Drawing on little-known sources, Marina Svensson argues that the concept of human rights was invoked by the Chinese people well before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and it has continued to have strong appeal after 1949, both in Taiwan and on the mainland. These largely forgotten debates provide important perspectives on and contrasts to the official PRC line. The author gives particular attention to the issues of power and agency in describing the widely divergent views of official spokespersons, establishment intellectuals and dissidents. Until recently the PRC dismissed human rights as a bourgeois slogan, yet the globalization of human rights and the growing importance of the issue in bilateral and multilateral relations has grown. Thus, the regime has been forced to embrace, or rather appropriate, the language of human rights, an appropriation that continues to be vigorously challenged by dissidents at home and abroad.

An emerging star in the field of US-China policy pairs leading scholars from both the US and China in dialogues about the most crucial elements of the relationship.

Human rights debates can provoke strong reactions, particularly among people of different cultural backgrounds. The debate over Asian values and the use of human rights diplomacy are the most obvious manifestations of divisions between Asia and the West and reflect particular world views and historical legacies. In this new book, scholars from the United States and several Asian countries debate fundamental issues such as 'Asian values', 'peaceful evolution' and cultural imperialism. Provocative and challenging essays analyse the debate between East and West, presenting critical perspectives on globalization and human rights diplomacy. Debating Human Rights is an original contribution to a vital area of debate. It presents a uniquely wide diversity of perspectives on controversial issues and demonstrates how scholars and activists who view the world very differently can nonetheless move these debates forward in a search for common ground.

Even as human rights provide the most widely shared moral language of our time, they also spark highly contested debates among scholars and policymakers. When should states protect human rights? Does the global war on terror necessitate the violation of some rights? Are food, housing, and health care valid human rights? Debating Human Rights introduces the theory and practice of international human rights by examining fourteen controversies in the field. Daniel Chong presents the major arguments on both sides of each debate, encouraging readers to think critically and form their own opinions. Designed for classroom use, the structure of the book makes it easy for students to become familiar with the major political and legal actors in the global human rights system and to understand the practical challenges of protecting civil, political, social, and economic rights.

By exploring the "China factor" in the North Korean human rights debate, this book evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of applying the Chinese development-based approach to human rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The contributors to this book treat the relevance of the Chinese experience to the DPRK seriously and evaluate how it might apply to easing North Korean human rights issues.They engage with the debate about the relevance of the developmental or development-based approach to North Korea. In doing so, they problematise, scrutinise and contextualise the development-based approach in Northeast Asia, including China, and examine different responses to the developmental approach and the influence of domestic politics on these responses. A valuable contribution to discussions on possible ways forward for human rights in North Korea and an insightful critique of the Northeast Asian development model more broadly.

What do China’s scholars make of the nature of China’s global rise? And what is the significance of academic debates for Chinese policy goals and preferences? In this book, leading Chinese specialists outline how their colleagues are studying and interpreting different dimensions of China’s evolving global role, opening these Chinese language debates to a new audience. Collectively they show that while some ideas and ways of thinking are more prominent than others, there is no homogeneity of scholarship and no single conception of what China thinks and wants. Not only has the range of issue areas under discussion actually increased as China’s global role and impact has changed, but there also remains considerable diversity when it comes to thinking on what China can, might, and should try to do as a global power, and how China’s global role should be studied and theorized. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, The Pacific Review.

The twenty-fourth semi-annual Munk Debate, held on May 9, 2019, pits former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs H. R. McMaster and Director for Chinese Strategy at the D.C.-based Hudson Institute think tank Michael Pillsbury against former President of the United Nations Security Council Kishore Mahbubani and president of one of China’s top independent think tanks, the Center for China Globalization, Huiyao Wang to debate the threat of China to the liberal international order. Increasingly in the West, China is being characterized as a threat to the liberal international order, one that must be overcome through economic, political, technological, and even military means. For those who believe that the policies of the Chinese Communist Party pose a threat to free and open societies, the U.S. and like-minded nations must band together to preserve a rules-based international order. For others, this approach spells disaster; it ignores the history and dynamics propelling China’s rise to superpower status. Rather than threatening the post-war order, China is its best, and maybe only, guarantor in an era of declining U.S. leadership, increased regional instability, and slowing global growth.

