Human Rights In Chinese Foreign Relations

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.

"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"--

Over the five decades since the establishment of the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights issues have become a dominant feature of the international system, embracing new actors, eroding the traditional Westphalian concept of sovereignty, and leading to an acceptance that the treatment of individuals and groups within domestic societies is legitimately a focus of global attention. This book examines the affect that this normative evolution has had on the individual, state, institutional and advocacy network behaviour. Having described this normative environment it assesses its impact on key actors' relationships with China, especially in the period since the Tiananmen bloodshed in June 1989. It also examines China's responses–international and internal–to being the focus of global attention in this issue area. The book's theoretical concerns are to uncover the conditions under which international human rights norms influence behaviour, including domestic changes within states, and about the operation of norms in the global system.

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2015 in the subject Politics - Topic: Public International Law and Human Rights, grade: A, , language: English, abstract: This paper seeks to address the correlation of foreign policy of states on human rights in general and the foreign policy of China on the human rights situation of Africa in particular, with special reference to Ethiopia and Uganda. The paper tries to specify why the African states welcomed China and pushed out Europeans and the USA, which are far more coercive states for human rights development and democratization than China. It also seeks to give an overview of China’s approach to human rights in it foreign relations juxtaposed with the human rights situation of selected African countries (Ethiopia & Uganda) before and after the coming of China to the continent.

Various domestic factors impact upon China's foreign policy making, such as bureaucracy, academics, media and public opinion. This stimulating book examines their increasing influence and focuses in particular on China's policy towards the United States, exploring whether there has been an emergence of societal factors, independent of the Communist Party, that have begun to exert influence over the policy process. It also debates questions such as how it will affect the ability of the Chinese government to frame and implement its policy towards the US, and whether it has generated institutional arrangements in China for cooperation on issues such as trade, human rights and Taiwan. The book provides a better understanding of the role of societal forces in China's foreign policy making process.

This title was first published in 2002: Utilizing the case of the 1994 US decision to delink China’s human rights record from most favoured nation status, Susan C. Morris addresses the critical issues where commercialism and human rights converge. This insightful addition to the literature on US foreign policy on human rights draws on both political and economic theory, touching upon the relationships between labour conditions and production, business and freedom of association, management and bargaining and ultimately the relationship between economics and human justice. Empirically, the work draws on US Congressional proceedings and debates throughout the decade of the 1990s. Although the trade and human rights debate has long been ingrained in the rhetoric of scholars, the research approaches the issue within the context of communism’s last major threshold, making it a valuable contribution to the field of international relations.

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: USA, grade: 1,0 (A), Ripon College (Department of Politics and Government), course: Senior Seminar, language: English, abstract: Due to economic reforms that were started in the late 1970s, China has stepped into the center of international politics and economy during the past years. These reforms helped the country to achieve an immense economic upturn with annual growth rates of almost ten percent and thus made China an ever more important actor on the international stage of politics. The United States strongly support China's economic development by granting it permanent Normal Trade Relations, for example, and investing directly in China's manufacturing sector. But whereas China has been liberalizing its market, using American interests to gain profits, it largely maintains its defensive and rejecting attitude about changing its human rights situation. There are controversial opinions about how the United States should respond towards China human rights situation. In order to make aware of the stagnated situation of the human rights issue in U.S. China policy, this paper explores how the Clinton administration handled human rights in China policy and looks at the role of human rights in the Bush jr. administration's policy towards China.

China’s rise to prosperity on the international stage has been accompanied by increased tensions with international standards of law and governance. Exporting Virtue? examines China’s internationalizing of PRC human rights policy and practice as an example of its international assertiveness, and considers the implications. China’s international human rights activism is couched in terms of virtue but manifested as authoritarianism, inviting scholars and policy makers around the world to engage critically with the issue. Exporting Virtue? investigates the challenges that China’s human rights orthodoxy poses to international norms and institutions, offering normative and institutional analysis and providing suggestions for policy response.