Seizing Opportunities of the Digital Era, Focusing on the Protection and Development 

of Digital Human Rights

With the rapid development of digital technologies, human society is undergoing profound changes, showing a brand-new social formation. In the digital era, human rights in Socialism with Chinese characteristics have also achieved breakthroughs and development in various fields, including politics, economy, society, culture, and health care. The right to subsistence is the premise and foundation of all human rights, and the people's happy life is the greatest human right in contemporary China. At present, facing the global economic downturn and further recession, China attaches great importance to the development of the digital economy, which has become been upgraded to national strategy. The digital economy is gradually becoming a strategic choice to seize the new opportunities of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation. According to the Digital China Development Report (2021) released at the opening ceremony of the 5th Digital China Summit, from 2017 to 2021, the scale of China's digital economy increased from RMB 27.2 trillion to RMB 45.5 trillion, steadily ranking second in the world, with a compound annual growth rate of 13.6%, and the share in GDP raised from 32.9% to 39.8%. China is significantly improving its governance level of digital economy and has gradually built a road of quality development. Martin Jacques, a British scholar, pointed out that "the most fundamental human right is a good economic situation". The development of digital economy has laid a solid material foundation for the protection and development of human rights in China.

In 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 brought a great disaster to the whole world. In order to cooperate with epidemic prevention and control, more than one billion people in China insisted on working and studying at home. Modern information technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, fully guaranteed the normal operation of the society. From travel cards to health code, from online work and study platforms to take-away logistics, the dividends in the digital era are profoundly affecting everyone's daily work, study, and life. The Internet industry in China has developed rapidly and is in a leading position in the world. According to the Statistical Report on China's internet development in 2022, in 2022, the total number of Internet users in China reached 970 million, an increase of 70 million compared with that in 2021. The total amount of online payment in China reached RMB 7.3 trillion, an increase of 20% compared with 2021. The payment scenarios are diversified and the types of payment are further increased. Online shopping mall payment was in the dominant position, and the cumulative payment reached RMB 2.2 trillion, an increase of 30% compared with 2021; transportation payment followed, with a cumulative amount of RMB 2.0 trillion, an increase of 35% over 2021; The payment for accommodation and tourism also increased compared with 2021. Judging from the proportion of payment scenarios, the diversification of online payment market in China has become obvious, and it has gradually become the mainstream form of social consumption. The digital era has effectively promoted the development of China's education, employment, medical care, housing, transportation and other fields, and further guaranteed China's civil rights, political rights, and economic, social, cultural, life and health rights.

Although digital technology represented by the Internet has greatly promoted economic and social development, the imbalance of digital development among different regions and groups has become increasingly prominent, and human rights in the digital era are also facing new crises and challenges, which need to be highly valued and effectively dealt with.

