On the morning of June 12, 2026, an academic lecture themed The Logic of Human Rights in the Digital Age was successfully held in Room 434, Xingmin Building, Xianlin Campus of Nanjing Normal University. The lecture was delivered by Professor Ma Changshan, Dean of the Institute of Digital Rule of Law at East China University of Political Science and Law, Changjiang Scholar, and leading talent in philosophy and social sciences under the National "Ten Thousand Talents Program". Professor He Baisheng from the Law School of Nanjing Normal University served as the moderator, with Professor Zhang Lei, Associate Professor Chen Hui and Associate Professor Zhang Chujia as panel discussants. Undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students of the law school attended the lecture.

At the opening of the lecture, Professor He Baisheng extended a warm welcome and sincere gratitude to Professor Ma Changshan for taking time out of his busy schedule to deliver the lecture. He introduced Professor Ma’s pioneering contributions to digital law research, noting that Professor Ma is one of the leading scholars in China’s digital law field.

Professor Ma Changshan elaborated on the topic from four dimensions: Human Rights Challenges in Digital Society, Digitalization of Contemporary Human Rights, Formation of Fourth-Generation Human Rights, and Legal Protection of Digital Human Rights.
First, Professor Ma started with how the information revolution reshapes human beings. In the digital age, every individual exists as both a biological person and a digital person, and human-machine collaboration and symbiosis have become a reality. This shift has brought brand-new challenges to human rights protection: infringements have evolved from individual, intermittent acts into automated, institutionalized and systematic practices. Issues such as algorithmic discrimination, price discrimination and selective services are growing prevalent, while ordinary individuals are often in an asymmetrically disadvantaged position against technological hegemony.
Next, Professor Ma analyzed the digitalization tendency of human rights in depth. He pointed out that digital technology has transformed human identity from a fixed, closed natural person into a distributed, multi-dimensional digital self. Everyone has multiple "digital avatars" on platforms like Didi, Meituan and WeChat. These digital portraits are more authentic and comprehensive than the individual themselves, and can even reversely manipulate a person in the physical world by controlling their digital identity. Traditional human rights protection rests on the dual structure of physical space and spiritual world, yet the power structure in the digital age has evolved into a tripartite game of public power, private rights and platform private power, making it urgent to reconstruct the original protection logic.
On this basis, Professor Ma systematically expounded the theory of "fourth-generation human rights". He explained that the first generation of human rights refers to political rights, the second to economic, social and cultural rights, and the third to collective rights — all three generations are grounded in natural persons. The fourth-generation human rights break through this scope, center on digital attributes, and emphasize new rights such as digital autonomy, digital right to information and digital participation. Its core value is to resist digital control and advance the free development of human beings. Professor Ma specifically noted that the newly released Fifth National Human Rights Action Plan (2026–2030) has included digital human rights contents such as "a better digital-intelligent life" for the first time. This marks the first such inclusion not only in China, but also among all countries with national human rights action plans worldwide, signifying that digital human rights have been officially recognized at the national policy level.
On the legal protection of digital human rights, Professor Ma put forward six proposals: establishing the rule-of-law concept of digital human rights, building a digital rule system, exploring digital due process, setting up scenario-based protection mechanisms, constructing a moral infrastructure for human rights, and cultivating digital citizenship competence. He stressed that China should play a leading role in global digital human rights governance and build an independent Chinese knowledge system of digital law.
During the panel discussion, Professor Zhang Lei remarked that Professor Ma’s lecture had delivered a powerful "brainstorm". Starting from the height of human civilization revolution, Professor Ma uncovered the deep-seated issue that technological development in the digital age is rendering a large amount of labor redundant, and raised a key question for digital human rights research: the definition of "human being" — whether it refers to natural persons, semi-digitalized persons, or awakened AI entities.

Associate Professor Chen Hui expressed his admiration for Professor Ma’s academic transition from civil society studies to digital society research. He pointed out that a core puzzle in current digital law research is whether digital technology merely erodes the existing rights system, or triggers a fundamental paradigm revolution. Comparing the conservative stance of the European Union with the aggressive application in China and the United States, he noted that while China is forging ahead boldly in application, it also faces pressure of multi-dimensional rights infringements. This calls for academic reflection on whether traditional tort elements are sufficient to address digital-age challenges, or whether a brand-new theoretical paradigm is needed.

Associate Professor Zhang Chujia shared her insights based on her own research. She observed that Professor Ma’s lecture is highly forward-looking and practically oriented. Against the backdrop of the newly issued National Human Rights Action Plan, the lecture promptly offers academic interpretations aligned with cutting-edge policies, pointing out research directions for young scholars. She particularly highlighted that the methodological guidance on classifying and concretizing digital human rights carries great enlightening value for interdisciplinary research, and the intersection of environmental rights protection and digital ecological governance deserves further exploration.

At the conclusion of the lecture, Professor He Baisheng summarized that Professor Ma Changshan has systematically constructed the theoretical framework of digital human rights as the fourth-generation human rights from multiple perspectives including historical evolution, technological transformation, rights logic and institutional guarantee. With both a grand civilizational vision and vivid real-world cases, the lecture presented an intellectual feast for all faculty and students of the law school. The event concluded successfully with warm applause.

Text source: Xiao Wei
Image source: Graduate Student Union, Law School