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Nicols Velsquez US Foreign Policy
The Bilateral Scrutiny on Human Rights between the USA and the
PRC, 2000-2010
1. Objectives
This paper will compare certain official discourses on Human
Rights made by the governments of the
United States of America (USA) and the Peoples Republic of China
(PRC) published between 2001 and
2010. More concretely, we will compare documents on the
bilateral scrutiny, also known as Human Rights
records, between the USA and the PRC. The general goal is to
identify the co-constitutive dynamics of the
debate on Human Rights, a debate where we expect to find
insightful elements on recent transformations
in the international sphere and the evolution of United States
Foreign Policy. For instance, the rise of
China, the swifts between unilateralism and multilateralism of
the last two US administrations, the
imperatives posed by the latest economic crisis, and the
continuous violations of diverse categories of
Human Rights are punctuations that we expect to find reflect on
their debates.
Background
We start with the principle that Human Rights are values that
characterized the discourses for regime
legitimacy. In their traditional and still prevalent
interpretation, they are a legacy from the liberal
revolutions in Europe and the Americas during the XVIIIth and
XIXth centuries. Since their adoption as a
core guiding principle of the United Nations in 1945, Human
rights have played an important role in
shaping the political discourse of a World led by western
powers, with the USA at the lead. During the last
few decades, and especially after the end of the Cold War, a
Universalist discourse that stresses a
preeminence of Human Rights over States sovereignty has
developed. (Forsythe 2011) In the realm of
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politics, Human Rights have been polemic and debated concepts
that, in Jean Cohens words, are
ultimately unintelligible if one does not understand the
political stakes in historical context. (Cohen
2008, 579)
While we recognize that liberal readings of Human Rights are
essentially a discourse on the limits of the
state power over their citizens (thus are negative rights), we
also acknowledge that this is not the only
valid interpretation. (Foot 2000) For instances, the official
discourse on Human Rights from the Chinese
State draws on Marxist and Chinese concepts to define them as
social and economic guarantees that
require the state to exercise its power. This illustrates how,
in their role as legitimizing discourses,
different notions of Human Rights are advanced by competing
actors as tools of foreign policy and
international relations. In a co-constitutive fashion, one
government discourse on another states Human
Rights records is at a same time a statement about itself, and
thus stands as a legitimacy claim toward
international and domestic audiences. This is very important to
have in mind, because at the core of the
bilateral human rights debates are the questions over authority,
hegemony, sovereignty, trade and regime
types, all concepts related to both the ideas and material
forces that join international and domestic
politics together. (Gourevitch 1978, 883)
Indeed, while the United States has unilaterally reviewed other
states Human Rights Records for decades,
China challenged what it sees as an illegitimate attitude as a
self-proclaimed world judge of human
rights. (Information Office of the State Council 2002, 1) Since
the turn of the century, a growing number
of countries have voiced their dissatisfaction with the way in
which the USA employs Human Rights in its
Foreign Policy. The 2001 ousting of the USA from the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights
(UNCHR) by an unprecedented majority vote was reflective of how
this growing criticism materialized in
diplomatic actions. Nonetheless, while this action might be
praised by those critics of the United States
power and or unilateral practices, it cannot uncritically be
applauded by those committed with
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humanitarian principles. The UNCHR that followed included a
number of states with the darkest human
rights records by most standard. Among members and chairs we
founds regimes like Sudan (stained by
the Darfur Ethnic Cleansings), Nepal (at a time when the
constitution had been suspended by the
authoritarian monarch), and Saudi Arabia (an absolutist kingdom
lacking in, among others, women rights).
The role that China, spearheading an African voting bloc, and
that Venezuela as a senior-partner of a pro-
Cuban block, played in the ousting of the USA were open secrets.
(For a news media analysis, see Kahn
(2006); for a policy analysis see Wenping (2007))
These maneuvers exemplify the role of Human Rights discourse
within foreign policies that wed like to
stress: they are constantly employed as a political tool of
legitimation. They are a tool for power struggle.
2. Human Rights in International Relations and Foreign
Policy
Western academic accounts of Human Rights policies usually fall
into three categories (or their
combination): idealists, realists and constructivists. The first
take the Human Rights ideals and the actors
that support them as determinant, the second subordinate any
other issue to the conceptual prevalence
to national power and security and thus place HR in a marginal
category. Constructivists deal with how
notions of identity and legitimacy constitute the basis for the
idealist and realists categories.
