Rana Siu Inboden examines China's role in the international human rights regime between 1982 and 2017 and, through this lens, explores China's rising position in the world. Focusing on three major case studies – the drafting and adoption of the Convention against Torture and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, the establishment of the UN Human Rights Council, and the International Labour Organization's Conference Committee on the Application of Standards – Inboden shows China's subtle yet persistent efforts to constrain the international human rights regime. Based on a range of documentary and archival research, as well as extensive interview data, Inboden provides fresh insights into the motivations and influences driving China's conduct and explores China's rising position as a global power.
"Prior to China's entry into the United Nations (UN) in 1971, there was fierce debate about its anticipated behavior and impact. Proponents of Chinese membership argued that integration into the United Nations would ultimately change or "civilize" the People's Republic of China (PRC) while skeptics countered that the "...the UN is not going to serve as a reform school for Peking," and that China was likely to attempt to alter the international system. When Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders failed to challenge the existing global order and eventually adjusted their own priorities and goals to fit into it and even benefit from the prevailing international order, its behavior alleviated concerns of destructive behavior. Yet, the larger question of China's longer-term impact on and role in international regimes remains an open question. Even if the PRC has not acted as a spoiler of the international system, are there subtle yet significant ways that it has pursued change toward international regimes? This question become more pressing and salient with China's ascendance and rising weight in global politics, especially given indications that it is shedding its earlier status quo posture and shifting to a more assertive one. As scholar Elizabeth Economy noted, in a June 2018 speech PRC President Xi Jinping "put the world on notice: China has its own ideas about how the world should be run and is prepared, as he put it, to 'lead in the reform of global governance.'" Scholars have begun grappling with"--
Rana Siu Inboden examines China's role in the international human rights regime between 1982 and 2017 and, through this lens, explores China's rising position in the world. Focusing on three major case studies - the drafting and adoption of the Convention against Torture and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, the establishment of the UN Human Rights Council, and the International Labour Organization's Conference Committee on the Application of Standards - Inboden shows China's subtle yet persistent efforts to constrain the international human rights regime. Based on a range of documentary and archival research, as well as extensive interview data, Inboden provides fresh insights into the motivations and influences driving China's conduct and explores China's rising position as a global power.
How can we make sense of human rights in China's authoritarian Party-State system? Eva Pils offers a nuanced account of this contentious area, examining human rights as a set of social practices. Drawing on a wide range of resources including years of interaction with Chinese human rights defenders, Pils discusses what gives rise to systematic human rights violations, what institutional avenues of protection are available, and how social practices of human rights defence have evolved. Three central areas are addressed: liberty and integrity of the person; freedom of thought and expression; and inequality and socio-economic rights. Pils argues that the Party-State system is inherently opposed to human rights principles in all these areas, and that – contributing to a global trend – it is becoming more repressive. Yet, despite authoritarianism's lengthening shadows, China’s human rights movement has so far proved resourceful and resilient. The trajectories discussed here will continue to shape the struggle for human rights in China and beyond its borders.
This book focuses on China’s evolution in the field of human rights protection, highlighting its achievements in various systems of human rights protection, as well as its role in international human rights governance and the healthy development of human rights. From the perspective of China’s human rights protection, starting with various types of citizens, e.g. women, children and the disabled, the book analyzes and discusses the changes and major events in the country’s human rights development path one by one, while also explaining the Chinese stance on human rights development. China is becoming more active in the international human rights cooperation field, playing its unique and constructive role and serving as the participant, builder and contributor of the international human rights governance.
The past sixty years have seen an expansion of international human rights conventions and supervisory organs, not least in Europe. While these international legal instruments have enlarged their mandate, they have also faced opposition and criticism from political actors at the state level, even in well-functioning democracies. Against the backdrop of such contestations, this book brings together prominent scholars in law, political philosophy and international relations in order to address the legitimacy of international human rights regimes as a theoretically challenging and politically salient case of international authority. It provides a unique and thorough overview of the legitimacy problems involved in the global governance of human rights.
Selected by Choice magazine as a Outstanding Academic Book for 2000 Nelson Mandela once said, "Human rights have become the focal point of international relations." This has certainly become true in American relations with the People's Republic of China. Ann Kent's book documents China's compliance with the norms and rules of international treaties, and serves as a case study of the effectiveness of the international human rights regime, that network of international consensual agreements concerning acceptable treatment of individuals at the hands of nation-states. Since the early 1980s, and particularly since 1989, by means of vigorous monitoring and the strict maintenance of standards, United Nations human rights organizations have encouraged China to move away from its insistence on the principle of noninterference, to take part in resolutions critical of human rights conditions in other nations, and to accept the applicability to itself of human rights norms and UN procedures. Even though China has continued to suppress political dissidents at home, and appears at times resolutely defiant of outside pressure to reform, Ann Kent argues that it has gradually begun to implement some international human rights standards.
The human rights records of more than ninety countries and territories are put into perspective in Human Rights Watch's signature yearly report. Reflecting extensive investigative work undertaken in 2016 by Human Rights Watch staff, in close partnership with domestic human rights activists, the annual World Report is an invaluable resource for journalists, diplomats, and citizens, and is a must-read for anyone interested in the fight to protect human rights in every corner of the globe.
In recent years, more and more scholars in the world feel interested in the topic of human right protection status in China. This book hopes to serve as a window through which its readers will have a better understanding of theory and practice of human rights protection in the Chinese context. The book systematically introduces the dynamic development and progress of human rights protection in China, attaching great importance to the first white paper on Human Rights in China, “The state respects and guarantees human rights” included in the Constitution, National Human Rights Action Plan of China, and then putting forth fundamental principles to achieve international human rights standards and specific measures to improve human rights protection standards in China. Then the book further discusses “Foundations of Human Rights Guarantee in Contemporary China”, “Human Rights, Culture and Their Reconstruction in the Chinese Context” and “Socialist Legal System with Chinese Characteristics”. Then, a final chapter is dedicated to the topic of “Judicial Protection System of Human Rights in China”. In appendices, four important documents on human rights in China, as well as a list of the author’s major articles and works in the past 10 years are provided.
Few issues in the relations between China and the West invoke as much passion as human rights. At stake, however, are much more than moral concerns and hurt national feelings. To Washington, the undemocratic nature of the Chinese government makes it ultimately suspect on all issues. To Beijing, the human rights pressure exerted by the West on China seems designed to compromise its legitimacy. As China's economic power grows and its influence on the politics of developing countries continues, an understanding of the place of human rights in China's foreign relations is crucial to the implementation of an effective international human rights agenda. In Human Rights in Chinese Foreign Relations, Ming Wan examines China's relations with the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and the United Nations human rights institutions. Wan shows that, after a decade of persistent external pressure to reform its practices, China still plays human rights diplomacy as traditional power politics and deflects pressure by mobilizing its propaganda machine to neutralize Western criticism, by making compromises that do not threaten core interests, and by offering commercial incentives to important nations to help prevent a unified Western front. Furthermore, at the UN, China has largely succeeded in rallying developing nation members to defeat Western efforts at censure. In turn, it is apparent to Wan that, while the idea of human rights matters in Western policy, it has seldom prevailed over economic considerations or concerns about national security. Western governments have not committed as many policy resources to pressuring Beijing on human rights as to other issues, and the differing degrees of commitment to human rights-related foreign policy explain why Japan, Western Europe, and the United States, in that order, have gradually retreated from confronting China on human rights issues.
