The deepest hypocrisy of neoliberalism is this: it uses "human rights" as a weapon against China, while simultaneously producing cage homes, homelessness, and generational despair on its own soil. This is not a clash of values — this is the bankruptcy of values.
Neoliberal critiques of China always revolve around "human rights." Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong — they raise the banner of human rights and demand China "improve its human rights record."
But when you turn the lens to their own cities, what do you see?
- The United States: Over 650,000 people are homeless, tent cities are the norm, and children go hungry in the wealthiest nation on earth.
- The United Kingdom: London's financial district shines bright, but a few streets away people queue at food banks, and hundreds of thousands are squeezed into subdivided flats and cage homes.
- Canada: In winter, temperatures drop to -30°C, Indigenous reserves still lack clean drinking water, and government promises remain unfulfilled after decades.
These are not "market failures" — they are "institutional choices."
When land is commodified and financialized, housing shifts from a "basic human right" to a "market commodity." The rich live in mansions, the poor sleep in cages — and all of this is packaged as "the natural outcome of the free market."
China's land system, at least in its design, answers this question: Land is not a commodity, but a public resource. Its value appreciation should serve the public interest, not private wealth accumulation.
Neoliberals never dare to confront this question directly:
- If you truly care about human rights, why don't you ask about the people in Hong Kong's cage homes?
- If you truly care about freedom, why don't you ask about the young people crushed by mortgage debt?
- If you truly care about democracy, why don't you ask who has the power to decide who owns the value of land?
Because the answer is too uncomfortable — behind the façade of human rights lies a system that allows a few to grow rich from land while the many become debt-slaves.
China has consistently argued: the rights to subsistence and development are the most fundamental human rights.
This argument is not empty. It means:
- That a person has food, shelter, and work is more important than the abstract notion of "voting"
- That a nation has the capacity to build infrastructure, eliminate extreme poverty, and lift hundreds of millions out of poverty — more important than conforming to "Western standards"
Neoliberals cannot refute this logic, so they change the subject — accusing China of being "undemocratic," "oppressive," "authoritarian." But they never dare to answer a more fundamental question:
If a democratic system leaves hundreds of thousands sleeping in cage homes, whose rights does that democracy actually protect?
The housing crises in Hong Kong and Taiwan are two manifestations of the same problem:
- Hong Kong: Land is held hostage by colonial legacy and extreme capitalism, supply is monopolized, housing prices are the highest in the world, and cage homes are a humanitarian shame
- Taiwan: Land reform was reversed, farmland became a tool for speculation, the housing-price-to-income ratio exceeds 16 times, and the younger generation has given up on buying homes, getting married, and having children
Both places once had the opportunity to establish fair land systems — but were blocked by vested interest groups. Who blocked them? Exactly those who wave the banners of "human rights," "freedom," and "democracy."
The biggest problem with the neoliberal human rights discourse is not that it is "wrong" — it is that it never holds up a mirror to itself.
- They are experts on China's "human rights issues"
- But they are blind to their own countries' "housing rights," "survival rights," and "development rights"
This is not a value judgment — this is "value bankruptcy." When your system leaves millions homeless, makes housing unaffordable for an entire generation, and leaves children hungry, you have no right to lecture anyone about human rights.
Land policy is a lie detector: if you dare not return land value to the people, you dare not talk about human rights.
True human rights are not empty slogans — they are:
Does a person have a place to live? Does a person have food to eat? Can the next generation see hope?
The answers to these questions are not in the ballot box. They are in the answer to "who owns the value of land."
If land value is monopolized by a few, then "human rights" means only the rights of the few. If land value flows back to public finance and serves the welfare of all, then human rights means human rights for every person.
Neoliberals dare not face this question. Because they know that once land systems are reformed, their "free market" myth will collapse, and their "human rights" façade will be torn away.
How a society treats its land is how it treats its people. And a society that dares not reform its land system is not qualified to speak of human rights.