科技部補助專題研究計畫成果報告
期末報告
建構非自由人權制度：中國國家認同與國際人權規範的相
互構成(第 2 年)
計 畫 類 別 ： 個別型計畫 計 畫 編 號 ： NSC 101-2628-H-004-002-MY2 執 行 期 間 ： 102 年 08 月 01 日至 103 年 07 月 31 日 執 行 單 位 ： 國立政治大學國際關係研究中心 計 畫 主 持 人 ： 陳至潔 計畫參與人員： 碩士班研究生-兼任助理人員：林顯明 碩士班研究生-兼任助理人員：陳宥任 碩士班研究生-兼任助理人員：于振亞 報 告 附 件 ： 移地研究心得報告 處 理 方 式 ： 1.公開資訊：本計畫涉及專利或其他智慧財產權，1 年後可公開查詢 2.「本研究」是否已有嚴重損及公共利益之發現：否 3.「本報告」是否建議提供政府單位施政參考：否 中 華 民 國 103 年 09 月 15 日中 文 摘 要 ： 這是一項為期兩年的研究計畫,主題是探討中華人民共和國與 國際人權建制(以聯 合國人權制度為代表)自 1970 年代以來 相互抗爭、卻又相互構成的複雜關係。以人權研究著名的美 國賓州大學出版社已表達高度興趣，要出版本計劃的專書成 果 。 本計畫針對以下的問題作出實證上的研究:中華人民共和國的 官方人權制度-包括受黨國體制主導的人權研究機構、人權論 述與宣傳、及人權外交政策與策略-為何並如何在已過四十年 產生明顯地(但絕非劇烈地)變化? 而國際人權規範與建制又 是如何因為中國自 1980 年代以來的持續參與而受到影響?簡 言之,本計畫試圖了解中國決定與國際人權建制進行交往 (engagement)的國內思想與制度因素、以及因為交往而導致 的國內制度成效、國家行為影響、與國際制度效應。在參考 Abdelal 與其合作者所提出的認同政治研究架構之後,本人針 對中國與國際人權建制的複雜互構關係提出一個身分導向建 構主義的詮釋架構。與現有國際關係建構主義理論的研究取 向有所不同,本人不只將國際規範的解釋能力視為一個需要被 證明或證偽的實證問題,並且也同樣注意國家身分認同(state identity)是否能夠解釋中國對普世人權之概念與制度的政 策。 本學術專書研究計畫將對國家社會化過程的研究做出實證與 概念上的貢獻,因此將對國際關係學(建構主義國關理論與國 際規範研究)、中國研究(國家社會關係研究)、人權研究、與 比較政治學(比較威權政體研究)的學術發展帶來助益。就實 際面而言,本人的研究將對國際人權倡議社群成員的中國政策 有所幫助,也能為台灣的兩岸政策提供重要的參考。 中文關鍵詞： 人權,國際規範,國家社會化,國家身分,中華人民共和國,聯合 國,建構論
英 文 摘 要 ： My project aims to interpret the contentious, yet co-constitutive, relationship of People＇s Republic of China and the international human rights regime, as represented by the United Nations human rights institutions, from the 1970s to the present. The final product of this research project is an English book, to be published by the University of
Drawing on the identity-based Constructivism and mixed approaches, my research investigates ideational determinants, institutional effects and behavioral impact of China＇s engagement with the international human rights regime. Based on the analytic framework of identity studies designed by Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott, I devise an interpretive framework, a revision of that of Abdelal et. al., that illustrates and rigorously interprets the constitutive relationship between the Chinese state identity of the time and China＇s policy to the
conception and institution of universal human rights. In particular, my project addresses the following under-appreciated questions: Why and how has China＇s official human rights institution (including state-controlled discourses and policies on human rights, in both domestic governance and foreign relations) changed substantially, if not dramatically,
throughout the past four decades? How, if any, has China＇s participation in the international human rights regime implicated the normative and practical development of global governance in the dimension of human rights?
I present a Constructivist interpretation of the phenomenon of co-constitution between international human rights regime and the Chinese government. Unlike the majority of existing Constructivist work in the field of International Relations that
presuppose and disproportionately emphasize the normative and regulatory power of international regime, I treat the issue as an empirical question, and pay equal attention to the constitutive influence of domestic ideational imperatives in shaping
China＇s rights policy. I argue that the development of China＇s human rights institution and policy—or lack thereof, as of during the 1970s—is a function of the evolution of China＇s state identity, as unfolding in the international normative order that grants legitimacy and status to state actors.
