China seeks to recalibrate the human rights system to its interests, but does face constraints. Concerned states should respond not with a narrow focus on China itself but with an ambitious global strategy that engages with the priorities of China’s allies.
China has worked hard for the influence it has accrued in the human rights system. One of the questions for the future of human rights diplomacy is what China intends to achieve with this influence in the long term. This is a subject of debate among analysts of Chinese foreign policy. The key question, as one academic reflected, is whether China’s goal is ‘to make the world safe for autocracy, or to make it no longer safe for democracy’. In other words, is Beijing’s objective to blunt the threat to its interests from the human rights system by rendering it as ineffective as possible? Or does it intend to remake the human rights machinery entirely, as part of an international system recalibrated to China’s worldview?
The answer is tied to speculation about the future of the CCP and its leadership. As one observer of China explained, the history of the People’s Republic is often interpreted as cycles of relative openness and repression, and the Xi Jinping era belongs to the latter. But even the most optimistic reading of the long-term future would point towards growing pressures from China that progressively threaten to weaken the human rights system in significant ways.
In its overall engagement with the multilateral system, China has generally tended to position itself as a responsible actor. It is taking an ever more active approach. In line with its rapid economic growth, it has become the second-largest donor to the UN regular budget, at 15 per cent in 2022, well ahead of third-placed Japan (8 per cent) and quickly catching up with the US (22 per cent, which is the upper limit). China’s best-known contribution is in the area of peacekeeping, where its contribution of personnel is more than double the combined total of the other P5 members, and its financial contribution is second only to that of the US. Chinese nationals lead four of the 15 specialized UN agencies – one interviewee stressed that, in terms of committee posts, China ‘leaves no position unfilled’. There are 27 UN entities with a base in China (although OHCHR is not among them). The Chinese government has regularly stated its commitment to the SDGs, while UN secretary-general Guterres has attempted to make a conceptual link between the SDGs and the BRI, notably at the Belt and Road Forum in May 2019.
But there is a different tenor to China’s engagement with the human rights system. The foundations of the system were put in place before the People’s Republic of China joined the UN in 1971, replacing the Republic of China (Taiwan), and the CCP has always seen it as an unwelcome constraint. It was not surprising, therefore, that ‘Western freedom, democracy, and human rights’ were enumerated as existential threats to the CCP in a leaked internal party communiqué from 2012, known as Document 9.
China’s influence in the human rights sphere is a function of its economic and political heft, both of which have grown substantially over the past two decades.
China’s influence in the human rights sphere is a function of its economic and political heft, both of which have grown substantially over the past two decades. A combination of BRI investments and debt purchases have tied numerous countries financially to China. But there are also strong economic disincentives against standing up to Beijing’s interests. China’s withdrawal from trade talks with Norway after the Nobel Committee awarded its 2010 Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, its freezing of many Australian imports after the Australian government called for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 in 2020, and its economic and diplomatic ostracism of Lithuania after the latter invited the Taipei government to open a representative office under the name of Taiwan, all stand as warnings against countries less able to withstand such pressure.
However, these assertive responses to Global North countries are part of China’s broader diplomatic positioning and its proposition to the Global South. China’s economic investments in developing countries do not automatically translate into influence or uncritical support, but they do offer a welcome alternative to economic and political dependency on countries in the Global North, and there is genuine admiration for China’s economic achievements and the political system which is perceived to have enabled them. The right to development narrative championed by China resonates with countries in the Global South, especially in Africa, for reasons of both principle and politics. Similarly, an interviewee from an Asian country said, ‘if they bring jobs to our country, that is part of human rights too’. China has been successful in building a network: the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDC) constitutes a bloc of sorts, on which it can count for support. As one interviewee stated, China’s narrative about restoring multilateralism comes from a position of confidence that it has the necessary support. It is a way of saying to its opponents, ‘count the votes’.
