A Discursive Analysis of the Chinese Party-State’s Potential Impact on the LOAC

Abstract

Abstract Understanding the Chinese Communist party-State’s LOAC legal discourse as domestic political speech and international “discourse power” that affirms that the Party’s legitimating moral narrative is a useful hermeneutic for understanding China’s engagement with international LOAC. The Communist Party’s structural control over domestic discourse formation, the weakness of Chinese civil society, the lack of independent legal institutions, and a general conception of Chinese law as subordinate to the Party enables the party-State to prioritize the discursive function of law as a highly credible form of political speech. The desire of the international community to socialize China has resulted in uncritical acceptance and adoption of the party-State’s own self-narrative on LOAC, which the party-State then rebroadcasts domestically to demonstrate international affirmation of its legitimating narrative. It reframes jus ad bellum LOAC discourse to support past and prospective territorial aggression against neighboring countries. Jus in bello is reframed to support the narrative that the Party-Army has not and would never commit humanitarian violations, deflecting potential criticism of the Army’s involvement in the State’s violent oppression of Chinese citizens and justifying the sanitized public record. Effective engagement with Communist China on LOAC requires first that the United States more consistently commit to LOAC as a binding legal norm, both in words and action; and second, that the international community be willing to engage party-State scholars and officials critically.