英文關鍵詞： human rights, international norm, state
socialization, state identity, China, the United Nations, Constructivism
行政院國家科學委員會補助專題
研究計畫
□期中進度報
告
v 期末報告
建構非自由人權制度:
中國國家認同與國際人權規範的相互構成
Socialization without Identification:
Co-Constitution of Chinese State Identity and
International Human Rights Norm
計畫類別：v 個別型計畫 □整合型計畫
計畫編號：NSC
101-2628-H-004 -002 -MY2
執行期間： 101 年 8 月 1 日至 103 年 7 月 31 日
執行機構及系所：國立政治大學 國際關係研究中心 中國政治
研究所
計畫主持人：陳至潔
共同主持人：無
處理方式：除列管計畫及下列情形者外，得立即公開查詢
□涉及專利或其他智慧財產權，x 一年□二年後可公開查詢
中 華 民 國 103 年 8 月 1 日
中文摘要 這是一項為期兩年的研究計畫,主題是探討中華人民共和國與國際人權建 制(以聯 合國人權制度為代表)自 1970 年代以來相互抗爭、卻又相互構成 的複雜關係。以人權研究著名的美國賓州大學出版社已表達高度興趣， 要出版本計劃的專書成果 。 本計畫針對以下的問題作出實證上的研究:中華人民共和國的官方人權制 度-包括受黨國體制主導的人權研究機構、人權論述與宣傳、及人權外交 政策與策略-為何並如何在已過四十年產生明顯地(但絕非劇烈地)變化? 而 國際人權規範與建制又是如何因為中國自 1980 年代以來的持續參與而受 到影響?簡言之,本計畫試圖了解中國決定與國際人權建制進行交往 (engagement)的國內思想與制度因素、以及因為交往而導致的國內制度 成效、國家行為影響、與國際制度效應。在參考 Abdelal 與其合作者所提 出的認同政治研究架構之後,本人針對中國與國際人權建制的複雜互構關 係提出一個身分導向建構主義的詮釋架構。與現有國際關係建構主義理 論的研究取向有所不同,本人不只將國際規範的解釋能力視為一個需要被 證明或證偽的實證問題,並且也同樣注意國家身分認同(state identity)是否 能夠解釋中國對普世人權之概念與制度的政策。 本學術專書研究計畫將對國家社會化過程的研究做出實證與概念上的貢 獻,因此將對國際關係學(建構主義國關理論與國際規範研究)、中國研究 (國家社會關係研究)、人權研究、與比較政治學(比較威權政體研究)的學 術發展帶來助益。就實際面而言,本人的研究將對國際人權倡議社群成員 的中國政策有所幫助,也能為台灣的兩岸政策提供重要的參考。 關鍵字:人權,國際規範,國家社會化,國家身分,中華人民共和國,聯合國,建 構論
英文摘要：
My project aims to interpret the contentious, yet co-constitutive, relationship of People’s Republic of China and the international human rights regime, as represented by the United Nations human rights institutions, from the 1970s to the present. The final product of this research project is an English book, to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, presumably in 2015-6.
Drawing on the identity-based Constructivism and mixed approaches, my research investigates ideational determinants, institutional effects and behavioral impact of China’s engagement with the international human rights regime. Based on the analytic framework of identity studies designed by Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott, I devise an interpretive framework, a revision of that of Abdelal et. al., that illustrates and rigorously interprets the constitutive relationship between the Chinese state identity of the time and China’s policy to the conception and institution of universal human rights. In particular, my project addresses the following under-appreciated questions: Why and how has China’s official human rights institution (including state-controlled discourses and policies on human rights, in both domestic governance and foreign relations) changed substantially, if not dramatically, throughout the past four decades? How, if any, has China’s participation in the international human rights regime implicated the normative and practical development of global governance in the dimension of human rights?
I present a Constructivist interpretation of the phenomenon of co-constitution between international human rights regime and the Chinese government. Unlike the majority of existing Constructivist work in the field of International Relations that presuppose and disproportionately emphasize the normative and regulatory power of international regime, I treat the issue as an empirical question, and pay equal attention to the constitutive influence of domestic
ideational imperatives in shaping China’s rights policy. I argue that the development of China’s human rights institution and policy—or lack thereof, as of during the 1970s—is a function of the evolution of China’s state identity, as unfolding in the international normative order that grants legitimacy and status to state actors.
By posing refreshing questions and presenting rigorous interpretations, the project promises to revitalize the scholarly understanding of the process of state socialization, and hence will make substantial contributions to International Relations (particularly International Theory and International Norm Studies), China Studies (especially the studies on state-society relations in China), Human Rights Studies, and Comparative Politics (especially Comparative Authoritarianism Studies). At the practical end, my research will certainly benefit stakeholders of the global community of human rights advocacy in their engagement with the Chinese government. On a further note, the project will bring valuable insights to Taiwan’s policy formation of cross-strait relations.
Keywords: human rights, international norm, state socialization, state identity, China, the United Nations, Constructivism
計劃緣起：
In the wake of the Tiananmen Incident in 1989, Western democracies formed a human rights coalition to expose and sanction China‘s abusive domestic behavior, not only through bilateral means but also by multilateral mechanisms, such as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and its Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities (known as the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights, or UNSCHR). Western democracies and like-minded African, Latin American, and East European states justified their move by emphasizing the universal norm of human rights protection, as enshrined in key international conventions.
The Chinese government adamantly resisted such collective opprobrium; Beijing‘s resistance led to intense, emotionally charged debates, as demonstrated at UNCHR annual sessions throughout the 1990s. Beijing strongly contested a discussion of her domestic human rights practices at multilateral settings without its express consent, arguing that the move violated the fundamental norms of exclusive domestic jurisdiction and non-intervention that constituted the modern Westphalian international system. Moreover, the Chinese government vehemently challenged the legality and political legitimacy of the universality of the international norm on human rights protection. Beijing deemed such norm at most as an opinion juris—an element of customary international law—that was short of substantive legitimacy and procedural fairness. As a result, Beijing detested the human rights norm‘s dubious obligatory and regulatory powers.
