Monday, June 17, 2024

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 6: Larry Catá Backer--"The Chinese Path for Business and Human Rights"[白 轲 "工商企业与人权的中国道路"]

 

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I am posting and providing brief reflections on the essays that make up the excellent new online symposium organized by the marvelous Caroline Omari Lichuma and Lucas Roorda and appearing on the blog site of the Business and Human Rights Law Journal. Entitled Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe. The essays (and the symposium) means to expand the conversation about human rights from out of its hub in the UN apparatus in Geneva and begin exploring in more depth the sometimes extraordinary developments occurring outside the highest reaches of elite curation in the Global North.

The sixth of the essays is my own: Larry Catá Backer--"The Chinese Path for Business and Human Rights" [白 轲 "工商企业与人权的中国道路"]. For those who do not know me:

Larry Catá Backer (me) is the W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar; Professor of Law and International Affairs at Pennsylvania State University, and the University Faculty Ombuds, and a member of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics. I have taight and spoken in many paces in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa over the years, mostly on topics touching on business and human rights, constitutional law (especially Marxist Leninist systems), globalization, and semiotics. I have written many articles on topics in those fields. Some of my books that might be of interest: (1) The Current State and Future Trajectories of Human Rights Due Diligence Laws: New Legal Norms on Human Rights Due Diligence (Larry Catá Backer and Claire Methven O’Brien, eds.; Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group forthcoming 2024); (2) The Self-Reflexive Imaginaries of Law: Essays on Contemporary Legalization in an Age of Algorithmic Law and Platform Governance, Emancipating the Mind in the New Era: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics 16(1) (Summer 2021) (Larry Catá Backer and Matthew McQuilla (eds), 2022); (3) Essays on Contemporary China–Heartland, Periphery, and Silk Roads, Emancipating the Mind in the New Era: Bulletin of the Coalition for Peace & Ethics 16(1) (Summer 2021) (Larry Catá Backer and Matthew McQuilla (eds), 2022); (4) Hong Kong Between ‘One Country’ and ‘Two Systems’: Essays from the Year that Transformed the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (June 2019 – June 2020) (Little Sir Press, 2021); (5) Cuba’s Caribbean Marxism: Essays on Ideology, Government, Society, and Economy in the Post Fidel Castro Era (Little Sir Press, 2018).  I am currently on The UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Right: A Commentary (OUP, forthcoming 2025). More about me on my website Backerinlaw.

My contribution follows below in both the original English and in a Chinese translation. The essay may be accessed as originally posted here. Self-analysis is always hard; maybe too hard.  What I offer here are some reflections on the reflections in the essay:

1. One of the more interesting aspects of the consideration of Chinese approaches to human rights touches on the concept of periphery itself. The assumption generally is that one tends to view periphery from the centrality of one's own position. For liberal democratic systems, Marxist-Leninism, like theocratic regimes, by definition fall to a greater or lesser degree on the peripheries of  liberal democracy as the core and center of "correct" approaches. The same applies for systems of business and human rights. Here the issue is one of finding the center around which it is possible to draw the "circumference, outer surface, line round a circular body." That core of leadership has tended to center on the apparatus of the UN in Geneva and New York with its inter linkages among elite academics, civil society and networked bureaucracies and the political leadership they guide and guardrail (the theories of which were solidified among knowledge producer collectives  around the end of the 20th century).  That leadership center is then  guided in turn by its own core--traditionally  in complex "dialogue" between European and North American variations on core concepts and objectives. Everyone and everything else is peripheral, though of intense interest tho those who do the guiding and assume the role of leadership.

2. China would invert these once stable orientations of center and periphery. That is essentially the point of the essay. In that reorientation, China occupies the center and its political-economic model the lodestar against which international or global standards must be developed and policed. To this way of looking at the world, the European-North American conversations around human rights represents a periphery. This peripheral construction of norms and application do not align either with the aspirations, context or historical conditions of the rest of the world. China would offer an alternative, one grounded on the imperatives of Marxist Leninist theory refined substantially from its crude Soviet forms and made more flexible so easier transposition to developing and post colonial states. That, anyway, is the theory; but in some respects it parallels that of liberal democratic leadership.  True as well that this proffer is strategically projected against the current core of global liberal democratic leadership--but it is offered as an alternative with aspirations of leadership in its own right.  If successful, the object is to flip the current assumptions about center and periphery in business and human rights (among other policy structures).  At the end of the process, however, the rest of the global community remains located along the rim of a system still connected by spokes to a central ordering hub.