According to David P. Forsythe, it makes little sense to expect
thorough consistency in the overall Human
Right policy of one state towards all the other states.
(Forsythe 2011, 770) Not even a single administration
is likely to be able to set up a consistent humanitarian policy,
simply because the Human Right ideals imply
universal constraints framed too far away from the pragmatism
required in administering a state in its
foreign and domestic politics. In Forsythes accounts, for
instance, every single US administration has
found necessary to relativize whatever concept of Human Rights
it had. They invariably end up with a
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murky balance of political compromises, and submitting their
utopian ideals to the needs of a
conceptual national interest, usually determined by the national
security. (Forsythe 2011, 772)
This paper is informed by the notion that the discourses
constituting the debates on Human Rights merit
attention not just because of the normative value of their
ideals, nor despite the expected pragmatic
subordination to other dimensions of Foreign Policy, but
essentially because they mirror the evolution of
international relations and political regimes. We refer to the
relations of power and authority between
the USA as the greatest world power and hemispheric hegemon on
the one hand, and the PRC as a rising
regional power.
In ideological terms, this constitutes a brief peak over what
could be the near future of the role and that
liberal ideals will play in a multipolar world where emerging
powers, not all of them characterized by
liberal regimes by western standards, will have a greater say in
world politics. In fact, politicians and
academics are both wondering and debating what implications will
the emergence of China in the
international sphere have over various current international
regimes, including those of Human Rights.
Liberals (and US Realists) fear that the Chinese rise will curb
down Western influence on human rights
standards over third (and less developed) countries. (Nathan and
Scobell 2012, 325) Of course, others
doubt the legitimacy of western or Asian or, for that matter,
any foreign imposition of human rights
standards as hegemonic wrongs rather than cosmopolitan goods.
(Benhabib 2009, 695) Finally, there are
those who back the notion of universal human rights that agree
with the role that in their support the
international community (or at least the most powerful nations)
can play, but are undecided on how
would the increasing Chinese engagement into Human rights
debates and regimes will in the constitutions
of those regimes. (Hearn and Len-Manrquez 2011, 3) It is
nonetheless key to take into account that
these engagements into human rights debates are not just a
matter of government and states, but also
an issue were the population is involved and plays a role.
(Brzezinski 2007, 201-202)
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Human Rights, Sovereignties and States play different roles in
the contending American and Chinese
narratives. In western liberal thought, sovereign individuals,
freely derive from their innate rights the
provisions that build social and political orders. In this view,
State are drawn their legitimacy from
providing their constituents with security, justice and the
guarantee of not stepping into their innate
rights. Human Rights and peoples sovereignty are thus, at the
origin of the political equation. In the
Chinese view, influenced by Marxism and illustrated by the
countrys own history, the State creates the
conditions for people to have rights. The State, as in the New
China, draws its legitimacy from removing
imperialist imposition from its people and territory, but this
ideal capacity is only attained through full
sovereignty. State sovereignty is placed as a precondition and
human rights, as all other rights, are seen
as a subsequent construction.1
Historically, but specially as a soft power narrative born
during the XXth century, the USA has built a
narrative of itself as the Leader of the Free World, a champion
of Democracy and Human Rights, and a
nation supportive of those oppressed people struggling for
liberal democratic emancipation. This claim,
and a critical and ahistorical metanarrative, has nonetheless
been employed as a domestic and foreign
legitimizing discourse for decades, (Nye 2008, 96-99) and the
two administrations under review in this
article were not the exception. (Hancock 2007) On the other
hand, the Chinese state also boasts a
legitimizing narrative, drawn from its recent ideology, and
interests. In their view, the Communist Party
of China led a revolution to build the New China in the interest
of the whole Chinese people, which for
centuries had been humiliated and subordinated by foreign powers
that gained too much influence over
Chinese people and territories. In this view, the New China was
built as an anti-colonialist endeavor,
that thorough reaching true sovereignty is able to enforce the
rights of its citizens. In the international
1 In fact, most western law theories, as opposite to the liberal
contractual political theory, are adamant on the
necessity of the State as constructor of the rights and laws.