After 1992, however, the human rights coalition among Western capitals and their allies began to lose its momentum and cohesion. Collective sanctions on China proved ineffective in changing the Chinese government‘s human rights behavior. To Western democracies, sanctions were costly not only politically, but also potentially economically, as China‘s economic performance
rebounded. Furthermore, the Chinese government had successfully divided and outmaneuvered the coalition by promises of trade expansion to those who chose to break away from the coalition. Member states of the UNCHR grew reluctant to co-sponsor or endorse a draft resolution that raised issues with China‘s domestic rights abuses. The eventual disintegration of the Western human rights coalition during the 1997 UNCHR session led to China‘s unprecedented triumph on the Commission‘s voting record.
The year of 1997 marked the definite end of the confrontational approach as the primary method of changing China, and simultaneously witnessed an upsurge and regularization of bilateral rights dialogues between China and Western interlocutors. In early 1997 four major EU member states (France, Germany, Italy and Spain) and Canada announced that they would not co-sponsor a draft resolution on China‘s rights conditions in the UNCHR annual session. Eventually at the 1997 UNCHR session Denmark proposed the draft resolution regarding the state of human rights in China, which was co-sponsored by Austria, Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the United States. The defection of major EU member states made explicit the rift between the United States and European allies on their China policy, and marked the collapse of the united front of Western states. China once again succeeded in blocking the resolution (by employing the procedural ―no-action motion) by an unprecedentedly wide margin of ten votes.
The realization of a capable and resilient China generated a change of mind among politicians of Western democracies regarding the most effective approach of socializing China into international human rights standards. In light of the failing policy of shaming, condemnation and confrontation through multilateral mechanisms, Western democracies in the mid-1990s began to develop a two-pronged approach in their human rights policy toward China: while continually taking issues with China‘s rights violation, Western officials began to conduct bilateral human rights dialogues with the Chinese
government, and to encourage scholarly exchanges and technical assistance programs in rights-related fields. Six Western countries (Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Norway and Sweden), along with the European Union as a whole, agreed in 1997 to hold regular bilateral human rights dialogues with the Chinese government. Inter-state confrontation was henceforth supplanted by inter-governmental communication.
China‘s persistence defiance, however, concurred with an expanding international normative agenda. China‘s insistence on the classical Westphalian norm of state sovereignty (i.e., the norms of exclusive territorial jurisdiction and non-interference) was met by a simultaneous attempt of border penetration by the latest normative development of the inter-state system. Instead of just regulating state behavior in its foreign relations, the international norm has developed to prescribe state behavior within its own borders. As a result, the EU and US-based NGOs followed Western governments in developing working relationships with the Chinese government and government-organized NGOs (GONGOs) for rights-related programs.
The Chinese government has highly appraised the bilateral human rights dialogue as a channel of building mutual understanding and reducing disinformation. Beijing conceptualized and operated bilateral dialogues as a discursive platform to lessen Sino-Western friction over human rights issues and to enhance China‘s international image. The Western governments and transnational NGOs, however, were not satisfied with mere discursive exchanges of official policies and scholarly perspectives. Rather, they anticipated that the human rights momentum accumulated in the bilateral dialogue would be converted into tangible and far-reaching changes in China‘s domestic mechanisms of human rights protection, such as law and the judiciary.
up, Chinese foreign affairs officials participating in the formal dialogue became more assertive. They were more resistant than before when discussing individual cases of Chinese political prisoners brought up by their Western counterparts during the dialogue. The disgraced international image of the United States following the exposure of abusive practices against enemy combatants in global war on terror has further justified and reinforced China‘s defiant attitude in response to Western criticisms.
On the other hand, for the Chinese government the bilateral dialogue is a diplomatic instrument of a reactive and defensive nature that works better at keeping ideological rivals at bay, but falls short of establishing a Chinese sphere of influence in international human rights regime. While carrying out bilateral human rights dialogues, China did not opt out from multilateral human rights mechanisms. Instead, an increasingly confident Beijing has adroitly capitalized on its major victory in 1997 at UNCHR to consolidate its presence in, and to extract cooperation from, the UN human rights bodies. Hence China‘s post-1997 human rights foreign policy was gradually moving away from a passive, self-defensive approach that was designed to protect the integrity of state sovereignty (as interpreted by the party regime), toward a more ambitious and concerted approach that emphasized the propagation and popularization of a Beijing perspective on theories, institutions, and practices of human rights in international relations.
Chinese leaders (including President Jiang Zemin and Vice Premier Qian Qichen), after Beijing‘s major victory at the 1997 UNCHR session, spoke affirmatively about the universality of human rights norm and the importance of international human rights regime in 1998, the year during which the United Nations commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). These discursive milestones of China‘s human rights diplomacy laid the groundwork for the establishment of a working relationship between the Chinese government and the UN human
rights regime.
Realizing the consequential impact of China‘s landslide triumph at the 1997 UNCHR session, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) began to approach the Chinese delegation at the United Nations European Headquarters in Geneva. Following Beijing‘s formal invitation, Mary Robinson, then the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (1997-2002), visited China for the first time in September 1998. She signed a Memorandum of Intent (MOI) with the Chinese government that expressed a willingness of providing technical assistance in human rights education and legislation, and established bilateral human rights dialogue between the OHCHR and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In March 1999 the OHCHR dispatched a group of experts to China to negotiate over the terms and scope of bilateral cooperation as indicated in the 1998 MOI. In November 2000 Robinson visited China for the third time to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Beijing that formally kicked off a two-year, multifaceted human rights cooperation programme. Public records suggest that during her High Commissioner tenure, Robinson visited China seven times, resulting in the intensification of OHCHR‘s provision of technical and legislative assistance to the Chinese government.
