ABSTRACT
Mab Huang, professor in the Department of Political Science at Soochow University on Taiwan, is a long-time advocate of human rights. Huang calls attention to the drawbacks of the contemporary human rights theories and emphasizes that human rights need to encompass both civil and political rights as well as economic and social rights. He is also active in the current work to establish a National Human Rights Commission. The contemporary theory of human rights has been taken up by a majority of societies in Western Europe, and it also constitutes the foundation of the UN Charter and a number of covenants on human rights and fundamental freedoms; its influence and value cannot be overlooked. But it cannot be denied that the rise of seventeenth-century liberalism, and the theory of human rights and fundamental freedoms to which it gave rise, has been deeply influenced by the capitalist market economy system.