The most basic task for Beijing in its human rights diplomacy is self-protection. It has proven adept at shielding itself from criticism with the aid of other countries. The annual resolutions on Tiananmen Square in the UNCHR were a regular embarrassment, but China developed a long record of defeating them with the use of ‘no-action’ resolutions proposed by its allies. It has been able to continue in much the same vein in the HRC. For example, Foot has shown how, during China’s 2018 UPR, it was able to stack the floor with friendly comments and push NGOs aside. This was consistent with its record as the most active country in obstructing NGO accreditations, and forcibly preventing individuals from testifying at the UN. China has used similar tactics in relation to alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang. Numerous statements of condemnation at the HRC and UNGA have been countered with statements defending China, which have a larger number of countries in support. That China’s group of supporters has gradually dwindled in size, and that China received the fewest votes of those states elected at the most recent HRC election, led then executive director of HRW Ken Roth to speculate in 2021 that:
That remains possible but has certainly yet to materialize. The visit of the UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, to China in May 2022, was widely criticized as a public relations victory for China. The long-awaited OHCHR report on the human rights situation in Xinjiang was released by Bachelet around nine minutes before her term expired on 31 August 2022. The 46-page report was accompanied by a 122-page response from China. The report was hard-hitting and concluded that China’s actions against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang ‘may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.’ In the September 2022 HRC session, the US and others proposed a draft decision noting the report and calling for a debate at the next Council session. However, this proposal was narrowly defeated – only the second time a resolution had ever failed a vote in the HRC. It remains to be seen whether appetite remains for a fresh attempt and, if so, which countries may be persuaded to change their position.
But while China has continued its success in avoiding censure, it also has a more proactive agenda. A Chatham House report published in 2012 concluded that:
This analysis has broadly been vindicated in the decade since.
The main elements of China’s agenda for the human rights system have remained relatively consistent in the post-Tiananmen years: to constitute it as a system based on ‘dialogue’ and technical cooperation between states, with little or no place for criticism, and no meaningful role for civil society.
One important element of China’s effort to undermine or neuter the system is the blandness and ambiguity of the language it uses on human rights. This deployment of ‘discourse power’ is supported by hundreds of Confucius Institutes located around the world, and the creation of around 15 human rights centres within Chinese universities. This strategy can boast a measure of success. Since 2017, Xi Jinping has embraced the concept translated benignly into English as ‘community of shared future for humankind’. This phrase captures the idea of a collective with a shared fate. It has been summarized by Malin Oud as ‘a vision for a world order that emphasises sovereignty, respect for different political systems, and “win-win cooperation” among states’, in what amounts to a repudiation of an accountability-based system. In March 2017, the CCP noted its success in introducing the phrase into a resolution for the first time during the 34th session of the HRC. In the following session, held in June 2017, the HRC adopted China’s first solo-sponsored resolution – putting forth its discourse on the right to development – which has since become a biennial resolution. In December 2017, the Beijing Declaration that emerged from the first South–South Human Rights Forum advanced several core ideas from China’s human rights doctrine in the name of a wider group of developing countries. China also successfully sponsored a series of annual HRC resolutions on ‘Promoting mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of human rights’ in 2018, 2020 and 2021. In February 2021, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi used his remarks to the HRC to call for a ‘people-centered approach’ to human rights, with a view to promoting ‘all-round development of the people’. The language is benign, denuded of accountability and plays to the CCP’s own domestic source of legitimacy – namely, its economic record. On its own terms, China is de facto a human rights success story.
In February 2021, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi used his remarks to the HRC to call for a ‘people-centered approach’ to human rights, with a view to promoting ‘all-round development of the people’.
There are also signs that the attack on country resolutions may be yielding success. Within the HRC, country resolutions are passing with narrower margins and higher levels of abstentions. In October 2020, the HRC saw a resolution defeated in a vote for the first time: a proposal by the Netherlands to extend the mandate of the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen was defeated by 21 votes to 18, with seven countries abstaining. Although this result was mainly attributed to the efforts of Saudi Arabia, which was not on the Council, most votes against came from the LMDC and countries which have become economically dependent on China, such as Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Gabon. As one diplomat remarked, ‘to understand the way countries vote, you have to look at market share’.
