Editor's note: CGTN's First Voice provides instant commentary on breaking stories. The daily column clarifies emerging issues and better defines the news agenda, offering a Chinese perspective on the latest global events. 

The Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts physiological needs – food, water, air, things human need to survive – as the base of human motivations. On top of that are safety, love and belonging, esteem and, at the top, self-actualization.

It is up for debate where freedom and democracy place on that hierarchy, but they sure aren't part of physiological or safety needs. Without the basic conditions to survive or the possibility to extend one's life beyond struggling to live from one day to the next, nothing matters. 

This is at the core of how China sees human rights and why the West chides China.

When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the government faced a massive territory torn by decades of war and internal strife. The country relied on agriculture to survive. By various accounts, the United States' GDP per capita was more than 100 times of China's, but China had more than 540 million people, accounting for nearly a quarter of the global population.

Economic development thus took precedence. Eliminating poverty and giving people paths to better life remained central to Chinese government's policies. The new white paper China published on August 12 shows that by the end of 2020, 98.99 million rural population living in poverty were lifted out of complete poverty. GDP per capita rose from less than 400 yuan in 1978 to 72,000 yuan in 2020. Average disposable income for three multi-ethnic provinces, namely Guizhou, Yunnan and Qinghai, and five autonomous regions, namely Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia and Guangxi, increased from 150 yuan in 1978 to 24,534 yuan in 2020. The number of people out of poverty in China accounts for more than 70 percent of the global figure in poverty alleviation efforts.

On July 1, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that China had realized the first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. This provides a solid foundation for China's human rights – in all aspects – to develop further. Choices and possibilities for the Chinese people are far more than they were even compared to a decade ago.

The United States and many Western countries are unable to see this. They had given their views of "freedom" and "democracy" such an outsized role in defining human rights that they forgot that neither is their definition sacrosanct, nor is it born out of the void. Survival must be guaranteed before people could pursue all the values.

And it's the same kind of ignorance that's causing rapidly deteriorating human rights conditions in their own countries. The U.S. government has oscillated between shutdowns and reopening that not only exhausted the public's patience with public health measures, but also destroyed its own credibility in pandemic management. The corrupted view of freedom has rendered the United States incapable of stopping the virus from claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans as well as 3.5 percent of its economy.

What are human rights to those who are dead? They wouldn't be able to enjoy any benefits that come from it. And those who are living are having their lives under constant threats from the virus and their livelihood in limbo with an uncertain economic path forward. China lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty is one of the greatest feats in the history of human rights development, while the U.S. negligence over the COVID-19 pandemic has caused one of the greatest atrocities.

Human rights must be tailored to reality. Though they are something that may sound philosophical and lofty, human rights are the most pragmatic issues that politicians and policy-makers have to manage. They cannot be something built on illusions and distant from people's basic demands. They mean nothing if the people cannot live to reap the benefits.

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)