Following Robinson‘s footsteps, Louise Arbour, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights during 2004-2008, visited China in September 2005 to seal a deal that formally extend the technical cooperation programme. Arbour also signed an agreement with Beijing that aimed to facilitate the Chinese government‘s early ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and to assist China in implementing recommendations from the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, Beijing turned down Arbour‘s request of visiting China and Tibet in April 2008, following the ethnic riot that broke out in China‘s southwestern frontier region in March.
The period of 1998-2005 also witnessed an increasing degree, in both quantitative and qualitative terms, of China‘s formal compliance with international human rights instruments. During this period of time China ratified 7 major international human rights conventions, amendments, and optional protocols, hence constituting a substantial departure from its previous behavioral pattern (Beijing ratified only 2 international human rights instruments throughout the period of 1989-1997). The United Nations data reveals that during this period of time China submitted at least 12 periodic country reports to 6 treaty-based UN human rights bodies (although all the reports were submitted with a significant time delay), a steady increase from 10 reports to 4 UN human rights bodies during the previous period of time. Given the fact that China has since 2006 submitted another 8 periodic country reports to 4 UN human rights bodies mostly in a timely fashion, it seems that China‘s formal compliance with the requirement of periodic reporting has become habitualized and institutionalized. Lastly, China‘s gradually enhanced compliance during 1998-2005 was reflected also in its hosting of 3 country visits by special rapporteurs and working groups of UN human rights special procedures, as compared to only 1 country visit during the previous period of time.
Active engagement and formal compliance, however, does not necessarily translate into substantive compliance, which is measured largely by the state‘s domestic efforts of implementing recommendations made by international human rights bodies after reviewing its periodic country reports. Some Western observers hence criticized the Chinese government for handling human rights as a pure foreign affairs issue rather than a matter about the modality and quality of state-society relations.
研究目的：
My project aims to interpret the contentious, yet co-constitutive, relationship of People‘s Republic of China and the international human rights regime, as represented by the United Nations human rights institutions, from the 1970s to the present. The final product of this research project is an English book, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, presumably in 2015-6.
Drawing on the identity-based Constructivism and mixed approaches, my research investigates ideational determinants, institutional effects and behavioral impact of China‘s engagement with the international human rights regime. In particular, my project addresses the following under-appreciated questions: Why and how has China‘s official human rights institution (including state-controlled discourses and policies on human rights, in both domestic governance and foreign relations) changed substantially, if not dramatically, throughout the past four decades? How, if any, has China‘s participation in the international human rights regime implicated the normative and practical development of global governance in the dimension of human rights? By posing refreshing questions and presenting rigorous interpretations, the project promises to revitalize the international studies on human rights in China, and raise the profile of identity-based Constructivism in International Relations Theory.
I present a Constructivist interpretation of the phenomenon of co-constitution between international human rights regime and the Chinese government. Unlike the majority of existing Constructivist work in the field of International Relations that presuppose and disproportionately emphasize the normative and regulatory power of international regime, I treat the issue as an empirical question, and pay equal attention to the constitutive influence of domestic ideational imperatives in shaping China‘s rights policy. I argue that the development of China‘s human rights institution and policy—or lack thereof,
as of during the 1970s—is a function of the evolution of China‘s state identity, as unfolding in the international normative order that grants legitimacy and status to state actors.
Based on the analytic framework of identity studies designed by Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott (hereafter Abdelal et. al.), I devise an interpretive framework, a revision of that of Abdelal et. al., that aims to illustrate and rigorously interpret the constitutive relationship between the Chinese state identity of the time and China‘s policy to the conception and institution of universal human rights. As of December 2011, I have completed two empirical chapters that examine respectively China‘s dominant state identity and her human rights policy in the 1970s and 1980s. Chapter II reveals that a revolutionary-internationalist state identity had from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s engulfed Chinese politics. The anti-liberal contents of the revolutionary-internationalist identity are not only incompatible with, but also antithetical to, the liberal notion of universal human rights, the foundational norm of international human rights regime. The perceived incompatibility between the anti-liberal state identity and the liberal human rights regime led Chinese state elites to adopt an ignorant attitude, and develop an evasive approach, to the conception and institution of universal human rights, as represented by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). Accordingly, the revolutionary China supported global self-determination, decolonization, and anti-racism campaigns, but did so by staying out of the ambience of UNCHR.
Chapter III presents the contestation over the discourse of China‘s state identity during the first four years of reform and opening-up (November 1978 – September 1982), and how that contentious process implicated China‘s policy to the conception and institutions of universal human rights. During the first four years of the reform era, China‘s state identity underwent a significant transformation, from a revolutionary-internationalist identity that emphasized
constant class struggle, world war, and global socialist revolution, to a strong socialist state identity that prioritized socialist China‘s economic productivity, material power and international status in the existing world order. Accompanying a power struggle that engulfed China, the contentious process of identity shift created a more tolerant political environment that allowed political elites and foreign affairs professionals to adopt a less dogmatic, more strategic attitude to liberal ideas, practices, and institutions.
The process of identity shift hence ushered in a re-evaluation and limited affirmation of the conception of universal human rights. Furthermore, pragmatist elites who followed the strong socialist state identity ceased the revolutionary effort of overthrowing the existing international system. Instead, they pursued the augmentation and consolidation of China‘s state power in that system. The changed Chinese perception to the existing international normative order in turn informed Chinese political elites and foreign affairs professionals of the imperative of constructing a stable and favorable international environment for the making of a materially strong Chinese state. Such ideational development within Chinese politics, I argue, most convincingly explained China‘s formal participation in, and her steadily increasing engagement with, the UN human rights regime during the 1980s, as Chinese political elites perceived the institution as an arena of contention wherein Chinese delegates aggrandized state power and sustained a favorable international environment through human rights rhetoric. By spring 1989, the enhanced domestic receptivity to universal human rights and the perceived need of a favorable external environment jointly made the strategic engagement with the UN rights regime a minor national interest of the Chinese state.
