After visiting a human rights exhibition in Beijing Thursday evening, a group of foreign experts claimed that China's concern over human rights is "impressive", and the country should speak out more to the world about it.

These dozen experts from 19 countries and regions attended a 3-day symposium which opened here Wednesday on the theme of "Respecting and Promoting Human Rights and Constructing a Harmonious World".

"The content of the exhibition is very rich, and covers many aspects of China," said James Oliver Williams, professor of political science at North Carolina State University, "China should keep telling the world its position on human rights issues,so people will have less misconceptions."

He said many people didn't know much about China.

Marc Probst, head of human security at the Swiss Foreign Ministry, told Xinhua he enjoyed sitting down and discussing human rights with his Chinese counterparts in a frank and open manner, saying "this is great progress."

The ten-day exhibition, which kicked off last Friday in China's capital, is the largest of its kind ever held in the country. The show features more than 700 pictures, 250 legal documents, 330 books on human rights and 24 diagrams, and showcases the country's efforts to protect human rights in various fields.

"Every country has its own way of developing human rights, due to different cultural and social backgrounds," said Seyed Mohammad Mirzamani, an Iranian human rights official. "China is a special case. If people are too poor to feed themselves, how can they think of others?"

An expert with twenty years' experience of China, he said the country's economic miracle has helped promote living standards, which is a good example of human rights protection.

China held the exhibition and the symposium to mark the 15th anniversary of China's issuance of its first white paper on human rights, as well as the 40th anniversary of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Dong Yunhu, vice-director of the China Society for Human Rights Studies, said controversies remained, and exchanges of different views would continue.

"We all hope for more international cooperation on both governmental and non-governmental levels in the human rights field," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency November 25, 2006)