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backed by the people, corrected these mistakes and set the nation's socialist democracy and legal system back to the course of steady development. Upholding the general policy of reform and opening to the outside world and giving great attention to building socialist democratic politics, China is striving to improve and strictly enforce the socialist legal system and continuing the work to reform and improve the political system all for the purpose of ensuring that the people can fully enjoy their civic rights and better exercise their political right of running the country.
III. CITIZENS ENJOY ECONOMIC, CULTURAL AND
SOCIAL RIGHTS
The human rights advocated by China encompass not only the right to subsistence and the civic and political rights, but also economic, cultural and social rights. The Chinese government pays due attention to the protection and realization of the rights of the country, the various nationalities and private citizens to economic, cultural, social and political development.
Socialist China eliminated the system of exploitation of man by man, thus making it possible for the first time in history for all working people to secure the right to equal economic development. China upholds the socialist system of public-ownership of the means of production as the mainstay while at the same time permitting and encouraging the appropriate development of other economic sectors as supplements to the socialist economy. It will neither adopt a unitary public ownership system, which is divorced from the nation's current level of development of productive forces, nor practise privatization, which tends to shake the dominant position of public ownership in the national economy.
Public ownership of the means of production constitutes the basis of China's socialist economic system. It guarantees that the major means of production in society are possessed by all the working people through the ownership by the whole people and the collective ownership by the labouring masses. The working people enjoy the right to manage, control and use the means of production. According to statistics, the total social investment in fixed assets in China came to 444.9bn yuan in 1990, of which 291.9bn yuan, or 65.6%, was invested in units owned by the whole people, and 52.9bn, or 11.9%, in collectively-owned units. That is to say, the bigger share (77.5%) of the social investment in fixed assets is owned by the state and the collectives of the labouring masses.
The distribution system adopted in China is mainly based on the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his work". At the same time, the government allows and encourages some people to become rich first by the sweat of their brow and though legitimate business activities. Those who get rich first can then help others, so that common prosperity can be achieved. This brings into play the enthusiasm of the labouring masses and at the same time prevents po rustio.. China is one of the nations that register the lowest income gap in the world. According to 1990 statistics. the 20% of urban dwellers with the highest spendable incomes earn only 2.5 times as much as the 20% with the lowest incomes. This very tact has made it possible for China, an economically underdeveloped country, to guarantee the livelihood of its 1.1bn people and avoid social confrontation resulting from polarization.
8 Nov 91
Economic equality has motivated the labouring people to a great extent and brought about speedy growth of the Chinese economy. Over the past 40-odd post-liberation years and particularly in the past decade and more since the adoption of the policy of reform and opening to the outside world, China has all along [been] in the front rank of the world in terms of the rate of economic growth. The annual increase of GNP was 6.9% during the 1953-90 period and 8.8% during the 1979-90 period. China now leads the world in the output of many important products, including grain, cotton, pork, beef, mutton, cloth, coal, cement and television sets; and it has also emerged as one of the world's biggest producers of steel, crude oil, electricity and synthetic fibres.
With the growth of the national economy, the overall living standards of the Chinese people have greatly improved. Statistics show that in 1990 China's national income came to 1,442.9 billion yuan, or 11.9 times the 1952 figure of 58.9bn yuan calculated according to constant prices. A good part of the national income was spent on consumer goods. In 1990, consumer spending amounted to 944.4bn yuan, which was 8.4 times the 1952 figure of 47.7bn yuan according to constant prices. Of the total volume of consumption, 810bn yuan was spent by individual consumers, which was 7.3 times the 43.4bn yuan in 1952 according to constant prices. The per-capita volume of consumption for the Chinese residents averaged 714 yuan in 1990, 3.7 times more than in 1952 according to constant prices, despite a 98.9% population increase in the intervening years.
Now that the Chinese people have solved the basic problems of food and clothing, they are working their way towards a well-to-do life. According to statistics, in 1990 every hundred rural families owned 118.3 bicycles and 44.4 TV sets; and every hundred urban households owned 188.6 bicycles, 111.4 TV sets, 42.3 refrigerators and 78.4 washing machines. In addition, the housing conditions of Chinese residents have improved, with the 1990 average per-capita living space increased to 7.1 sq.m. from 3.6 sq.m.in 1978 for urban dwellers and to 17.8 sq.m. from 8.1 sq.m. in 1978 for rural inhabitants. The speeds at which the economy grows and the people's living standards improve in new China are not only something inconceivable in old China, but also among the highest in the world community.
The right to work is a basic right of the citizens. In old China, people were deprived of the right to work according to their own will. This right was controlled by the landlords and capitalists, the owners of the means of production. The working people were constantly threatened by the prospect of unemployment. When China was liberated in 1949, a total of 4,742,000 or 60% of the total labour force in the cities, were jobless.
It is stipulated in the Constitution that Chinese citizens have both the right and the duty to work. The government took all sorts of measures and solved th
provem unemployment, thereby enabling the masses of the working people to take part in socialist construction as masters of the society. In the 12 years between 1979 and 1990, a total of 94m new job, were created in urban arcas. With the expansion of the productive forces, the problem of rural surplus labour emerged as a major issue. The Chinese government has
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