For the year 2012, I plan to compose two more empirical chapters: Chapter VI investigates the constitutive influence of the strong socialist state identity in China‘s state-led construction of domestic human rights episteme and
institution during the 1990s. I argue that it was the normative-cognitive drive for a strong state in the international society that led to Beijing‘s conscientious pursuit of international status and affirmation. Henceforth China‘s international human rights image—which until spring 1989 had remained a secondary issue in China‘s foreign relations—became a crucial component of its national interest in the post-Tiananmen era, and has driven its continuing—yet contentious—engagements with various international human rights mechanisms at global, regional, and bilateral levels.
Chinese ruling elites’ engagements with the conception and institution of universal human rights has made possible China‘s socialization by international human rights standards, as reflected in qualitative changes in Beijing‘s human rights discourses, practices, and diplomacy. I argue, however, that the strong socialist state identity that prioritized an authoritarian state-society relationship has overwhelmingly conditioned, and circumscribed, the domestic effects of state socialization in the field of human rights: as the Party-state has monopolized the process of confining and exploiting the domestic impact of China‘s embeddedness in the UN human rights regime, effects of state socialization were inevitably mediated by the Communist Party‘s ultimate agenda of power retention, which calling for the construction and operation of an ensemble of interlocking, illiberal human rights institutions, a state-dominated establishment that has endeavored to justify, propagate, and advise on the Party-sanctioned discourses and practices of human rights. While socialization indeed took effect, it is a capped socialization. Nevertheless, the oxymoron development, although far from gratifying to transnational rights advocacy groups, testifies to the noticeable—but certainly not unhindered— influence and qualified permeation of international human rights norm within the Chinese borders in the age of globalization.
Chapter V therefore turns around the direction of inquiry. I plan to investigate the socializing effects (or lack thereof) of foreign human rights actors on
China‘s human rights policy. Since my interpretive framework suggests that significant changes in China‘s human rights policy are mainly a function of the change in her state identity, I am interested in learning whether, and to what extent, Sino-Western human rights exchange/training programs that began in earnest after the mid-1990s have generated identity shift among Chinese participants, who were most likely law scholars, legal professionals, and legal-judicial officials. Given my long-term professional relationship with the Nordic human rights institutes (the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of Sweden, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights), I plan to conduct field research at these three institutes and their China offices to learn about the policy agendas and operational mechanisms of their China programs. I also plan to interview Chinese scholars, professionals, and—if available—officials who were previously involved in Nordic human rights exchange/training projects, with an aim to identify the socializing effects of these bilateral human rights activities.
Finally, Chapter VI, the last empirical chapter of my book project, is designed to examine the impact of a powerful, yet illiberal China in the institution-building of UN human rights regime. I take China‘s influence in the multilateral institution of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of UN Human Rights Council as a case study. My argument is that China‘s engagement with the UN human rights regime has not only influenced its domestic institutional development and foreign policy, but also brought to bear upon the political agenda, operating logics, and policy goals of the international human rights regime. In other words, state socialization influences not only domestic and foreign policies of a given state, but also reconstructs the international normative regime wherein socialization takes place. Beijing‘s progressing involvement in the designing and operating of the UN Human Rights Council‘s UPR is an appropriate ―least-likely-scenarioǁ case to test the Constructivist proposition of co-constitution between a corporate being and a major part.
現有文獻：
China specialists and students of Asian Studies began to pay attention to the relationship of international human rights regime and China in the early 1990s, as the Tiananmen Suppression laid bare an urgent need for a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the state of human rights in China. In the meantime, the discussion of human rights conditions in China coincided and got entangled with the contentious debate over the ―Asian Values (Bauer & Bell 1999; Jacobson & Brunn 2000). The 1990s witnessed an exponential growth of academic publication addressing the state of China‘s human rights from a variety of angles.
Western philosophers and historians approached China‘s human rights controversies by way of conceptual retracing and ideational simulation. Human Rights and Chinese Values (1995), edited by Michael C. Davis, was the first collective effort by international and Chinese scholars who conveyed diverse— and not infrequently conflicting—human rights thoughts in the contemporary Chinese context. Stephen C. Angle‘s Human Rights and Chinese Thought (2002) presents a set of Chinese human rights discourses, which was conceptually distinctive to the liberal human rights thought in the West, and was proposed and retained by Chinese philosophers who were richly informed by Neo-Confucianism over the past four centuries. Marina Svensson‘s Debating Human Rights in China (2002) traces the modern conceptual history of human rights in Chinese politics at successive stages, from the late Qing to the early 1990s. Robert Weatherley‘s The Discourse of Human Rights in China (1999) holds the view that the contemporary Chinese conception of human rights is a hybrid of multiple thoughts, including classical liberalism, Marxism, statism, and Neo-Confucianism. William Theodore de Bary in his seminal Asian Values and Human Rights (1998) not only points out the Chinese state‘s act of mobilizing particular Confucian precepts for authoritarian purposes, but also suggests that rights theories informed by Confucian communitarianism,
socialism, and liberalism may be mutually supplementary for ―promoting a more balanced relationship among the individual, the community, and the stateǁ (157).