(Benhabib 2009, 693)
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scene, China represents both a leading developing nation and a
key supporter of national sovereignty as
a path for world peace and internal harmony. (Information Office
of the State Council 2000, 3)
This paper will draw from two main primary sources published
between 2000 and 2010. The United States
Department of State (DOS) annual Country Reports on Human rights
Practices (CRHRP) for China, and its
Chinese direct answer, the Council of States (CoS) Human Rights
Record of the United State (HRRUS).
Both sources edit massive amounts of anecdotical evidence taken
from open sources, like media outlets
and NGOs. (See Table 1 for a comparison of dimensions) For
instance the 2001 DOS Country Report on
China has almost 700 hundred individual cases, excluding its
chapters on Tibet, Hong Kong and Macau.
What each country is identifying in the other, with such detail,
is very telling. Nonetheless, this paper will
just try to follow the main patterns of their discourse,
identifying with the help of secondary sources, the
main diplomatic and legitimacy goals that our three regimes want
to achieve with their employ oh Human
Rights discourse. Further, finer, reseach could be done to
deliver greater results. Saddly, this paper wont
be able to go that far.
TABLE 1. REPORTS LENGTHS
Length in Words (English Editions)
Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
CRHRP China 63.742 33.35 56.639 36.924 33.384 31.621 31.956
49.12 30.045 29.073
HRRUS 5.861 6.733 7.445 8.392 8.840 8.826 8.804 9.251 8.672
8.754
Source: The author.
3. Case studies
The United States
Our main US source is the Department of States Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices (CRHRP),
delivered annually to the US Congress during the first quarter
since 1977. We reviewed the reports
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published by the Bush and the first three years of the Obama
administrations, those covering the events
from 2001 to 20102.
The introductions format varies from year to year, and
especially among different Secretaries of State. Yet
they tend to introduce the report within the overall Foreign
Policy of the current administration, to invoke
the commitment of the USA to their founding liberal and
democratic principles (more prevalent during
the Bush years) and/or to United Nations and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (stressed during
the Obama years). The Introduction presents, in one way or
another, the leading role of the United States.
Then, the function allocated to Human Rights and Democracy as
purveyor of security, and stability at
home or in the international sphere is lauded. The moral
imperative that gives meaning to those policies
is clearly stated. The connection, or securitization discourse,
that links the existence of cases where liberal
Human Rights do not prevail with the presence of perceived
threats to World Harmony and National
Security is evident. (See Table 2. Select introductory
discourses)
TABLE 2. SELECT INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSES
Secretary Powell quoting President Bush, 2001 Report
Secretary Clinton, 2008 Report
As President Bush declared in his State of the Union Address,
"In a single instant, we realized that this will be a decisive
decade in the history of liberty, that we've been called to a
unique role in human events. Rarely has the world faced a choice
more clear or consequential. ...We choose freedom and the dignity
of every life." This choice reflects both U.S. values and the
universality of human rights that steadily have gained
international acceptance over the past 50 years []
Guaranteeing the right of every man, woman, and child to
participate fully in society and live up to his or her God-given
potential is an ideal that has animated our nation since its
founding. It is enshrined in the United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights[]
We will make this a global effort that reaches beyond government
alone. We will work together with nongovernmental organizations,
businesses, religious leaders, schools and universities, and
individual citizens.
2 The Reports on the events from a given year are delivered in
the first quarter of the following year. Thus the
Report on the year 2000 was published in 2001.
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America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they
are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. No
nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them.
We have no intention of imposing our culture. But America will
always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity:
The rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for
women, private property, free speech, equal justice and religious
tolerance.
Our commitment to human rights is driven by faith in our moral
values, and also by the knowledge that we enhance our own security,
prosperity, and progress when people in other lands emerge from
shadows and shackles to gain the opportunities and rights we enjoy
and treasure.
Chapter I, Human Rights and National Security.
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2001/8147.htm
Preface
http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/frontmatter/118982.htm
Then comes a highlights section, were a selection of cases are
presented to praise their advance or warn
over their setbacks. This section works like an Executive
Summary of over 15-20 pages in average.
