"The Chinese government unswervingly pushes forward the cause of human rightsin China, and, in response to the United Nations’ call for establishing a national human rights action plan, has instituted the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009–2010) on the basis of painstakingly summing up past experience and objectively analyzing the current situation." (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, has made great efforts to promote human rights.
Qiu Jin, a pioneering feminist and revolutionary martyr, argued that women should have the same duties as men. She was married to the son of a wealthy family, but was dissatisfied with the marriage and fled her husband’s traditional-style household.
In 1904, she went to Japan, and there she began to promote equality between men and women. After she returned from Japan to China in 1907, she founded the Zhongguo n¨ubao (China Women’s Newspaper) which forcefully advocated women’s self-determination. As a
result of her involvement in a failed rebellion against the Manchus, she was executed that same year.
Qiu Jin called for women's self-determination. If women could earn money from their own work, they could escape situations in which they had to be subordinate to men and could gain men’s respect, and many problems could be discussed between friends, husbands and wives, and sisters. In this way, women’s aspirations and thinking would become more and more progressive.
In her essays, Qiu Jin never used the term ‘women’s rights’ (n¨uquan). In her ‘Mian n¨uquange’ and Jingwei shi, she makes many references to ‘equal rights of men and women’ and ‘natural rights’, yet these amount to no more than the assertion that ‘people possess rights from birth’, and are not related to ‘women’s rights’.
Sudo, M. (2006). Concepts of Women's Rights in Modern China. Gender & History, 18(3), 472-489. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0424.2006.00452.x
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