 3. In this context, perhaps, it is more useful to think about a contest among three contenders for the role of supreme normative hub within global political collectives. Three quite distinctive regulatory systems are evolving in contemporary space. Most of the focus is on two of them: (1) the European system which is grounded in legalization and control through a regulatory apparatus based n compliance and accountability administered by closely aligned networks of public and private techno-bureaucracies, and (2) the U.S.  system which is grounded in public nudging of private markets driven behaviors and expectations, with a smaller scope of legal compliance and a reluctance to align pubic policy and economic activity as one of its principal rationales. Of the two--elites and civil society have tended to favor the European model. The tird tends to be ignored or marginalized--a Chinese Marxist Leninist regulatory system that has developed quite unique features since its liberation from Soviet Marxist Leninism after  the 1980s. That ideological foundation  has now been developing ist own structures and expectations for business and human rights. It is worth considering that system on its own terms.

4. Chinese human rights in the context of economic activities tends to privilege development, and collective welfare. It tends to balance the value of development to a community, ad the utility of a project as a function of public objectives against the harms that may impact individuals. I the context in which collective value is strong that balancing may tilt analysis toward compensatory remedies rater than prevention strategies.Nonetheless, in many cases the practices of Chinese and liberal democratic business and human rights tends toward the same range of results.  The current objectives of Chinese Marxist Leninist business and human rights principles tends to favor legal compliance (domestic and foreign investment); to minimize risk (including human rights risks abroad); and to emphasize development and environmental concerns. 

5. Assuming some merit to this structuring, the traditional peripheries outside of the guiding metropolitan centers may have a choice among leadership and guidance regimes. What is emerging from the essays, however, is that the periphery tends to seek to blend choice to suit their needs. That blending can occur at the central level (mandatory versus guidance measures) or it can be distributed along functionally differentiated economic sectors (eg, modern slavery). It can now occur at the conceptual level as awell (defining the meaning and application of global human rights guardrails). China offers that opportunity in unavoidable ways. The only real question is whether or to what it extent it may be successful in achieving its ambitions in the medium and long term.

 

我正在发表并简要回顾由出色的 Caroline Omari Lichuma Lucas Roorda 组织并发表在《商业与人权法杂志》博客网站上的精彩新在线研讨会的论文。该研讨会题为“欧洲以外的商业与人权 (BHR) 监管举措研讨会”。这些论文(和研讨会)旨在将人权对话从日内瓦联合国机构的中心扩展到更深层次,并开始更深入地探讨全球北方精英策展最高层之外有时发生的非凡发展。 * * *

 

我的贡献如下,包括英文原文和中文翻译版。本文可以在此处按原样访问。自我分析总是很难;也许太难了。我在这里提供一些关于本文反思的反思:

 

1. 考虑中国人权方法的一个更有趣的方面涉及边缘本身的概念。一般认为,人们倾向于从自己立场的中心性来看待边缘。对于自由民主制度,马克思列宁主义与神权政体一样,从定义上讲,或多或少地处于自由民主的边缘,而自由民主是“正确”方法的核心和中心。商业和人权制度也是如此。这里的问题在于找到一个中心,围绕这个中心可以画出“圆形物体的圆周、外表面、线”。领导核心往往集中在日内瓦和纽约的联合国机构上,该机构与精英学者、民间社会和网络官僚机构以及他们指导和保护的政治领导层之间有着相互联系(这些理论在 20 世纪末左右在知识生产集体中得到巩固)。然后,领导中心又由其自己的核心引导——传统上是欧洲和北美在核心概念和目标方面的变化之间的复杂“对话”。其他人和事都是边缘的,但​​那些指导和承担领导角色的人却对此非常感兴趣。