Yet it is also important to acknowledge the constraints on China in its pursuit of this agenda for the human rights system. First, there are limits as to how far the countries China claims to represent are willing to accept its leadership. The October 2021 China-sponsored HRC resolution on the ‘Negative impact of the legacies of colonialism on the enjoyment of human rights’ was a case in point. Four African states abstained on this resolution, which was building on momentum that had been growing after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, US, in May 2020. The lack of unequivocal support from African states was arguably a rebuke to China, giving the impression that China had jumped on an anti-American bandwagon where it lacked the credibility to lead. One interviewee highlighted that China’s conduct in Africa is itself sometimes seen in neo-colonialist terms, and many people in the continent had just cause to resent China’s attempt to co-opt an anti-colonialist agenda that rightfully belongs with them.
Second, Chinese ‘discourse power’ is still limited in its impact. An interviewee noted that while the ‘shared future’ language from President Xi has been absorbed into several negotiated texts, it has not resonated widely. This is perhaps partly due to its vagueness (at least in English-language translation). One reading of this is that it reflects a structural weakness within the CCP: China has largely borrowed ideas from elsewhere in its critique of human rights, such as from the intellectual tradition of Third World Approaches to International Law, and the linear, state-centric approaches that underlie the rights to subsistence and development – while consistent with Communist traditions – are now considered outdated. China has been able to exploit long-standing tensions such as those around accountability or development, but it has not been able to generate new ideas or risk engaging in detail in case this should lead to internal disagreements. The superficiality and unoriginality of China’s human rights discourse may constrain how far it is able to spread.
Third, China is also open to charges of inconsistency that undermine its legitimacy. As Foot explains, the credibility of China’s overall proposition on human rights is compromised by its domestic record. It relies on:
This credibility deficit is especially problematic for China in its appeal to countries that place some value on civil and political rights or have other reasons to be concerned about human rights in China. China’s vacillating support for Russia since its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has been another example of incoherence, as the invasion was an obvious violation of the normative basis for China’s discourse on human rights – namely sovereignty and non-interference.
While China does not enjoy unfettered influence, it has nevertheless had some success in weakening the international human rights system. This is a challenge that should be answered by states interested in defending that system. But there are few options available for challenging China directly, as the failed Xinjiang vote in the HRC demonstrated. China has a long record of rebuffing direct criticism with the help of other states and has shown little vulnerability to ‘name and shame’ tactics. It has now begun to position itself as a leader on human rights rather than simply seeking to evade censure. As one interviewee said, China senses a shift of power away from the US-led bloc towards the rest of the world, which it sees itself as leading; and China now wants a multilateral system in which it is unconstrained by values-based ideology and can exercise maximum sovereign autonomy.
To counter this challenge, other states will need to do at least two things. The first is to make the case for the kind of multilateral engagement that the human rights system historically calls for. This means embracing the full spectrum of rights and upholding the legitimacy of supranational institutions that guard against the relativization or weakening of rights. The continued failure of the US to ratify the ICESCR and the UK government’s threats to limit the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights help China by validating a ‘pick and choose’ approach based on a hierarchy of rights, and by legitimizing the state sovereignty argument.
The second is for the major powers (especially, but not only, in the Global North) to recognize that they need a global strategy, rather than just a China strategy. The success of China’s challenge to the human rights system rests on the strength of its appeal and its leverage over the countries it seeks to represent. If Global North countries want to counteract the influence of China in this regard, they need to understand how narrow their own agenda has become and develop an alternative proposition that responds to the priorities of China’s constituency. A human rights discourse based exclusively on ideas of democracy and fundamental freedoms will not be sufficient. The new proposition should rather focus on the areas of inequality and economic development, and be rooted in strong commitments to economic, social and cultural rights and the SDGs. This would not be without precedent: Steven Jensen has noted that the US had been ‘the strongest proponent of the most advanced implementation measures on economic, social and cultural rights’ during the debates leading up to the ICESCR in 1966, with Italy in support. This is a legacy to which the US and its allies should return.
