Wang Gonglong: A Deep Understanding of the Common Characteristics of the Common Values of All Mankind
At present, changes unseen in a century [1] are accelerating, the world has entered a new period of turbulence and transformation, and human society has once again arrived at a critical crossroads. Faced with the question of our times—"What is wrong with the world, and what should we do?"—General Secretary Xi Jinping has advocated for the common values of humanity, consisting of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom, which carries profound practical significance. The common values of humanity coalesce the value consensus of different civilizations, countries, and nations across the world. They constitute an original and hallmark concept of Xi Jinping Thought on Diplomacy and represent a crystallization and quintessential example of the "Two Combinations" [2]. They embody the global vision and mission-driven pursuit of the Chinese Communists, contributing Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions to the resolution of common problems facing humanity. We must accurately grasp and systematically interpret the shared characteristics of the common values of humanity by combining theory and practice. This will promote a broader, deeper, and more accurate understanding of these values within the international community, thereby better exerting their role as a normative guide for the development of human society and injecting spiritual momentum into the promotion of building a community with a shared future for humanity.
The commonality of the common values of humanity contains profound theoretical, historical, and practical logic
The common values of humanity represent the greatest common denominator of values for all mankind; they are commonly owned, shared, and pursued by all people. Commonality is their most prominent feature. The emergence of this value commonality rests upon solid theoretical, historical, and practical logic.
From the perspective of theoretical logic, although the history, culture, systems, and development levels of various countries differ, peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom reflect the common needs for survival and development of people across different regions, social systems, ideologies, and religious beliefs. They are an accurate expression of the universal pursuits of all humanity.
From the perspective of historical logic, the turn of history toward "world history" [3] serves as the historical basis and foundation for the generation of the common values of humanity. Marx and Engels pointed out: "The separate spheres of action, which influence one another, expand in the course of this development, the more the original isolation of the separate nationalities is destroyed by the developed mode of production and intercourse and the division of labor between various nations naturally brought forth by these, the more history becomes world history." As the process of world history develops in depth, human society has thoroughly bid farewell to its state of mutual isolation and has historically entered a new stage of universal intercourse. In this process, different value concepts have collided and blended with one another; those value concepts capable of satisfying the needs of universal human intercourse and promoting the common interests of humanity have been sedimented over time, increasingly becoming the common values of all parties involved in such intercourse.
From the perspective of practical logic, against the backdrop of the deep development of economic globalization, the degree of human interdependence has deepened to an unprecedented level, and the people of all nations have formed a community with a shared future where "you are in me and I am in you." On the other hand, global challenges such as environmental pollution, terrorism, nuclear security, cybersecurity, and epidemic diseases are threatening human survival and development as never before. Joining hands to address these global challenges has become the universal desire of the international community. A community with a shared future for humanity is both a community of interests and a community of values. It is both possible and necessary to coalesce the value consensus of different civilizations, countries, and nations, thereby gathering the majestic strength of human society to a greater extent to respond to various global challenges.
The commonality of the common values of humanity is concrete, respectful of differences, and in line with the common interests of all humanity
Since World War II, the West has always gone to great lengths to flaunt the "universality" of its own values, attempting to elevate its values to "universal values" [4] for all humanity. Unlike the so-called "universal values" of the West, the common values of humanity adhere to the Marxist historical materialist conception of history as their theoretical cornerstone. They take the coalescence of a value consensus for all humanity as their direction of endeavor, achieving a profound innovation in value concepts within the history of human thought.
The West’s so-called "universal values" are based on an abstract theory of human nature. The "universality" they emphasize is an abstract "universality" detached from reality, reflecting a fantasy of "universality." Based on such "universal" values, human society is fundamentally unable to find realistic solutions to resolve contradictions and conflicts or to realize the common interests of all humanity. Based on the Marxist view of practice, the common values of humanity abstract value concepts of general significance—capable of satisfying the common practical needs of all humanity—from the specific practices of different civilizations, countries, and nations, thereby coalescing a value consensus to safeguard the ever-growing common interests of all humanity. The commonality possessed by the common values of humanity is a commonality that faces reality and responds to and solves real-world problems.
The West’s so-called "universal values" deny the particularity of values and pursue a value identity that is undifferentiated, contradiction-free, and absolutely unchanging, believing that as long as all humanity follows them, many oppositions and conflicts in human society can be resolved. The result is inevitably "uniformity without harmony" [5] or "uniformity that cannot be sustained." A few individuals go to the other extreme, completely denying the existence of common values for humanity, believing that values are pluralistic and that the particularity of values is the "principal aspect of the contradiction" [6] that determines the essence of things. Marxist dialectics holds that universality and particularity are a unity of opposites; everything is a unity of universality and particularity. While emphasizing value commonality, the common values of humanity acknowledge the diversity in the understanding of value connotations and the differences in the ways values are realized under different social systems and ideological backgrounds. They achieve a unity of value commonality and value particularity, drawing the largest possible "concentric circles of values" across different civilizations.
Civilizational diversity is an objective reality of human societal development and an inexhaustible driving force for human progress. It is inevitable that different values resulting from this will involve disagreements. To better realize the common interests of all humanity, the more value disagreements exist, the more it is necessary to transcend narrow private interests and continuously coalesce value consensus. Marx and Engels revealed the essence of bourgeois values: "For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society... it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones." The West’s so-called "universal values" are nothing more than the portrayal of its own particular values as common values to better safeguard its own narrow private interests. The common values of humanity persist in maintaining a global vision, firmly occupying the moral high ground, and aiming to realize the common interests of all humanity, achieving a theoretical transcendence of the West’s so-called "universal values" across multiple dimensions.
Under the current situation of increasing global instability and uncertainty, the common values of humanity are undoubtedly of great significance for maintaining world peace and development and promoting the progress of human civilization. To promote and practice the common values of humanity, we must maintain a highly responsible attitude toward the future and destiny of humanity. We must understand the understanding of value connotations by different civilizations with a broad mind, refrain from imposing our own values and models on others, and persist in drawing a relative distinction between value concepts and the forms of their realization. We must respect the exploration of value realization paths by the people of different countries, allowing the common values of humanity to be manifested concretely and realistically in the practice of realizing the interests of their own people, effectively benefiting all peoples and helping to build a better world.