P. C. Chang’s Main Ideas in Drafting the UDHR

Abstract

This chapter conducts an in-depth investigation into the whole drafting process, including P. C. Chang’s main ideas at the first session of the Commission on Human Rights, at the first session of the Drafting Committee, at the third session of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), at the Third Committee of the General Assembly, and at the 182nd meeting of the General Assembly (GA) by checking all the relevant meeting records of the United Nations (UN). This chapter presents a vivid picture of how Chinese wisdom was integrated by P. C. Chang’s efforts into the international instrument: the UDHR. Particularly in the drafting process, P. C. Chang successfully incorporated Confucian philosophy into the first article of this instrument as its philosophical foundation of the whole declaration. Through detailed analysis of the speeches that P. C. Chang made at 110 meetings relevant to the drafting of the Declaration, this chapter persuasively shows us that Pengchun Chang, the Chinese representative, was a principal architect of the UDHR and it was impossible for the UN to adopt the Declaration without P. C. Chang’s interventions.