Considering the length of the country reports and the more than
190 countries reviewed each year, it is
very likely that the general reader would refer to the
introduction for meaningful information. The PRC
was very important to the US discourse all along. China was
referred in all of the reviewed introductions
(See Table 3. The PRC in the USHRR)
TABLE 3. THE PRC IN THE USHRR
Report Qualification HR Dimensions
Highlighted
2001 Positive -
Negative PI; RF; WR
2002 Positive IC
Negative PR
2003 Positive BD; TM
Negative PR; RF; TM; WR
2004 Positive BD; IC
Negative BD; FP; RF
2005 Positive -
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Negative FP; IC; PR; RF; TM
2006 Positive -
Negative FP; IC; PR; RF
2007 Positive FP
Negative FP; FS; PR; RF
2008 Positive -
Negative FP; FS; PR; RF; TM
2009 Positive BD
Negative FP; FS; PR; RF; TM
2010 Positive BD
Negative FP; FS; PR; RF; TM
Code: BD = Bilateral Dialogue; FP = Freedom of the Press and
Information; FS = Freedom of Speech; HT = Human Trafficking; IC =
Institutional Changes; PI = Personal Integrity; PR = Political
Rights; RF = Religious Freedoms; TM = Treatment of Minorities; WR =
Workers Rights.
Source: The author, from the 2001-2010 DOS Human Rights
Reports.
We can easily identify how China is much more denounced than
congratulated on its human rights
records. In fact, most positive mentions are related to holding
bilateral dialogues on Human Rights, not
the actual improvement in Chinese policies and records. In this
section China is much more denounced
than congratulated. In fact, most positive mentions are related
to holding bilateral dialogues on Human
Rights, not the actual improvement in Chinese policies and
records. Interestingly, the greater emphasis is
placed on the evolution of freedom of the access to information
(especially through internet) of foreign
media outlets. Furthermore, from mid-decade onwards, a second
theme concerning freedom of the press
through the judicial and police harassment of journalists
becomes a constant. A second strong concern is
related to political rights, expressed mainly as freedom of
association and the right to assemble or to
protest. The DOS shows its concern on how detractors are
constrained to mobilize or publicly express
their views.
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Moving from the common highlights section, and into the specific
report towards China, three additional
themes were commonly stated in the following order: First, a
description of China as a totalitarian one
party state, then denounce on the violation of religious
freedoms of cultural minorities, and finally, an
exposition on how the party and central authorities interfered
with both the judiciary and the lawyers, in
fact hampering the rule of law. With minor year to year
modifications, the following lines appeared during
the whole decades within the first two pages:
TABLE 4. ON THE RULE OF LAW
2000-2006 2007-2010
The judiciary was not independent, and the lack of due process
in the judicial system remained a serious problem. Few Chinese
lawyers were willing to represent criminal defendants. [] The
authorities routinely violated legal protections.
A lack of due process and restrictions on lawyers further
limited progress toward rule of law, with serious consequences for
defendants who were imprisoned or executed following proceedings
that fell far short of international standards. The party and state
exercised strict political control of courts and judges, conducted
closed trials, and carried out administrative detention
Source of example: CRHR China, 2003. 10 CRHR China, 2009. 3
Interestingly, all reports during the Bush administration had
both a paragraph that addressed the (albeit
slow) liberalization and privatization of the economy as a key
tool to improve citizens liberties, and a line
placing the legitimacy of the Communist Party as derived, among
other restrictions, in the material
improvement of living standards. The 2003 report read:
The Party's authority rested primarily on the Government's
ability to maintain social stability;
appeals to nationalism and patriotism; Party control of
personnel, media, and the security
apparatus; and continued improvement in the living standards of
most of the country's 1.3 billion
citizen[]
Rising urban living standards; greater independence for
entrepreneurs; the reform of the public
sector, including government efforts to improve and accelerate
sales of state assets and to
improve management of remaining government monopolies; and
expansion of the non-state
sector increased workers' employment options and significantly
reduced state control over
citizens' daily lives. CRHR China, 2003. 1-2
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Such analysis linking the economic model and sustained growth to
rights and welfare were absent from
the Reports of the Obama era.
The Peoples Republic of China
The Peoples Republic of China relations with the international
Human Rights regime of both the post
WWII and post Cold War have been tense. Under these regimes,
Human rights are distinctly a western
and liberal concept, promoted by the powers that proved hostile
to New China during the early Cold
War. Furthermore, after the Cold War, the Universalist discourse
that characterized Human Rights
discourse at the UNs Security Council was clearly in
contradiction with the PRCs cherished enshrinement
of State sovereignty as a safeguard against imperialism. For a
number of reasons, the traditional western
Human Rights conceptualization had to have a hard time
internalizing into Chinese structures. According
to value surveys and policy analysis, this seems holds true for
both leadership and society.