Insofar as these philosophical and historical works illustrate conceptual possibilities of a Chinese society willing to communicate with and embrace universal human rights norm, they barely addressed my research questions, i.e., why and how has China‘s policy to the conception and institution of universal human rights changed over the past four decades, from total disregard to aggressive engagement? Philosophical and historical approaches contribute to intellectual discussion over the ideational foundations of China‘s socialization by the international rights regime, but are inadequate to direct the empirical studies of my concern.
Publication of China‘s human rights conditions by China scholars and area specialists of international studies backgrounds concurred with the works of philosophers and historians. Following rationalist-materialist epistemologies, their works adopted a realist perspective that prioritized the centrality of the state and its national government in the conduct of its foreign relations. Students of structural realism tend to emphasize the exogeneity of national interest and state power in international relations: the sovereign state‘s decision of either complying or violating a particular international norm is contingent upon its government‘s rational choice, which is in turn informed and shaped by the fixed national interests. International norm is not the independent variable in the process of state socialization; rather, the sovereign state‘s national interest is.
Rights scholars of China Studies who follow the realist notions of national interest and state power are focused primarily on empirical questions of the actual human rights discourses and policies of the Chinese state agents, in both domestic and international contexts. Ming Wan‘s Human Rights in Chinese
Foreign Relations (2001) is a structural realist account of the impact of human rights contention in China‘s bilateral relations with the United States, Japan, and the European Union during the 1990s. Ming Wan conducts his investigation by assuming that human rights image was a crucial component of China‘s national interest. He suggests that the change in Beijing‘s human rights diplomacy—from high-pitched confrontation to close-door dialogue—was nothing more than a tactical modification in order to insulate domestic politics from external normative pressure and to retain the authoritarian rule.
Likewise, Ann E. Kent‘s three books—Between Freedom and Subsistence: China and Human Rights (1993), China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: the Limits of Compliance (1999), and Beyond Compliance: China International Organizations, and Global Security (2007)—follow the realist analytic path and contended that China‘s intensifying participation in the UN human rights regime was intent on consolidating the authoritarian rule, hence delivering negligible improvement to domestic rights conditions. According to Kent, Beijing has maintained an intentional fissure between its human rights rhetoric at diplomatic occasions and its actual human rights policies in domestic politics. As a result, international rights regime could do little to make the Chinese state comply with universal human rights norm.
The existing empirical literature provides an informative, contextualized stock of knowledge that richly describes China‘s defiant human rights diplomacy, but is not without deficiencies. The existing publication is mostly descriptive that lacks the provision and/or consistent application of an analytic or interpretive framework that proposes causal or constitutive relationships between variables. As a result, the existing literature chronicles and describes, but fails to explain or interpret, the complicated phenomenon of China‘s human rights diplomacy. Consequently the existing literature registers China‘s varying degrees of compliance with different human rights regimes but is unable to adequately explain the variation. Nor can the existing literature satisfactorily account for
China‘s noticeable shift over the past four decades in its overall human rights posture, from total ignorance before 1979 through selective acceptance in the 1980s, to passive defense throughout the 1990s.
The other major conceptual flaw, which is germane to the lack of an analytic or interpretive framework, is that the existing literature tends to bracket the impact of changes of domestic ideational and institutional factors on the making and implementation of Chinese human rights policy. The existing literature treats the attributes of Chinese domestic politics as constant, and presupposes the constant importance of a positive human rights image as a crucial component of China‘s national interest. The de-emphasis of domestic political factors and the presumed fixture of state identity and interest effectively preclude the existing literature from tapping into the endogenously generated causes or rationales of China‘s behavioral changes in multilateral rights regimes. Rather than presupposing the longitudinal constancy of China‘s state identity, state interest, and foreign policy preferences, I take one epistemic step back to problematize and pry open the black box of domestic politics, with an aim to furnish a set of satisfactory explanations of the discursive and behavioral evolution of China‘s human rights foreign policy.
Moreover, the existing literature, particularly the works contributed by scholars of non-Chinese origins, derives information of China‘s human rights diplomacy almost exclusively from non-Chinese sources. Underdeveloped Chinese comprehension and limited access to primary Chinese sources of information have severely hampered the explanatory power or interpretive persuasiveness of the existing literature. Ann E. Kent‘s China, the United Nations, and Human Rights: the Limits of Compliance (1999) and Rosemary Foot‘s Rights Beyond Borders (2000) are reflective of these structural deficiencies. Kent conducted extensive and insightful interviews, the result of which was a rich and contextualized description of China‘s defiant human rights diplomacy in the UN system in the post-Tiananmen days. Nevertheless,
she was not able to secure even one interview with Chinese sources. Likewise, underdeveloped capabilities of obtaining and interpreting Chinese materials constituted a fatal blow to Rosemary Foot, who presented a persuasive account of evolving policies of individual Western governments to China‘s human rights records, but cited only one Chinese document throughout the entire book. As a result of the access and linguistic problems, both Kent and Foot, while describing quite comprehensively China‘s human rights rhetoric in her foreign relations, could only speculate on its domestic origins and its future contours.
