ABSTRACT
Human Rights Commission, the Chinese foreign minister suggested that eventually his government would sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). In response, the United States dropped its support of a resolution criticizing China's human rights practices. China's emphasis on socioeconomic rights has been echoed by other Southeast Asian leaders, and defended as an expression of "Asian values". The exercise of civil-political freedoms would disrupt "national stability" in a way that threatens economic development. The two international covenants on human rights were adopted in 1966, almost twenty years after the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Recently, major human rights organizations have begun testing new waters in their monitoring work to recognize the complexity of human rights violations, where socioeconomic rights and civil-political rights are often intricately entangled. Amnesty International has investigated and reported on violations arising from China's population policies.