There is a growing academic understanding on how China engaged,
at its own pace, the international
Human Rights regime since the late 1970s. (See Foot 2000;
Dingding 2009) According to Dingding, along
the process staterd by Deng Xiaoping to reimagine Chinas
identity away from dogmatic class struggle
and more into a modern socialsit state, the Chinese leadership
began a process of self reflection around
the changes needed to integrate into the world economy. Human
Rights were then seen as a concept
required to deal with the west, but that could be debated and
framed in terms favorable to chinese views
and interests.
Much prior to the bilateral debate that interests us, the PRC
ahd already engaged into the international
Human Rights Regime, and therefore, its debate. Concurrent with
its opening and going out strategies,
a definition of Human Rights with Chinese Characteristics where
developped as much for domestic as for
international consumption. As we will develop further in the
next pages, the main characterization of
these Chinese HR are a positive understanding of the role of the
state in assuring the provision of material
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needs, a prevalescence of social and economical rights
understood as collectively attained over the liberal
notion of political and civil rights where the individual
protection prevails over the collective structures,
and the defense of state sovereignity over imperialistic or
hegemonic employ of Human Rights to impose
foreign wills over lesser powers. Thus, during the 1980s and
1990s, China complimented the images of
Peoples Liberation Army tanks rolling over public spaces filled
with people demanding certain liberties
and rights, with a diplomatic effort to ratify a number of
Humanr Right treaties and sitting in numerous
multilateral and bilateral Human Rights committees.
In 1999, for the first time, the Information Office of the
Council of State of the PRC published in the
domestic media a response to the unilateral anuanl Country
Report on Hurman Rights Practices by the US
Department of State. The name of this response was the Human
Rights Records of the United States
(HRRUS), 1998. It was, as its first paragraph stated, a response
to United States unilaterality and self
proclaimed authority.
[The United States] posing as a "human rights judge" once again,
it attacked the human rights
records of more than 190 countries and regions.
Ignoring the actual situation, the report blamed China for
committing "widespread and well
documented human rights abuses," but did not say a single word
about the human rights problems
in the United States. In fact, the U.S., which often grades
human rights records of other countries,
won low marks from its own people and the international
community. (HRRUS, 1999 1)
While the first two HRRUS were unstructured collections of
anecdotic references and logic flaws on the
domestic violations of Human Rights by the United States, they
amounted to little more than a discourse
denouncing that the US was not so much different, that during
the previous year it had suffered
humanitarian problems of its own. Nonetheless, since the 2001,
and following the structure provided by
a review on domestic Chinese progress on Human Rights, the HRRUS
starts to clearly engage the debate
in a way consistent with the legitimacy quests from the Chinese
government toward its citizens and
toward the world. From then on, the State Council publication
was promoting the comparative
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advantages of the Chinese social model by denouncing growing
racial, social, and economic inequalities
along with rampant violence and crime rates in the US. (See
Table 5. Report's General Outlines).
To whom were this official narratives directed to? To Chinese
elites, but also to a larger public opinion
with access to the debates of international issues, especially
the global order. Furthermore, the reports
are reproduced in important newspapers that target both regular
citizens and the Anglophones, and are
introduced by narratives on how China hits back or retorted the
US criticism and distortion of its
human rights situation. (Xinhua News Agency 2013, 1) Were they
targeted also for American audiences?
Perhaps they are. But they do not seem to have reached any
significant American audience outside the
circles of Sinologist and Human Rights specialists. Judging only
by their presence in the website discourse
of the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the Chinese Permanent
Mission to UN-Geneva (the epicenter
of UN Human Rights activities), it seems likely that their role
in diplomatic circles is also greater.
It is very interesting to note that the Human Rights Records of
the United States (HRRUS) follow two
narratively intertwined structures. On the one hand, their
layout resembles in basic order and categories
the layout form the DOS Country Reports. On the other hand, they
broadly follow the outline presented
by the Council of States 2000 (Fifty Years) and 2005 (Chinas
Progress) Human Rights papers. These two
offered a framework were Human Rights were defined mostly in
positive terms (or rights of the people to
access certain things), instead of the traditional liberal
negative definitions (or the limits of the state
towards the citizens), in consistence with the left wing
materialist interpretation of HR. Furthermore, they
defined the advancing of Human Rights as derived from economic
and social progress first, and as
developments of subsidiary political improvements later. While
to fulfill the first required substantial
improvements in living conditions, to comply with the second it
is enough to assert this or that right in the
law and the constitution.
