Over the past more than four decades of reform and opening-up, China has eradicated extreme poverty, lifted over 800 million people out of poverty, and brought over 400 million people into the middle-income group. This is a miracle in the history of human civilization and has far-reaching and enlightening implications for global human rights governance.

The United States has never considered poverty eradication a human rights issue, while Europe considers it an obstacle to the realization of human rights at most. However, China has politically recognized poverty eradication as not only a human right, but also a core one, and has put it into firm, vigorous and extensive practice. Therefore, China is at the forefront of poverty eradication in the world. It is great inspiration and enlightenment to all developing countries, since almost all of the biggest challenges facing developing countries are related to poverty eradication. It can be expected that more and more developing countries will learn from China's poverty alleviation experience from the perspective of promoting human rights.

The achievements made possible by Chinese path to modernization pattern in eradicating poverty are much better than those achieved under the West-led development pattern. The main reason is the huge difference in human rights awareness between the two patterns. China is a civilization-oriented country. In its modernization drive, China continues to formulate policies based on its own people's feelings, national conditions, and cultural traditions. China has an ancient motto that has been popular for thousands of years that “the people are the foundation of a country and only when the people lead a good life can the country thrive.” In other words, the people are the cornerstone of a country, and only by consolidating the cornerstone of the country can the country be peaceful, and how well people's livelihood issues are resolved will determine the future and destiny of a country. Furthermore, as the Chinese saying goes, “issues related to people's livelihoods are paramount.” An important experience from China's reform and opening up in the past few decades is that people's livelihoods are paramount. A developing country shall spare no efforts to eradicate poverty and improve people's livelihood, which is the top priority of the government work.

Now, it seems that China's philosophy that “people's livelihoods are paramount” has corrected a deviation having been in existence for a long time in the Western philosophy of human rights governance, i.e., importance is only attached to the political rights of citizens, but the rights to people's livelihood and development are ignored. Looking back to the historical reasons, we can find that when European enlightenment thinkers in the 18th century proposed human rights such as freedom, equality and private property rights, they represented the emerging proprietary classes at that time. In those days, racism, colonialism and slave trade were all legal, and the most tragic poverty occurred in the colonies, not in Europe.

Today’s world has entered the 21st century, but half of the world's people are still living in extreme poverty, and suffering from wars, extreme poverty, hunger and lack of basic necessities. Most developing countries that follow Western political systems are unable to solve the basic issue of people's livelihood. In this context, we may better understand the global significance of Chinese path to modernization. We can even say that the Chinese people, through their great practice of poverty eradication, are in a sense redefining modernization and modernity.

Compare this with the 20-year war waged by the United States in Afghanistan, which cost nearly 2.3 trillion US dollars, and resulted in human rights violations, countless deaths, and innumerable displaced people. As clearly stated by United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) recently, nearly half of the children in Afghanistan were malnourished, including 3.2 million children under 5 years old who were at risk of death threats due to severe malnutrition. The United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Afghanistan also pointed out in a statement that 95% of the Afghans didn't have enough food.

In stark contrast, China has successfully lifted the last 100 million poor people out of poverty within ten years at about one-tenth of the cost of the Afghanistan War waged by the United States ($250 billion), and thus has achieved the goal of completely eliminating extreme poverty in the whole country. We can even make a theoretical hypothesis from this: If we followed the Chinese pattern, with 2.3 trillion US dollars, we could almost eliminate extreme poverty in the whole world including the United States. Similarly, this expenditure was also sufficient to exempt 45 million Americans from the heavy loan burden of university/college education. However, the US government is unwilling to do so since the US political system has long been kidnapped by U.S. military-industrial interest groups. They have made a lot of money through wars, including the Afghanistan War and the Russia Ukraine Conflict, but they have brought crises and even disasters to the people of the world, including the American people. How can such a country be qualified to talk about human rights in today's world?

The Global Development Initiative put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping calls for“giving continued priority to development” and “staying committed to the people-centered approach”, because only through development can poverty be eliminated, and can the root causes of many conflicts be removed. Seen from the perspective of human rights protection, the Global Development Initiative put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping and China's complete set of philosophy and practice for poverty eradication have greatly enriched the philosophy and practice of global human rights governance.

(Zhang Weiwei is Director of the China Institute of Fudan university)