dc.description.abstract | Cultural rights is mentioned as a legal concept in "International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights" approved by the UN General Assembly in December 1966. Although it is a part of human rights, it is the most immature in range, legal content and enforceability compared to other human rights such as Civil rights, political rights and economic rights. Thus cultural rights are often considered as the "underdeveloped sector" and become "neglected human rights." Since the 1990s, the Western nation-state has undergone a series of "rights revolution", on demand of the various rights, thinking the issues of belonging and exclusion. In these different rights, the cultural rights, which is not new but neglected has becoming more and more important with increasing situation of the transnational migration and culture across borders and the rise of multiculturalism. (Lijung Wang,2012: 40) In the Documents of human rights, cultural rights is in parallel with civil rights, political rights, economic rights and social rights and these rights are inseparate. Thus every States must take responsibility to protect the cultural rights. Meanwhile because cultural rights include individual cultural rughts and collective cultural rights, Therefore, cultural rights also became claims of ethnic minorities for their collective rights. Will Kymlicka (1995: 27-31) classified rights of ethnic rights into self-government rights, special representation rights, and polyethnic rights, the first two rights refer to regional self-governance and political participation, and the third refers to the cultural rights. (Cheng-Feng Shih, 2008: 6)
With cultural rights becoming a global consensus, China joining the United Nations in 1971 and actively involving global society after the reform in 1978 as well as China′s economic development, citizens ask more and more spiritual culture after living standards improving. So the official have recognized many international treaties in China and put emphasis on cultural rights of citizens. As a socialist country, China has some basics protection for individual cultural rights, but unlike democratic regime in Western countries, China’s authoritarian political system differs frome the democratic countries on the protection and implementation of cultural rights. China attaches great importance to the cultural consumption and cultural industries, emphasizes economic discourse dominating cultural policy, reflecting ideology, and ignores freedom of speech and other rights. Meanwhile, the protection of collective rights has limitations, many unrecognized minorities’collective rights have been ignored.
Chinese government claims that China is a multi-ethnic country, and it has legislative measures for the recognized national minorities. But government′s ethnic policy was only for recognized national minorities, for other minorities, the protection of their rights have not been officially recognized. For instance, Han ethnic is not a homogenous group.In Guangdong Province, there is Cantonese, Hakka and Chaozhou,three ethnics, and they differ frome each other in culture and language, but they are only the Han ethnic for government. Therefore, cultural rights of Hakka have not been concerned. In addition, with the deepening of globalization, more and more foreigners come to and become permanent residence. Since the 1980s, more and more Africans come to China, most of them live in the Guangdong province, and do business. Some people gradually can speak fluent Cantonese. At present, African residential districts have formed in Xiaobei Road, Ghuanghuasan Road and other places. (Liu Li Duo, 2007) Due to the Chinese deeply rooted racial ideology, they have been treated far less than the Europeans and Americans in China. Chinese government also think there is no need to consider their cultural rights.
The range of the protection of ethnic minoritiesin the United Nations Declaration has undergone the process from race to minority groups, such as ethnic, religious and language to non-citizen immigrants. According to the United Nations declaration, Hakka ethnic and African immigrants also belong to ethnic minorities, but at the current, government did not make any law or take any measures to protect the rights and resolve the problems that Hakka ethnic and African immigrants faces.
Because of characteristics of the Hakka ethnic and African immigrants and the special national conditions in China, the first two rights: self-government rights and special representation rights that Kymlicka proposed are difficult to achieve, so this parper mainly studies on the polyethnic rights. This paper takes Canton for research site, firstly, I review related theories and literature of western cultural rights and ethnic rights, then review the characteristics of Chinese cultural rights, and then take observation, interviews and questionnaires to investgate the actual situation of cultural rights of Hakka ethnic and African immigrants in Canton.
For the Hakka ethnic, the Government has some basic cultural activities to let them participate, so to a certain extent, the individual cultural rights has been protected, but the quality of these activities are poor, and there is no special attention that is paied on the implication of Hakka culture, thus Hakka collective cultural rights is not be considered, Hakka culture is in the double dilemma: Cantonese culture and northern centeral culture. For the African immigrants, the government allowe Muslim to worship at the mosque, and wear headscarves. Their culture rights are not blocked, but they are stigmatized by the whole society and the government also lets the media humiliate them.
Thus, we found from the study that the Chinese government has protected cultural rights in some extent, but what it has done is not enough. In collective cultural rights, China′s cultural policy protects the recognized national minorities, which the range of protected rights is too small. A lot of ethnisc minorities’rights are not protectrd at present, such as Hakka ethnic and African immigrants in canton. Meanwhile, on individual cultural rights, the content of protected rights is also insufficient, it only emphasizes the cultural consumption, and ignores other cultural rights such as freedom of speech. The issues on human rights in China has been criticized by Western countries all the time, so refer to theories of Western cultural rights, I hope the Chinese government can face up to the characteristics of the Hakka ethnicity, and take some measures to protecr the Hakka culture and language, while take tolerant attitude to accept the African culture and eliminate social stigma against them. By doing this, make the range of protected cultural rights wider and the content of it more complete.
Keywords: Hakka ethnicity African immigrants cultural riights China | en_US |