 

2. 中国将颠覆这些曾经稳定的中心和边缘取向。这本质上是本文的重点。在这种重新定位中,中国占据了中心,其政治经济模式是制定和监督国际或全球标准的指南针。对于这种看待世界的方式,欧洲和北美围绕人权的对话代表了一种边缘。这种边缘规范的构建和应用与世界其他国家的愿望、背景或历史条件都不一致。中国将提供一种替代方案,一种以马克思列宁主义理论的要求为基础的替代方案,这种理论从粗糙的苏联形式中得到了实质性的改进,变得更加灵活,因此更容易移植到发展中国家和后殖民国家。无论如何,这就是理论;但在某些方面,它与自由民主领导的理论相似。诚然,这一提议是针对当前全球自由民主领导核心的战略性投射——但它本身也是一种具有领导抱负的替代方案。如果成功,其目标是颠覆当前关于商业和人权(以及其他政策结构)的中心和边缘的假设。然而,在这个过程结束时,全球社会的其余部分仍然位于系统的边缘,仍然通过辐条与中央秩序中心相连。

 

3. 在这种背景下,也许更有用的是思考三个竞争者在全球政治集体中争夺最高规范中心角色的竞争。当代空间中正在发展三种截然不同的监管体系。大部分焦点集中在其中两个方面:(1)欧洲体系,其基础是合法化和控制,通过基于合规和问责的监管机构进行管理,由紧密结合的公共和私人技术官僚机构网络管理;(2)美国体系,其基础是公众推动私人市场驱动的行为和期望,其法律合规范围较小,不愿将公共政策和经济活动结合起来是其主要理由之一。在这两个体系中,精英和民间社会倾向于支持欧洲模式。第三个体系往往被忽视或边缘化——中国马克思列宁主义监管体系,自 1980 年代后从苏联马克思列宁主义中解放出来以来,已经形成了相当独特的特点。这一意识形态基础现在已经发展出自己的商业和人权结构和期望。值得从自身的角度来考虑这个体系。

 

4. 中国在经济活动背景下的人权倾向优先考虑集体利益的发展,从而为个人带来相应的利益。它倾向于平衡发展对社区的价值,以及项目作为公共目标的函数的效用,与可能影响个人的危害。在集体价值观强大的背景下,这种平衡可能会使分析倾向于补偿性补救措施而不是预防性战略。尽管如此,在许多情况下,中国和自由民主的商业和人权实践倾向于相同的结果。中国马克思列宁主义商业和人权原则的当前目标倾向于遵守法律(针对国内和外国投资);尽量减少风险(包括国外的人权风险);并强调发展和环境问题。

 

5. 假设这种结构有一定优点,指导性大都市中心以外的传统边缘地区可能会在领导和指导制度之间做出选择。然而,从这些文章中可以看出,边缘地区倾向于寻求混合选择以满足他们的需求。这种混合可以发生在中央层面(强制性措施与指导性措施),也可以分布在功能差异化的经济部门(例如现代奴隶制)。现在,这种现象也可以在概念层面上出现(定义全球人权护栏的含义和应用)。中国以不可避免的方式提供了这种机会。唯一真正的问题是,它能否或在多大程度上成功实现中长期的雄心壮志。

 

The essay and its crude Chinese translation follows.

 Links to all BHR Journal Symposium essay:s

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 1--"Setting the Stage"

 Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 2: Bonny Ling--"Taiwan: Business and Human Rights on the Margins of the UN System"

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 3: Keren Adams--"A Race to the Top? Progress and pitfalls of Australia’s Modern Slavery Act"

 Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 4: Jernej Letnar Černič--"Business and Human Rights in the Western Balkans"

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 5: Barnali Choudhury--"BHR Developments in Canada: Targeting Low Hanging Fruit"

 Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 6: Larry Catá Backer--"The Chinese Path for Business and Human Rights"[白 轲 "工商企业与人权的中国道路"]

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 7: Sang Soo Lee--"BHR Regulations in South Korea: Achievements and Limitations"

 Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 8: Rimdolmsom Jonathan Kabré--"Business And Human Rights In Africa in The Era of The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA)"

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 9: Cristiane Lucena Carneiro and Nathalie Albieri Laureano --"Regulatory Initiatives on Business and Human Rights in Brazil – From the Domestic to the International and Back? "

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 10: Lisa J, Laplante, "The United States 2024 National Action Plan on Responsible Business Conduct"
Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 11: Erika George and Enrique Samuel Martinez, "The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act: An Assessment Of Enforcement Efforts"

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 12: Pradeep Narayanan, Dheeraj, and Jhumki Dutta, "Business Responsibility Reporting in India – Can it go Beyond the Global North Gaze?"

Symposium on Business and Human Rights (BHR) Regulatory Initiatives Outside Europe: Part 13: Kazuko Ito,"Challenges for Japan’s Regulatory Approaches for Business and Human Right

 

The Chinese Path for Business and Human Rights

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-espionagestate 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 USChina, 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. 

Author

  • Larry Catá Backer

    Professor, School of International Affairs and Law at Penn State University

     

    工商企业与人权的中国道路

    奠定基础:具有民族和意识形态特征的普世价值

     

    长期以来,国际人权界的一些人似乎对人权项目总体上,尤其是其在经济活动中侵犯人权的背景下的应用,持有两个核心假设。第一,人权能够以一种正确而真实的方式来理解,从其原则的最普遍表达到其在最细微环境中的应用。正如澳大利亚人权委员会所解释的那样:“它们基于尊严、平等和相互尊重的原则,这些原则是跨文化、宗教和哲学共享的。”第二,全球发展的轨迹将不可避免地趋同,或必须在指导精英的领导下趋同,这些精英(在身体上,当然是通过培训和文化意识形态归属)位于经合组织国家,他们的项目就是从这些自由民主想象中形成的,并由此获得合法性。包括联合国人权理事会在内的主要人权机构可以被视为实施这一原则。欧盟的“布鲁塞尔效应”可能被理解为努力实现大致相似的目标。

     

    可以说,这两个假设继续描述了商业和人权项目的主导路径:它仍然是一条强大而有价值的路径。虽然人们仍然可以争辩说,人权仍然是社会关系可以围绕其构建的组织和运作前提的顶峰,但趋同的概念似乎已经减弱了。尽管如此,趋同的单一解释普遍性的正统观念现在受到了更强烈的挑战;中国是一个关键的挑战者。这篇短文让我们一窥中国非常独特的马克思列宁主义“社会主义道路”,最终走向共产主义目标。在社会主义道路上,商业职能中人权的实现对背景(历史、社会和经济发展阶段以及政治发展阶段)很敏感,这些背景将在共产党的领导下发展和应用,而共产党是社会主义整个进程人民民主的核心。这条道路不同于美国正在出现的道路或更有活力的欧洲监管合规框架,也不同于其他马克思列宁主义方法(这里指的是旧苏联欧洲版本)。值得回顾的是,虽然人们在这里谈论的是不同的道路,但它们都倾向于指向同一个目的地——在经济活动中实现和实现人权,这是具有语境意义的更大人权框架的一部分。然而,不同的道路有时会引起传统行为者的强烈反应,例如人权观察。

     

    从社会主义国际主义到社会主义人权

     

    中国共产党中央委员会双月刊《求是》在 2022 年很好地概括了中国的人权方法:“中国以人民为中心的人权理念坚持马克思主义历史唯物主义的核心原则,建立在马克思主义人权理论的基础上。”这种方法有三个主要要素:

     

    “第一,我们确保人民当家作主,推动全过程人民民主发展。...第二,我们把人民当做生命至上,确保最广大人民的根本利益得到维护……第三,我们把幸福生活的权利视为最高人权。我们以人民对美好生活的向往为目标,把生存权和发展权视为首要的基本人权。”

     

    中国国务院新闻办公室和外交部举办的2019年南南人权论坛全面、有效地阐述了这条社会主义商业和人权道路的原则。这些原则既众所周知,又被明确界定(这里和这里)。它们包括以下概念原则:(1)“构建人类命运共同体与全球人权治理”,(2)“发展权:‘一带一路’倡议推动实现2030年可持续发展议程”,以及(3)发展。这些原则将全球主义、可持续发展和人权三个基本概念联系在一起。

