That 1.3 billion is greater than 13 is a matter of common sense for ordinary people, but not for some "human rights fighters". Since the beginning of 2012, some Western politicians, diplomats and "observers" have made an issue out of the suffering of individual Chinese and pointed figures at China's human rights situation. They have assumed that the majority of Chinese people are living a miserable life and public outcries can be heard everywhere. According to their theory, the stories of a few far outweigh the livelihoods of the 1.3 billion people.

But they forget that it is up to the Chinese people themselves, or rather the majority of the 1.3 billion Chinese, to decide whether they are happy or not. In a recent Pew Research Center poll, 87 percent of the Chinese respondents said they were satisfied with their country's direction, nearly two-thirds said their lives were better now than five years ago and 74 percent said they were optimistic about the future. Like many other polling results, the figures cannot represent the opinions of every Chinese, but at least the majority of Chinese seem more upbeat than their American and European counterparts in the same survey.

It is natural to find some among the 1.3 billion people who are not happy or who complain about their life. The Chinese government hopes every Chinese lives a happy life and is making efforts to make that a reality. But the government still has a long way to go before it attains that goal.

In fact, even developed countries with smaller populations but enormous wealth have a lot more work to do. The social unfairness that exists in Western societies was exposed when French workers went on a strike, when London was terrified by street riots and when protesters held banners that shouted "99 percent versus 1 percent" in the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US.

In China, one most widely accepted belief and also the overarching principle for Chinese is that when there is a conflict of interests, 13 people should be subordinate to 1.3 billion, 0.1 percent to the 99.9 percent and the minority to the majority, because a country as big and populated as China has never before adopted a project to promote modernization and lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. Owing to the complexity of the project, it is impossible to accommodate the interests of every individual.

Making its 1.3 billion people lead a happy life is China's ultimate goal, which will make a huge contribution to world peace and development. Over the past three decades, China has made remarkable achievements, but it has also paid a heavy price in terms of environmental pollution, waste of resources and the negative impact on the interests of a few people. These are all problems that appear in the process of development.

But China's history of self-development has a clean record. China didn't loot treasures from other countries or colonize others' land. It didn't trade in African slaves or slaughter Indians. Once it reaches the same development level as the Western countries, China would do better and show more respect for human rights than the West.

In the past when the whole of China was battling poverty, most of its people had no place to live or no clothes to wear and some even died of hunger or illness. Their basic rights to survive were not protected. But the West didn't show any sympathy or care for them. Now that Chinese are becoming rich and their lives are getting better, some Westerners have suddenly become concerned about the "human rights" of a few. Such "compassion" is hard to understand.

If the West really cares about human rights, it should first handle its own affairs properly, show more concern over the rights and interests of the strikers in France and the aggrieved in London, and talk to the big powers that use their might to cause heavy civilian casualties in other countries. If it cares about the human rights situation in China, it should observe more carefully the real life of the 1.3 billion Chinese and adopt a more constructive and cooperative attitude when talking about human rights with China. Only in this way can the West win true respect and friendship of the majority of Chinese.

China is not afraid of talking about human rights. But dialogues can continue only when they are held on the basis of mutual respect.

The author is a Beijing-based scholar of international relations.

(China Daily 02/13/2012 page8)