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TABLE 5. REPORT'S GENERAL OUTLINES
Pre 2004
Human Rights Records of the USA
Post 2004 Human Rights Records of the USA
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
I. Lack of Safeguard for Life, Freedom and Personal Safety II.
Serious Rights Violations by Law Enforcement Departments III.
Plight of the Poor, Hungry and Homeless IV. Worrying Conditions for
Women and Children V. Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination VI.
Wantonly Infringing upon Human Rights of Other Countries
I. On Life, Property and Security of Person II. On Human Rights
Violations by Law Enforcement and Judicial Departments III. On
Civil and Political Rights IV. On Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights V. On Racial Discrimination VI. On the Rights of Women,
Children, the Elderly and the Disabled VII. On the United States'
Violation of Human Rights in Other Countries
Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including
Freedom From: Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to
Change Their Government Section 4 Governmental Attitude Regarding
International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged
Violations of Human Rights Section 5 Discrimination Based on Race,
Sex, Religion, Disability, Language, or Social Status Section 6
Workers Rights
In a general sense, these documents allow us to identify the
terms of the debate. Both the 2000 and 2004
papers on Human Rights constitute an answer to Western critiques
from Chinese determined
perspectives. The Fifty Years papers begin with an historical
perspective that allows us to interpret how
the PRC tries to frame the conditions and definitions of the
debate in its favor.
Its initial chapter defines the existence of a New China as a
prerequisite to develop and guarantee Human
Rights. This is a move to historically justify two historically
supported narratives. First, In Old China the
people had few rights and where oppressed by the elites. New
China brought the conditions to advance
Human Rights, by defeating and cleaning the scourges left by the
feudal, colonial, capitalist past. And the
foremost conditions where national sovereignty, state
leadership, and the peoples commitment, in that
particular order. In the words of the State Council:
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In the old semi-colonial, semi-feudal China, the broad masses
were oppressed by imperialism,
feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism, and had no human rights at
all. After New China was
founded in 1949, the Chinese government and people waged a
series of large-scale campaigns,
rapidly sweeping away the dregs left over from the old society,
and established a basic political
system which could promote and protect human rights, so that the
nation and society took on an
entirely new look and a new epoch was started for the progress
of human rights in China.
(Information Office of the State Council 2000, 1)
Second, once New China emerged from the ashes of the Civil War,
the (imperial, capitalist and United
States led) West did everything it could to isolate it, trough
war, total containment and non-recognition.
The confident and stubborn resistance of New China, epitomized
by the wise steering of their leaders,
the coordination of the CPC and the commitment of its people,
allowed the PRC to successfully defeat
their adversaries and to gain a genuine and complete
independence. This also marked a defeat of the
aggressive West, at the hands of the Chinese Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence. A West that received
with aggression the peaceful project of a more egalitarian and
independent Chinese society has its
credentials as a Human Rights champion questioned. But, also of
great importance, the need for a strong
Chinese state that is able to uphold independence is set as a
prerequisite for the advancement of Human
Rights. In their words:
The genuine and complete independence of China has created the
fundamental premise for the
Chinese people's selection of their own social and political
systems and a path for development
with the initiative in their own hands, for China's opening to
the outside world, for steady and
healthy development, and for the uninterrupted improvement of
human rights in China.
(Information Office of the State Council 2000, 3))
Following chapters would develop the basic notions that national
independence, socialist equalitarianism,
and economic development are the central prerequisites for
positive Human Rights. The access to food,
shelter, education, health and other public services are
underscored. And, of course, such are the basis of
the Communist Party legitimacy.
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The sustained increase in living standards plays a very
interesting co-constitutive script. It does
not escape the DOS attention, which invariably includes the
following sentence somewhere in the opening
paragraphs of every Country report on China: The Party's
authority rested primarily on the Government's
ability to maintain social stability [] and continued
improvement in the living standards of most of the
country's 1.3 billion citizens. (CRHRP China 2001-2009,
Introduction) Nor does the PRC State Council
miss the opportunity to trump such trumpets. For instance, it is
very keen to remind domestic and
international audiences how two quality of life indicators have
grown constantly under the Communist
Party leadership. The first, of great importance for the basic
right to live, is the Engel coefficient, a measure
of food spending over total spending. The second, which we could
label as the Ford coefficient, is a
measure of the increase on private car sales over population.
