Challenging Normative Power Europe: China's normative diplomacy

This paper argues that the EU's declining soft power is vividly illustrated by its human rights diplomacy. While the EU took the lead as a significant actor in human rights diplomacy on the international stage, and bilaterally with China in the 1990s (especially between 1989 and 1997), Beijing has been increasingly skillful at undermining and breaking down common EU positions that target and embarrass China’s human rights record. in international human rights fora. Since the late-1990s, Chinese officials have used the language of human rights to showcase China’s success in achieving second-generation (economic, social and cultural) rights, while downplaying its shortfalls in first-generation (civil and political) rights. This paper suggests framing and understanding the interactions between between China and the EU in human rights diplomatic fora as a confrontation between two normative identities: one, a declining 'normative power' promoting a Western-style universalist conception of human rights norms (Manners 2002; Follesdal) and the other, a rising power promoting a culturally relative notion of human rights to protect its conception of national sovereignty and great-power status. Using concepts by Western (J. Donnelly, A. Follesdal, RJ Vincent) and Chinese/other Asian scholars (Yan Xuetong, Ting Wai, A. Acharya), this paper attempts to make sense of how and why the EU is losing its edge in human rights debates with China.