First of all, while bringing convenience to people's production and life, digital technologies also provide opportunities for criminals to carry out illegal activities such as telecom fraud, rumor spread, and cyber violence, which will not only infringe on citizens' legitimate rights, but even cause damage to normal and orderly social production. At present, telecom network fraud is a main target of the public security organs. According to the latest data released by the Ministry of Public Security, 464,000 telecom network fraud cases were cracked nationwide in 2022, up 5% year-on-year. In order to further reduce digital crimes, on the one hand, it is necessary to establish and improve laws and regulations in the digital field, strengthen the normative constraints on data collection and use, and severely crack down on illegal and criminal activities, on the other hand, it is necessary to constrain the participants of the entire data chain by means of formulating industry regulations and social evaluation, so as to create a healthy and safe digital ecosystem. In addition, the development of digital technologies also provides opportunities for foreign forces to steal China's intelligence by rebelling against relevant personnel. Therefore, while strengthening national security supervision, it is necessary for all the people to enhance their awareness of national security, be alert to behaviors endangering national security, and jointly build an indestructible people's defense line for national security. Secondly, digitalization has smoothed out some inequalities, but it has also created new ones. The problems such as the digital divide for the elderly, the digital divide in the central and western regions, and the digital divide between urban and rural areas have become increasingly prominent. The existence of these problems not only makes social autonomy and human dignity seriously eroded by digitalization, but also makes a considerable number of people excluded from the digital society and even reduced to "digital refugees", seriously damaging the right to survival and development of the disadvantaged groups. The difference caused by the digital divide is becoming the "fourth big difference" in China after the "three big differences" between urban and rural areas, between workers and peasants, and between brain labor and physical labor. It is not only a technical problem in itself, but also a social problem. In recent years, news such as "Old people can't get on the bus with their health code", "Old people pay for medical insurance in the rain but get refused" and "a 94-year-old citizen is held up for face recognition" has frequently appeared, which has aroused widespread concern in the society and made us pay attention to the marginalized groups in this digital era. Because they don't have smart phones or can't learn complicated operations, they can't make an appointment to register, scan the code to order food, pay by mobile, or even get a health code. They cannot enjoy the convenience of the digital economy, instead, their normal lives are affected. Faced with this situation, in November 2020, the State Council issued the Implementation Plan on Effectively Solving the Difficulties of the Elderly in Using Intelligent Technologies (hereinafter referred to as "the Plan"), emphasizing the promotion of the construction of a smart society that fully takes into account the needs of the elderly, insisting on the parallel of traditional service methods and intelligent service innovation, and effectively solving the difficulties encountered by the elderly in using intelligent technologies. The implementation measures of the "Plan" are mainly concentrated in two directions. First, the traditional service methods and manual channels are retained to ensure the daily needs of the elderly who do not have smart phones and have not yet learned intelligent operations; The second is to improve the "elderly-oriented" degree of the technologies, facilitate the elderly to learn and use them, and promote the universality of digital technologies. The vulnerable groups in the digital divide feature large population and wide influence, so the whole society needs to pay more attention to it and promote the popularization and implementation of the Plan.

Third, with the rapid development of the information society, the types of citizens' personal information are constantly expanding, not only the most basic information such as name, gender, and age, but also personal life preferences, shopping habits, chat records of social software, WeChat and Weibo data, etc. These personal information has been unconsciously mastered by the Internet and artificial intelligence databases. For such mastered information, it is reasonable if the government information work department wants to better protect citizens' rights and improve work efficiency. However, if it is collected and used by some manufacturers, profit[1]making organizations, or even criminals, it will be unreasonable or even illegal, which will infringe on citizens' privacy, which requires the soft restriction of social moral order and the rigid regulation of the legal system. The protection of citizens' privacy is a global task. In 2013, the United Nations adopted resolution 68/167 on privacy in the digital era, claiming that people's rights enjoyed offline should also be protected online, and urging all countries to respect and protect the privacy in the field of digital communication, review its procedures, practices and legislation related to communication surveillance interception and personal data collection, and fulfill their obligations under the international human rights law. Since then, the United Nations General Assembly has adopted many resolutions or reports, calling on countries to take actions to protect citizens' privacy in the digital era. China attaches great importance to the protection of citizens' privacy, and the Civil Code clearly stipulates protection of privacy and personal information. For example, the second paragraph of Article 1037 of the Civil Code stipulates: "If a natural person finds that an information processor violates the provisions of laws and administrative regulations or the agreement of both parties, he shall have the right to request the information processor to delete his personal information in time." Strengthening the protection of citizens' privacy according to law in the digital era is an important measure to protect citizens' human rights.

With the development of the fourth industrial revolution with the era of big data as the core, mankind is striding into the digital era. The fourth sci-tech revolution represented by digital technology and the drastic changes in economy and society have also brought new opportunities and impetus to further realize the protection and development of human rights. Building a digital country has become a global consensus and development trend. China's level and development of digital technologies are in the forefront of the world, and China's ability and scale of the application of digital technologies are also ahead of most countries and regions in the world. In the fourth generation of human rights, a large number of emerging human rights have emerged, among which digital human rights are the newest and most significant rights. We should fully grasp the opportunities of the digital era, lead the new generation of human rights from theoretical research to system construction, and promote the all-round development of human rights in Socialism with Chinese characteristics and the global protection and development of human rights.

(The author is executive director of China Society for Human Rights Studies)