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| quote: | Originally posted by biznology
eh wish youd post the text so i dont have to register.
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laaaaazy!
All's ya need is your email and make up a password, bub!
Anyways, here ya go:
| quote: | washingtonpost.com
China Codifies Property and Human Rights
Historic Guarantees Underscore Leaders' Move Away From Doctrinaire Communism
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 15, 2004; Page A14
BEIJING, March 14 -- China amended its constitution Sunday to include formal guarantees of human rights and private property, laying down new markers in the nation's swift march away from the doctrinaire communism of its founders.
Although both steps were pushed by the ruling Communist Party, their effect on the lives of Chinese people still depends on how they are carried out by what remains an authoritarian, one-party government that allows no challenge to its rule. Nevertheless, Chinese specialists said, the guarantees signaled the direction China's leaders intend to steer the country in the years ahead and provided a legal framework for sweeping changes that have already taken place in the past two decades.
"These amendments of the Chinese constitution are of great importance to the development of China," Premier Wen Jiabao said at a news conference shortly after the two measures were passed in a nearly unanimous vote by the National People's Congress, China's 2,904-member legislative assembly, on the final day of its 10-day annual meeting. He added: "We will make serious efforts to carry them out in practice."
The guarantee for privately owned property stated, "Legally obtained private property of the citizens shall not be violated."
The amendment marked China's formal renunciation of Maoist doctrine that made owning property an evil. In effect, it put private property on an equal legal footing with state-owned property, a welcome change for foreign investors who have invested billions of dollars in China and for the millions of Chinese entrepreneurs who have founded businesses since economic reforms began in 1979.
"Even though you're rich, you can be afraid, afraid of losing your property if the policy changes," said Zong Qinghou, a National People's Congress deputy and chairman of the board of the Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co., Ltd., a mineral water and processed foods giant. "This will prompt people to make more fortunes in the future."
Zong, 59, who started as a factory worker, said the amendment reflects changed attitudes that have been a long time in building but that now dominate the top echelons of President Hu Jintao's government and run through Chinese society.
"People who can create fortunes now get respect," he said in an interview. "Also, local governments want more taxes, and rich people can pay more."
Zong said poor Chinese also benefit because, in making their fortunes, businessmen create jobs and churn more money through the economy. Even if the gap between successful entrepreneurs and workers remains large and likely will grow larger, he said, workers benefit as money trickles down through the system.
"That's where China is heading," Zong declared.
Ying Songnian, director of the law department at the National School of Administration, said the amendment could also offer increased protection to farmers and other small landowners whose property is confiscated by local governments eager to please big developers. Such confiscations, sometimes by corrupt officials, have produced a wave of complaints in recent months, prompting Wen to pledge that his government would seek to put a stop to them.
"The constitutional amendment brings it to a higher level," Ying said in an interview.
The human rights guarantee stated simply, "The state respects and protects human rights."
Human rights activists here and abroad have noted that China already has laws providing for freedom of speech and assembly, but that the press and television are routinely censored, dissidents are jailed and anti-government assemblies are broken up. In addition, they pointed out, the Chinese government long has adhered to the Marxist view that health care, schooling and food are just as important human rights as the ability to challenge authority with free speech or assembly.
Wen, in his news conference, signaled that his government planned no radical changes in this domain when a reporter asked about a recent open letter from Jiang Yanyong, a well-known surgeon who raised the alarm about SARS last year. In his letter, Jiang asked the government to declare its predecessors were wrong in the bloody suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests.
Wen replied that the government has its hands full trying to shepherd China through fast-paced economic and social development. Without saying anything about the killings at Tiananmen Square, he emphasized that "unity and stability are of overriding importance."
But Ying, who also is a deputy in the National People's Congress, said putting the human rights guarantee in the constitution nevertheless marked an important step forward. It constitutes a written obligation by the Chinese leadership, he said, and puts the government on record for officials up and down the hierarchy that, in principle at least, human rights must be respected.
"I think this is a great progress for Chinese society, to bring it out and put it into the constitution," he said. "If you have such an article in the constitution, everybody has to obey it. We write all these things into amendments so all Chinese officials realize they have to do it. When we write it into the constitution, we are changing an era."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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