     

    中国以社会集体的福利为出发点,组织成金字塔式的群众机构,所有机构都通过以下方式联系在一起:个人有期望;集体权威有权利、义务和责任。改善个人的福利是国家的首要职责。因此,核心人权框架的阐述是通过个人确保集体的繁荣与稳定。公民权利和政治权利被认为必然受到确保繁荣与稳定的总体要求的制约和推动。这与当前的国际期望产生了一些不一致,而中国对此提出了异议。

     

    这种新的人权语言反过来又需要一种新的词汇,将话语的重点(以及术语被理解和应用为政策、规则和规范的方式)从人权(个人)的语言和词汇转移到发展(为人类服务的社会机构)。发展随后被纳入社会主义可持续性原则,这被理解为社会主义价值观、生态文明原则和共产党领导的函数。尽管如此,它是在这样的环境中进行的:国家利益(例如,在中国的反间谍、国家机密和数据本土化法律中编纂而成)产生了一个监管防火墙,旨在防止未经同意的外国渗透。

     

    从社会主义人权理论到实践

     

    因此,美国、欧洲和中国之间的相似之处和差异可以理解为一种关注点的功能,以及一种更符合中国马克思列宁主义政治模式的实施结构。例如,中国《公司法》第 5 条规定公司承担社会责任。方法上的差异大多存在于边缘。这在中国国有企业在中国境外的运营方式中尤为明显。它们将业务与国家的指导和政策重点保持一致,但同时坚持严格遵守当地法律和规避风险(包括人权风险)的原则。然而,为此,中国国有企业将优先考虑发展和多数利益,并在平衡人权利益时倾向于根据具体情况调整预防、缓解和补救之间的平衡。(讨论和例子见我的论文《中国国有企业和对拉丁美洲和欧洲的投资》(2024 年即将出版)草稿版)。

     

    最近,环境、社会和治理 (ESG) ESG 报告标准为这些责任的实施提供了载体。其中大部分工作是由中国证券监督管理委员会 (CSRC) 和证券交易所进行的。2018 年,中国证监会将 ESG 添加到其《公司治理准则》中(鼓励上市实体遵守 ESG 要求;¶ 86“上市公司在保持发展和实现股东利益最大化的同时,应当关注所在社区的福利、环境保护和公共利益,重视公司的社会责任。”)。2021 年,中国证监会通过了上市公司年度报告中 ESG 报告的规定,并改革了披露范围,包括环境排放、违反环境法规的行政处罚、减少碳排放的措施以及捐赠或其他减少贫困的行动等。2024 2 月,上海、深圳和北京证券交易所宣布了强制性可持续发展报告要求。据《ESG Today》报道,“对公司的报告要求将涵盖四个‘核心内容’主题,包括治理、战略、影响、风险和机遇管理以及指标和目标……采用‘双重重要性’方法进行可持续发展报告……可持续发展问题对企业的风险和影响,以及企业对环境和社会的影响。”

     

    具有重大影响的非正式标准也在沿着同样的思路制定中。例如,中国企业改革与发展研究会(CERDS)制定了 ESG 披露标准:《企业 ESG 披露指南》(“企业 ESG 披露指南”)、《ESG 披露标准》(此处比较欧盟标准)。人权实践的核心仍然是权利的层次性以及权利适用的当地背景的重要性。发展是社会主义道路人权的核心。其次是集体利益。遵守当地法律至关重要,但通常要尽可能多地解读,以推进权利的核心驱动要素。在许多方面,社会主义和自由民主的解决方案将是相似的。但通往结果融合的道路掩盖了有时完全不同的道路。

     

    临别感想

     

    尽管人们可能会认为人权从未被完全根除,但具有意识形态特征和国家影响的人权已经作为更正式的主张回归。这种回归反映了美国、中国和其他国家之间三种新兴的、截然不同的人权治理方法。


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