HONG KONG -- The 2004 session of China's National People's Congress closed Sunday with the passage of several constitutional amendments. Attention focused on those relating to human rights and the protection of private property.
China is sensitive to foreign criticism of its human-rights record and has reacted defensively, first by setting up an institute to study human rights and, more recently, by counterattacking with the issuance of an annual human-rights report on the United States. The amendments will enable Beijing to say that human rights are given constitutional protection. Hopefully, however, there will be implementing legislation to provide for the protection of specific rights.
While the new clauses on human rights and private property may not translate immediately into improved behavior by government officials at all levels, they are of important symbolic importance. Certainly, it is better for Chinese citizens to have those provisions in the Constitution than not.