In addition, their books failed to shed light on any domestic implications of China‘s progressing engagement with international human rights regime; rather, the two pieces concluded with, but failed to explain, a pessimistic stroke: ―China is deeply engaged with the international discourse of human rights, but full implementation of the core norms is still to comeǁ (Foot 2000, 26). China became a least likely case for norm diffusion in the dimension of human rights. Lastly, their books suffer analytic paucity and conceptual inconsistency: Foot in Rights Beyond Borders seemed to adopt a moderate Constructivist approach at the outset, but soon drifted away from that conceptual orientation in her empirical chapters. Even Kent‘s latest work— Beyond Compliance—was an apparent disappointment for the chronic problem of incoherent conceptualization and scant methodology. Publication of China‘s human rights and rule of law by legal scholars, such as Randall Peerenboom‘s (2002, 2004, 2007, 2010), experience similar defects.
Scholarly interest in China‘s human rights policy dissipated soon after the turn of the century. While various advocacy entities—including, inter alia, the Dui Hua Foundation, the Human Rights in China (HRIC), the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD)—continued to release periodic reports and occasional papers of China‘s human rights, epistemic communities of China Studies and
International Relations seemed content with the conclusions of prior research. The complacency reveals in the absence of any major publications on the subject after 2002. This is rather unfortunate, as previous works were based on biased sources of information and offered oversimplified accounts of China‘s human rights. Furthermore, China‘s domestic human rights governance and its human rights diplomacy have both evolved remarkably during the past decade, a consequential development that inevitably renders the existing literature not only outdated for academic analysis, but also inadequate for policy formation.
My book is meant to fill in the epistemic void and carry forward the agenda of academic research in China‘s human rights. Taking the existing literature as a point of departure, my research is intent on offering a nuanced perspective that interprets, and makes sense of, the development of China‘s human rights policy from the 1970s onward. The task requires me to avoid the analytic deficiencies that I just outlined: it is expected that an analytic or interpretive framework guides, and is consistently applied across, my empirical research. Also, informed by the chosen framework, I am required to point out a set of causal or constitutive relationships among key factors—both domestic and international—that adequately explains or interprets the discursive and behavioral evolution of China‘s policy to the conception and institution of universal human rights. Lastly, I am expected to draw on multiple sources of empirical data—particularly the Chinese materials that until fairly recently have been underutilized—for an informative, balanced explanation of China‘s human rights policy.
I propose an interpretive framework that advances an identity-based explanation of the Chinese policy to the conception and institution of universal human rights in the 1970s, which exerted an unequivocally path-dependent impact on Beijing‘s human rights policy in the following decades of reform and opening-up. My inquiry concentrates on the content and contestation of China‘s state identity, and the process in which the evolution of China‘s state
identity has affected the making and reformation of her policy to the conception and institution of universal human rights. As a normative-cognitive structure held collectively by ruling elites in one country, state identity constitutes the nature and modalities of the state‘s relationship with other political entities and social groupings, both within and beyond the state borders. State identity shapes state interests, and informs the appropriate range of policy choices/preferences for the fulfillment of state interests.
I adopt the term state identity rather than national identity, and state interest rather than national interest. A national identity refers to a prevailing normative-cognitive structure that is shared by a majority of both political elites (state) and general public (society). National interests in this vein denote a set of agreed-upon expectations and goals that is framed, informed, and shaped significantly by the national identity, and that is held intersubjectively by both state elites and societal actors as pivotal for the prospects of the entire nation and hence worth pursuing. On the other hand, a state identity conveys a dominant normative-cognitive structure that is shared collectively by a majority of political elites who effectively command the state apparatus. State interests indicate a set of expectations and goals that is framed, informed, and shaped significantly by the state identity, and that is held collectively by state elites only.
State elites may or may not share their normative-cognitive construct with the general public. Conceivably, a state identity may be completely identical with a national identity, when the self-understanding and worldview of ruling elites, through various linkage mechanisms, overlap seamlessly with those of societal forces of the same country. Alternatively, a state identity may be completely antithetical to a national identity, when the self-understanding and worldview of ruling elites clash with those of societal actors of the same country. Reality, however, almost always lies somewhere between the two extremes (Dittmer & Kim 1993, 6). Partial convergence characterizes most cases, leading to
perennial, dynamic tension between a state identity and a national identity, and between state interests and national interests.
My inquiry concentrates on the content and contestation of China‘s state identity, and the process in which the evolution of China‘s state identity has affected the making and reformation of her policy to the conception and institution of universal human rights. I choose state identity over national identity as the primary subject of analysis mainly because Chinese state elites—literally the central leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC)—have exerted an overbearing constitutive influence on the formation of Chinese foreign policy than social groups and general public. From the very beginning even until now, state principals and agents have monopolized the making of China‘s human rights policy in both domestic governance and foreign relations (Zheng 1999, 10-2). Policy inputs from concerned citizens and social groups, even when they came through, have remained not only marginal but also heavily dependent on the mercy and perception of state organs. Accordingly it makes more sense to focus my empirical investigation on the constitutive bearing of Chinese state elites‘ normative-cognitive structure and their collectively shared goals on Beijing‘s perception and policy to universal human rights (Hunt 1993, 63, 76).