"We are living through the endtimes of the civilizing mission. The ineffectual International Criminal Court and its disastrous first prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, along with the failure in Syria of the Responsibility to Protect are the latest pieces of evidence not of transient misfortunes but of fatal structural defects in international humanism. Whether it is the increase in deadly attacks on aid workers, the torture and 'disappearing' of al-Qaeda suspects by American officials, the flouting of international law by states such as Sri Lanka and Sudan, or the shambles of the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Phnom Penh, the prospect of one world under secular human rights law is receding. What seemed like a dawn is in fact a sunset. The foundations of universal liberal norms and global governance are crumbling."—from The Endtimes of Human Rights In a book that is at once passionate and provocative, Stephen Hopgood argues, against the conventional wisdom, that the idea of universal human rights has become not only ill adapted to current realities but also overambitious and unresponsive. A shift in the global balance of power away from the United States further undermines the foundations on which the global human rights regime is based. American decline exposes the contradictions, hypocrisies and weaknesses behind the attempt to enforce this regime around the world and opens the way for resurgent religious and sovereign actors to challenge human rights. Historically, Hopgood writes, universal humanist norms inspired a sense of secular religiosity among the new middle classes of a rapidly modernizing Europe. Human rights were the product of a particular worldview (Western European and Christian) and specific historical moments (humanitarianism in the nineteenth century, the aftermath of the Holocaust). They were an antidote to a troubling contradiction—the coexistence of a belief in progress with horrifying violence and growing inequality. The obsolescence of that founding purpose in the modern globalized world has, Hopgood asserts, transformed the institutions created to perform it, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and recently the International Criminal Court, into self-perpetuating structures of intermittent power and authority that mask their lack of democratic legitimacy and systematic ineffectiveness. At their best, they provide relief in extraordinary situations of great distress; otherwise they are serving up a mixture of false hope and unaccountability sustained by “human rights” as a global brand. The Endtimes of Human Rights is sure to be controversial. Hopgood makes a plea for a new understanding of where hope lies for human rights, a plea that mourns the promise but rejects the reality of universalism in favor of a less predictable encounter with the diverse realities of today’s multipolar world.

This Chinese best-seller is a geopolitical book for our times. It provides an original, comprehensive & engrossing study on the rise of China & its effective yet controversial model of development, & has become a centrepiece of an unfolding debate within China on the nature & future of the world's most populous nation & its possible global impact.

Westerners seem united in the belief that China has emerged as a major economic power and that this success will most likely continue indefinitely. But they are less certain about the future of China's political system. China's steps toward free market capitalism have led many outsiders to expect increased democratization and a more Western political system. The Chinese, however, have developed their own version of capitalism. Westerners view Chinese politics through the lens of their own ideologies, preventing them from understanding Chinese goals and policies. In Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives, Fred Dallmayr and Zhao Tingyang bring together leading Chinese intellectuals to debate the main political ideas shaping the rapidly changing nation. Investigating such topics as the popular "China Model", the resurgence of Chinese Confucianism and its applications to the modern world, and liberal socialism, the contributors move beyond usual analytical frameworks toward what Dallmayr and Zhao call "a dismantling of ideological straitjackets." Comprising a broad range of opinions and perspectives, Contemporary Chinese Political Thought is the most up-to-date examination in English of modern Chinese political attitudes and discourse. Features contributions from Ji Wenshun, Zhou Lian, Zhao Tingyang, Zhang Feng, Liu Shuxian, Chen Ming, He Baogang, Ni Peimin, Ci Jiwei, Cui Zhiyuan, Frank Fang, Wang Shaoguang, and Cheng Guangyun.