Social Sciences in China, 2023

Vol. 44 , No. 4, 2023

A Systemic Interpretation of Social Rights in the Chinese Constitution

(Abstract)

Liu Han

Prescribed by the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, social rights provisions cannot be comprehended in isolation, nor can they be interpreted simply by referring to the concepts of positive rights or socio-economic rights in traditional constitutional theory. On the basis of the Constitution, social rights exhibit three interrelated dimensions from the perspective of systemic interpretation: promoting people’s wellbeing, promoting democratic politics, and promoting citizens’ participation in state-building. In the overall structure and normative intention of the Constitution of China, social rights are not only a kind of socio- economic right, but also a fundamental right with a socialist nature. Specifically, social rights are individuals’ right to claim their economic welfare from the state, as well as the basic civil right of realizing a comprehensive social identity. They have a social and economic nature, and to a certain degree a political nature. Correspondingly, the normative structure of social rights, and in particular their functions and orientation toward obligation, are constructed on the basis of this kind of nature. The functions of social rights are most frequently manifested as objective value order, and its specific duty to protect not only points to specific state institutions such as the constitutional review organs and judicial organs, but to the whole national governance system, thus forming a Chinese-style institutional guarantee model of social rights.

Keywords: social rights, common prosperity, socialist constitution, labor rights, systematic interpretation