The positive trends in both are lauded by
the state council as dimensions of the same prosperity that
enhances positive Human Rights. (Fifty Years,
2000, 2 5; Chinas Progress, 2005, 1 2)
Chinas Progress in Human Rights in 2004 was published in 2005
along the lines of Fifty Years. The
historical justificating narrative was replaced by the
celebration of constitutional reforms, a new
commitment toward the scientific rule of law, and international
engagement in Human Rights cooperative
endeavours. All of them, but specially the first and the last,
can be read as influenced by the international
debate on Human rights practices. Furthermore, Chinas Progress
narrative, witch emphasises how
Chinas Institutional changes are armonious with its Peaceful
Rise policies, are in line with the mid
decade Soft Power offensive set to appease neighbouring
countries and the international community.
(Foot 2006, 85)
The very first sentence of the foreword remind the reader that
Human Rights go hand to hand with social
and material well being. The second sentence defined how both
goals were socialist in nature, and
irrecably intertwined Even if just enshrined in the PRC
constitutions half a century after its foundation.
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The third line introduced the renewed commitment of the
Government to behave according to the law
(and not otherwise), and to restrain from breaking citizens
rights. A commitment of the Comunsit Party
to uphold a scientific, democratic, and law abbiding governance
finishes the paragraph. It is indeed a
masterpiece of public relations narrative that answers directly
to the most common complaints of the
DOS on Chinese Human Rights practices. (See Table 6)
TABLE 6. DIFFERENT VIEWS, COMPETING LEGITIMACIES.
Beijings View Washingtons View
China's Progress In Human Rights In 2004 County Reports on Human
Rights Practices 2004
The year 2004 is an important year for China in building a
well-off society in an all-round way. It is also a year that saw
all-round progress in China's human rights undertakings.
In that year, China expressly stated in its Constitution that
"The state respects and safeguards human rights," further
manifesting the essential requirements of the socialist system.
The country faced many economic challenges, including [...]
growing unemployment and [...] the need to construct an effective
social safety net, and rapidly widening income gaps[...]
The Government's human rights record remained poor, and the
Government continued to commit numerous and serious abuses. [...]
However, the Constitution was amended to mention human rights for
the first time.
The Chinese government pressed forward on promoting
administration according to law in an all-round way. It promulgated
the document "Outline of Full Implementation for Promoting
Administration According to Law," which clearly states that China
must basically realize the goal of establishing a government under
the rule of law after making sustained efforts for about 10
years.
The lack of due process was particularly egregious in death
penalty cases, and the accused was often denied a meaningful
appeal. Executions often took place on the day of conviction or on
the denial of an appeal. [] They generally attached higher priority
to suppressing political opposition and maintaining public order
than to enforcing legal norms or protecting individual rights.
A series of effective measures were adopted to standardize and
restrain administrative power, and to safeguard and protect
citizens' rights and interests.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) adopted the "Decision on
Strengthening the Party's Governing Capability," which stresses
that state power should be exercised in a scientific and democratic
manner within the framework of the law, and that human rights
should be respected and protected.
The Party's authority rested primarily on the Government's
ability to maintain social stability; appeals to nationalism and
patriotism; Party control of personnel, media, and the security
apparatus []
The Constitution provides for an independent judiciary; however,
in practice, the Government and the CCP, at both the central and
local levels, frequently interfered in the judicial process and
directed verdicts in many cases.
Foreword, 1-2 Introduction, 1-5
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The notion that we are pressencing a struggle over legitimacies
is reinforced by how the Fifty Years and
Chinas Progress documentsset the framework for the Human Rights
Records of the USA of their following
years. In general terms, those subjects and areas were the PRC
proudly announces its domestic advances
are mirrored in the sections where it criticizes the United
States. (See Table 7. Domestic and International
Prestige Framework. The PRC Prides are Linked to the USA
Shames.)
How China exemplarily vanquished western interventionism and
colonialism as a prerequisite for human
rights (Fifty Years, 1) is linked to the present day violations
of Human Rights in foreign countries by the
USA (HRRU, VI). The praises for the rise in Chinese living
conditions (Fifty Years, 2) are mirrored by the
criticism on the plight for the American poor, hungry and
homeless (HRRU, III); Naturally, the above
come immediately first to the Chinese than the Civil and
Political Rights question, which in turn ranks first
in the US vision. But nonetheless, the PRC takes pride in how
its constitution and legal system guarantee
a set of rights without economic distinction or foreign
interference (Fifty Years, 3), while it bashed the
USA for the biased behavior of its police and judicial forces,
whom constantly abuse or are comparatively
harsher when dealing with vulnerable and needy minorities.
