The Challenges of Human Rights with Chinese Characteristics

Despite its recognition of human rights norms in the wake of June Fourth, 1989, the Chinese Party-State has relied on an array rights-violating norms and practices to sustain political control. As it has sought to justify the suppression of human rights challenges from within Chinese society by reference to national and cultural specificity, its suppression of human rights claims has become part of ‘human rights with Chinese characteristics.’ In the Xi era, the Party-State has not only intensified the persecution of human rights defenders. Relying on historical references to China’s ‘national humiliation’ in the 19th and 20th centuries and the Party’s claimed historical mission to lead China’s ‘rejuvenation,’ it has also increasingly portrayed human rights-based criticism and human rights defence as foreign attempts to infiltrate and dominate the Chinese system. Analysing the 2017 ‘Beijing Declaration’ on human rights and the 2018 HRC Resolution on ‘Win-win Win-Win Cooperation for the Common Cause of Human Rights,’ I argue that the Party-State is now seeking to internationalize its state-centric conception of ‘human rights.’ This conception is flawed. It threatens to undermine human rights, including in particular the freedom of expression, at a global level.