China Signs Human Rights Treaty

The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, meeting earlier this week in Beijing, has approved the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, known informally as the United Nations human rights treaty.

The Communist Chinese regime's official New China News Agency reported that:

Zhang Qiyue, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said the treaty "has a profound meaning" for China.

"We have found the right path suited to China's circumstances in promoting and developing human rights," she said.

In a news conference in Beijing on Tuesday, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, said the ratification would be "enormously important legally and psychologically for China, a real tool and a framework" for progress in human rights.

The New China News Agency stated that China's lawmaking body issued a statement announcing that the government "will assume the obligations" of the human rights treaty "in line with relevant provisions of China's Constitution, trade-union law and labor law."

According to a New York Times report on China's approval of the human rights treaty, the Chinese are hoping this ratification will influence delegates at a U.N. human rights meeting March 19 in Geneva not to censure China, once again, for its continuing and increased human rights violations this past year.

China is also hopeful the International Olympic Committee will decide in July to select Beijing as host of the 2008 Summer Games, which China believes would enhance its international prestige.