(HRRU, II) In that debate it is very clear how
China tries to demonstrate that out of electoral turnout, it
performs much better than the USA, where
abstention rates and losses of voting rights are very high.
Along similar lines, the formal vision of a racially harmonious
New China society, with equalitarian
access to once vulnerable gender, age and racial minorities
(Fifty Years, 4-5) are compared to the sad
depiction of a fragmented US society, ridden with prostitution,
pervasive substance abuse in vulnerable
populations, and the centennial and transversal racial cleavage
that has not been settled yet (HRRUS,
2001-2009, IV-V).
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TABLE 7. DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL PRESTIGE FRAMEWORK. THE PRC
PRIDES ARE LINKED TO THE USA SHAMES.
Fifty Years of Progress in China's Human Rights, 2000
Human Rights Records of the USA, 2000-2004- [2009]*
1. A Historic Turning Point in the Progress of Human Rights in
China [Victory over feudalism, capitalism, fascism, western
interventionism]
2. Great Improvement in the Rights to
Subsistence and Development, and Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights
3. Civil Rights and Political Rights of
Citizens Effectively Safeguarded
4. Protection of the Rights of Women and Children
5. Equal Rights and Special Protection for
Ethnic Minorities
6. VI. The Cross-Century Development Prospects for Human Rights
in China
I. Lack of Safeguard for Life, Freedom and Personal Safety
II. Serious Rights Violations by Law
Enforcement Departments
III. Plight of the Poor, Hungry and Homeless
IV. Worrying Conditions for Women and
Children
V. Deep-Rooted Racial Discrimination
VI. Wantonly Infringing upon Human Rights of Other Countries
*Minor semantic and chapter orders changes occur in the
2005-2009 reports, but the structure is substantively
untouched.
Table 7 allows us to picture how the HRRU is at a same time a
critique of the USA and a praise of the PRC.
As Steve Chan puts it, there is no getting around the fact that
when one proposes reform for this or that
country, one is engaging in comparative evaluation and policy
prescription. (Chan 2002, 1040) The
comparison of the HRRU with the Fifty Years and Chinas Progress
documents only allow us to make sense
of what are the particular dimension where the PRC does believe
it is a better model, and how it responds
to the questions that a democratic liberal USA poses to its
authoritarian popular democracy model.
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4. Conclusions
There is a debate around the concepts of Human Rights between
China and the US at the international
scene, but there is also a race for legitimacy between both
states and a larger public opinion, domestic
and international. The bilateral scrutiny on Human Rights
records that we have reviewed is one of the
constituted fields of battle between the two states. Taken by
themselves, and in isolation, these two
sources offer what looks like a negligible political tool in the
competition between the two major powers.
But the meanings a perceptions that are printed in them are a
very rich source to understand the overall
disputes over legitimacy and over crucial concepts of
international politics like state and popular
sovereignty, and the struggle between the US as a superpower and
world authority in the one hand,
and a rising China that wants to revise the balance of soft
power.
The United States indeed acts as an authority, which makes very
little changes to its structural approach
to the issue of Human Rights. Nonetheless, it is very
consistent, at least from the Country Reports on
Human Rights Practices point of view. It writes the Country
Reports as if it was standing in higher ground.
And Chinas answer acknowledges this position or attitude of
superiority as a fact, but questions its
legitimacy and offers an alternative.
China is clearly engaging into the debate. That is, it is clear
that China is not only trying to define Human
Right concepts in its own terms, a move that clearly makes part
of debate mechanics, but also tries to
appropriate justifications and gain higher ground on moral
terrain to defend its political process. China,
when talking to the US, is talking to both its domestic audience
and, to a certain point, helping frame its
approach toward other countries.
The bilateral debate will most probably spice up. As long as
both countries employ Human Rights
discourses as means towards legitimacy and tools of soft power,
as long as both States keep their
(meta)narratives of the Leader of the Free World and The
Anti-imperialist New China to gain domestic
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21
and foreign support from popular and state actors, the competing
views on Human rights will keep
clashing.
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22
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