Diplomatic Asylum in US-China Relations

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Abstract Diplomatic asylum provides a vital means for those suffering persecution to seek protection. The granting of diplomatic asylum, commonly justified on humanitarian grounds, often depends largely on the discretionary political benevolence of states. Ongoing scholarly debates have suggested that there is a legal obligation to offer de facto diplomatic asylum under the principle of non-refoulement in international law. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether the obligation to grant diplomatic asylum would differ for different groups of asylum seekers – those accused of purely political offences, those accused of violent political offences, and those accused of common crimes. Using four diplomatic asylum cases between the United States and China as examples, this article argues that states have the non-refoulement obligation to offer shelter to the above three types of asylees. This article also discusses the practical challenges of resorting to non-refoulement in obliging states to grant diplomatic asylum.