The Chinese Approach to Human Rights

Abstract

This essay explores meanings and implications of China’s approach to human rights through an examination of China’s discourse and action at the international and domestic levels. First it considers China’s engagement with multilateral human rights norms, processes to shape human rights norms and practice in line with its own priorities and China’s increasingly assertive resistance of criticism of its domestic human rights performance. Second it examines the domestic context within which human rights are given effect. The essay examines the ways in which domestic institutional and ideological frameworks and key concepts such as constitutional governance, development, stability and security shape the domestic governance of human rights. It argues that these concepts have been institutionalised in a way that sits in tension with and even displaces a human rights approach to governance.