country and promote the development of whole-process people’s democracy. . . Second, we put the people and human life above all else, ensure the fundamental interests of the broadest majority of people are safeguarded. . . Third, we regard the right to lead a happy life as the ultimate human right. With the people’s aspirations for a better life as our goal, we view the rights to subsistence and development as the primary basic human rights.” 

The principals that make up this socialist path for business and human rights were comprehensively usefully identified in the 2019 South-South Human Rights Forum, organized by the Chinese State Council Information Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The principles are both well-known and clearly identified (here, and here). They include the following concept principles: (1) “Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind and Global Human Rights Governance,” (2) “The Right to Development: The Belt and Road Initiative Promotes the Realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” and (3) Development. These principles interlink three fundamental concepts—globalism, sustainable development, and human rights. 

China takes the welfare of the social collective as their starting point, organized  as a pyramidal system of mass organs all connected by: individuals have expectations; collective authority has rights, duties,  and responsibilities. The betterment of the welfare of the individual collectively is the primary duty of the state.  And thus the core human rights framework as elaborated are through the principle that the state’s primary duty is to ensure the prosperity and stability of the collective. Civil and political rights are understood as necessarily constrained by and proceeding from the overall imperative to ensure prosperity and stability.  This has produced some dissonance with current international expectations, which China has contested. 

This new language of human rights requires, in turn, a new vocabulary that shifts the emphasis of discourse (and thus the way that terms are understood and applied as policy and rules and norms) from the language and vocabularies of human rights (of the individual) to that of  development (of social institutions serving humans). Development is then subsumed within principles of Socialist sustainability, which is understood as a function of Socialist Values, the principles of ecological civilization, and the leadership of the Communist Party.  Nonetheless it is undertaken in an environment in which the national interest, codified in China’s anti-espionage, state secrets, and data domestication laws, for example, produce a regulatory firewall meant to avoid foreign penetration without consent. 

From Socialist Human Rights Theory to Practice

The similarities and differences among the US, Europe, and China, then, can be understood as a function of focus, and an implementation structure better aligned to the Chinese Marxist-Leninist political model.  For example, the  Chinese Companies Law Art.5 provides that companies bear social responsibilities.  Much of the differences in approach lie at the margins. This has been especially apparent in the way in which Chinese State Owned Enterprises operate outside of China. They align their operations to the guidance and policy priorities of the State, but at the same time  adhere to a principle of strict compliance with local law, and risk avoidance, including human rights risk. Yet to that end, Chinese SOEs will prioritize development and majority interests, and in balancing human rights interests will tend to adjust that balancing between prevention, mitigation, and remedy in context. (Discussion and examples in my essay “Chinese State-Owned Companies and Investment in Latin America and Europe” (2024 forthcoming)  Draft verson here).

More recently Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and ESG reporting standards have provided a vehicle for operationalization of those responsibilities. Much of this has been undertaken through China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and the stock exchanges. In 2018 CSRC added ESG to its Corporate Governance Guideline (encouraging listed entities to comply with ESG requirements; ¶ 86 “While maintaining the listed company’s development and maximizing the benefits of shareholders, the company shall be concerned with the welfare, environmental protection and public interests of the community in which it resides, and shall pay attention to the company’s social responsibilities.”). In 2021 CSRC adopted rules on ESG reporting in the annual report of listed companies, and reformed the  scope of disclosure to include environmental emissions, administrative penalties for breach of environmental regulations, measures for reducing carbon emissions, and donations or other actions that reduce poverty, and so on. In February 2024, the Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Beijing Stock Exchanges announced  mandatory sustainability reporting requirements. As reported in ESG Today, “reporting requirements for companies will encompass four “core content” topics, including governance, strategy, impact, risk and opportunity management, and indicators and goals. . . adopting a “double materiality” approach to sustainability reporting, . . the risks and impact of sustainability issues on an enterprise, as well as on the enterprises’ impacts on environment and society.”

 Informal standards with substantial influence are also being developed along the same lines. For example, CERDS (China Enterprise Reform and Development Society) developed ESG disclosure standards: the “Guidance for Enterprise ESG Disclosure” (“企业 ESG 披露指南”, the “ESG Disclosure Standards (compare EU standards here). What remains central to the practice of human rights is the hierarchical nature of rights and the importance of the local context in which it is to be applied. Development stands at the core of Socialist Path human Rights. Collective benefit follows. Compliance with local law is essential, but often read as far as possible to advance the core  driving elements of rights. In many respects Socialist and liberal democratic solutions will be similar.  But the pathways to a convergence of result belie the sometimes quite different routes taken to that point.

Parting Thoughts

Though one might be tepted to argue that it was never never entirely eradicated, human rights with ideological characteristics and national effects have returned as a more formal propsition. This return reflects three emerging and quite distinct approaches to human rights governance between the US, China, and Europe. The divergences will affect everything from the use and forms of human rights due diligence, to the balancing of human rights and sustainability values, to the risk assessment around principles of preventing, mitigating, and remedying adverse human rights impacts. China provides a quite useful and important example of these developments.