Human rights in China’s Foreign Policy

Abstract

In this talk I put forth an analytical framework for understanding how policy makers in the People’s Republic of China approach foreign policy, and highlights where human rights stand within it. Essentially China’s foreign policy is driven by four defining characteristics. In order of importance, they are: putting the interests of the Communist Party at the core of China’s national interest calculation; and on this basis adopting an instrumentalist approach; adopting a party-centric nationalism; and adhering to a neoclassical realist assessment of the country’s place in the international system and its relative material power. In this conception, the putting of the Chinese Communist Party’s interest at the core of national interest is a constant, not a variable, factor. It implies that China under Xi Jinping is dedicated to make the world safe for authoritarianism, a direction of travel which contradicts the requirements for the protection of human rights globally.

Speaker biography

Professor Steve Tsang is Director of the SOAS China Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies University of London. He is also an Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College at Oxford, an Associate Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), and a Guest Professor at Tongji University in Shanghai.

He previously served as the Head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies and as Director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham. Before that he spent 29 years at Oxford University, where he earned his D.Phil. and worked as a Professorial Fellow, Dean, and Director of the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony’s College.

Professor Tsang regularly contributes to public debates on different aspects of issues related to the politics, history, foreign policy, security and development of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and East Asia more generally. He is known in particular for introducing the concept of 'consultative Leninism' as an analytical framework to understand the structure and nature of politics in contemporary China. He has a broad area of research interest and has published extensively, including five single authored and thirteen collaborative books. His latest books China in the Xi Jinping Era and Taiwan’s Impact on China were published by Palgrave in 2016 and 2017 respectively.