The Asian challenge to the universality of human rights has sparked off intense debate. This volume takes a clear stand for universal rights, both theoretically and empirically, by analysing social and political processes in a number of East and Southeast Asian countries. On the national arenas, Asian values are linked to the struggle between authoritarian and democratic forces, which both tend to convey stereotyped images of the 'west', but with reversed meanings.
They offer a balanced forum that seeks common ground, providing needed perspective at a time when the Chinese government, after years of denouncing Confucianism as an aritfact of a feudal past, has made an abrupt reversal to endorse it as a belief system compatible with communist ideology.
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.
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.
This book offers a unique insight into the role of human rights lawyers in Chinese law and politics. In her extensive account, Eva Pils shows how these practitioners are important as legal advocates for victims of injustice and how bureaucratic systems of control operate to subdue and marginalise them. The book also discusses how human rights lawyers and the social forces they work for and with challenge the system. In conditions where organised political opposition is prohibited, rights lawyers have begun to articulate and coordinate demands for legal and political change. Drawing on hundreds of anonymised conversations, the book analyses in detail human rights lawyers’ legal advocacy in the face of severe institutional limitations and their experiences of repression at the hands of the police and state security apparatus, along with the intellectual, political and moral resources lawyers draw upon to survive and resist. Key concerns include the interaction between the lawyers and their bureaucratic, professional and social environments and the forms and long term political impact of resistance. In addressing these issues, Pils offers a rare evaluative perspective on China’s legal and political system, and proposes new ways to assess domestic advocacy’s relationship with international human rights and rule of law promotion. This book will be of great interest and use to students and scholars of law, Chinese studies, socio-legal studies, political studies, international relations, and sociology. It is also of direct value to people working in the fields of human rights advocacy, law, politics, international relations, and journalism.
This book examines the effects that political institutions, the legal system, and economic policies have had on the human rights record in the PRC since 1949. The authors first address the problems of assessing political liberties in a nation that emphasizes economic over civil rights and that has traditionally valued collective rights over individ
