ABSTRACT
Although human rights advocates like to portray the international human rights regime as a fixed and stable part of international law, in fact it has a history of change, much of it both recent and rapid. (In this context, the word ‘regime’ refers to an international system of norms and institutions by which states regulate their relations in a particular domain of activity.) Every international regime is established by states and ultimately controlled by them, but also draws in additional actors who seek to influence its functioning through lobbying, information exchange, and norm entrepreneurship. In the complex arena of international human rights, China was at first an outsider, then in the early reform era a largely passive object of criticism. But China’s post-Tiananmen re-entry into world diplomacy and its economic rise, which were detailed in the two preceding chapters, have helped Beijing become one of the most proactive forces shaping the international human rights regime’s next phase of evolution. Beijing seeks to blunt the ability of human rights norms, institutions, and activists to influence the internal affairs of states. In the new environment of a rising China, advocates are scrambling for new ways to leverage international influence to improve human rights in China. In this sense, the intersecting trajectories of China and the international human
rights regime have produced paradoxical results. In the mid-1970s, just when international human rights norms, institutions, and advocacy groups began to enjoy a period of rising influence, Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of ‘reform and opening’ led China to shift from Mao-era resistance to nascent engagement with the regime. As a consequence, the immediate aftermath of Tiananmen marked a high point of China’s vulnerability to international pressure concerning human rights. And the incident contributed in some direct and indirect ways to further strengthening the international human rights system. But at the same time Tiananmen generated what became a complex and sophisticated Chinese challenge to the role of human rights as a set of international norms. As Beijing shifted its political and economic strategies to create ‘authoritarian resilience’ at home and a ‘rising China’ abroad, it found ways to blunt the impact of international human rights advocacy efforts on its internal politics and to shape the international human rights system to its
own advantage. In this way the rise of China, which has been in many ways a positive development, has put at risk the promise of human rights as a vital part of the international order.
