Scholars explored the human rights ideas from traditional Chinese culture and sought to provide Chinese wisdom and solutions for the human rights cause while attending a conference on human rights in central Chinese city of Changsha on Wednesday.
The International Academic Conference on the Ideas of Human Rights in Ancient Chinese Classics gathered over 200 Chinese and international scholars to share their interpretations and understanding of human rights and promote exchanges and mutual learning among civilizations.
The discussions centered on such topics as "human rights and traditional Chinese thoughts", "characteristics and developmental impetus of the Chinese human rights concept", making comparisons of human rights histories between Chinese and other civilizations, and exploring human rights ideas in classics and historical books.
"Chinese classics contain a wealth of human rights concepts and historical experiences. If we dig out some specific practices, we will find that they can enrich our understanding of human rights today and provide Chinese wisdom and solutions for the current human rights cause," said Chen Renren, vice president of the Yuelu Academy at Hunan University.
"Now when we talk about human rights, we should do so on a broader cultural basis. Only in this way can the concept of human rights be continuously enriched and developed in the collision and integration of cultures. It is also important and enlightening to explore the concepts related to human rights in traditional Chinese culture and to re-understand how our current human rights cause should develop," said Chang Jian, director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Nankai University.
Scholars explore culture-based human rights ideas
