Explaining China's Continued Resistance Towards Human Rights Norms: A Historical Legal Analysis

By Srini Sitaraman Assistant Professor Department of Government and International Relations Clark University

Published by the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ACDIS Occasional Paper series
June 2008

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Summary: The People's Republic of China has made significant strides in updating its commercial law, introduced a series of environmental regulations, and utilized international legal statutes to reform various aspects of its municipal legal system. However, problems persist in the area of compliance with and implementation of international human rights regimes. This paper examines why China is wary of international human rights law and why it has difficulties complying with international human rights norms. Specifically, this article seeks to understand why PR China is antagonistic towards human rights law, while it has been welcoming of other forms of legal reform, institutional development, and foreign cooperation.

Sitaraman argues that China's compliance problem and its inability to fully internalize international human rights norms can be explained by the combination of the following three factors: (1) Confucian influence and imperial institutionalist heritage, (2) Maoist socialist order, and (3) authoritarian-developmentalism. These three structural factors have interacted in complex ways at different political junctures to inhibit China from fully internalizing international human rights norms, thereby affecting its ability to successfully comply with its treaty obligations.