Students of China Studies are no strangers to the impact of collective identity on Chinese politics and foreign policy. The existing Chinese identity literature almost invariably emphasizes a preoccupation of Chinese political elites with the pursuit of a strong centralized state (Townsend 1996, p. 19). Lowell Dittmer and Samuel S. Kim in the trailblazing China’s Quest for National Identity (1993, pp. 14-17) critique the conventional Pye-Verba definition of national identity and suggest the two interdependent dimensions of national identity: identification, referring to the degree of legitimacy conferred upon the nation by its members; and substantive content, indicating the functional and symbolic roles played out by the state—the nation‘s corresponding sovereign
authority–in the nation‘s external relations, and the reference groups against which the nation-state categorizes itself and constructs self-understanding. Michael H. Hunt (1993, 62) emphasizes ―a preoccupation with creating and maintaining a strong centralized stateǁ as an ―important, even dominant feature of Chinese national identityǁ during the late Qing and early Republic periods. Edward Friedman in National Identity and Democratic Prospects in Socialist China (1995, x) conceptualizes collective political identities as ―projects of diverse political coalitionsǁ whose proponents vie for power and prestige. Friedman addresses the identity crisis in the post-Tiananmen China by examining the growing identity rupture between northern and southern China.
Yongnian Zheng in Discovering Chinese Nationalism in China (1999, 12-3) defines the nation-state and national identity as two related aspects of nationalism, and highlights the causal effects of domestic and international institutions—the state in particular—in shaping and reconstructing national identity. Zheng argues that administrative erosion and foreign invasion resulted in the popularization of statist nationalism in China that has consistently promoted a strong central power (ibid., 22-9). Baogang He and Yingjie Guo in Nationalism, National Identity and Democratization in China (2000, pp. 5-8) indicate four contending views of Chinese national identity: Statist-socialist identity, the Han identity, the cultural identity, and civic-territorial identity. Following Yongnian Zheng‘s state nationalism thesis, He and Guo emphasize the predominant role of the Communist party-state in shaping the content of Chinese national identity.
Peter Hays Gries in China’s New Nationalism (2004, 9) investigates popular Chinese perceptions of the United States and Japan. Gries defines national identity as ―that aspect of individuals‘ self-image that is tied to their nation, together with the value and emotional significance they attach to membership in the national community,ǁ and nationalism as ―any behavior designed to restore, maintain, or advance public images of that national community.ǁ
Likewise, Suisheng Zhao in A Nation-State by Construction (2004, 13) takes note of a major debate among China scholars over the distinctive content—or lack thereof—of Chinese nationalism: ―on one side are scholars who view Chinese nationalism as eternal and objective, reflecting China‘s domestic and international position in pursuing modernization. On the other side are scholars who take an instrumental approach in defining Chinese nationalism as an expression of the interest of the ruling elite. While affirming the scholarly efforts, such as by Robert A. Scalapino (1993, 215-36), to synthesize the two arguments into an integrated, encompassing one, Suisheng Zhao apparently leans toward the instrumentalist approach when he describe at great length how Chinese Communist incumbents took pains to mold and promote a pragmatic state nationalism for the retention of the authoritarian regime. Zhao hence suggests, ―nationalism as an instrument for the communist regime has been particularly effective when China has faced challenges from hostile foreign countriesǁ (2004, 32).
While my research is richly informed by the existing literature of Chinese political identity, I avoid conceptual inadequacies and flaws that compromise the explanatory power of the existing literature. Scholarly works of Chinese political identity present vague definitions of identity that render empirical studies impressionistic and tautological. A majority of studies on Chinese political identity presupposes the long-term stability and path-dependent tendency of identity at the expense of exploring the potential malleability of identity and its political implications. Furthermore, the Chinese human rights literature and the Chinese identity literature have hardly engaged each other: both epistemic communities have barely examined whether, and to what extent the factor of identity has influenced the making and implementation of Chinese human rights foreign policy.
The Chinese Communist leadership‘s adoption of the policy line of reform and opening-up entailed not only a tactical shift to economic modernization but
also a paradigmatic change in state identity. I argue that the identity shift that China underwent (1978-1982) has a significant bearing on the evolution of Beijing‘s perception and evaluation of universal human rights thereafter. For a better understanding of China‘s human rights policy in her domestic context and foreign relations, it is imperative to investigate the consequential identity shift, and to identify the constitutive relationship between the two developments.
To avoid the aforementioned analytic flaws that populated the existing literature, I explain the impact of identity shift on China‘s human rights policy by employing the analytic framework of Abdelal, Herrera, Johnston, and McDermott (Abdelal et. al. 2009, 18), who addressed what they lamented as ―definitional anarchyǁ of the identity research in social sciences by devising a framework for comparative studies of various types of collective identity. They provide a commensurate definition of a collective identity along two operational dimensions – content and contestation. While content refers to the ―meaning of collective identityǁ, contestation entails the ―degree of agreement within a group over the content of the shared categoryǁ (Ibid.). In their framework, a collective identity consists of four major elements: constitutive norms, social purposes, relational comparisons, and cognitive models.
As the first element of a collective identity, constitutive norms refer to the fundamental rules of an identity group that ―define that identity and lead others to recognize itǁ (ibid., 20). As the normative content of an identity, constitutive norms originate from the existing social norms, and define social meaning of an identity group by ―establishing collective expectations and individual obligationsǁ. Constitutive norms set the membership boundaries and shape identifiable patterns of behavior of group members. As such, socialization of new members entails the internalization of constitutive norms.
The second component of a collective identity is social purposes, referring to those collectively held, conceptually shared goals of group members. This is the purposive content of an identity that ―helps to define group interests, goals, or preferencesǁ (ibid., 22). Whereas the normative content shapes the criteria of group membership and the social expectation of member behavior, the purposive content informs group members of a collective sense of direction for which their social and /or political capital may be mobilized. Moreover, social purposes refer to a common phenomenon: members of an identity group tend to attach specific goals to their group attributes, and generate an a priori or essentialist linkage: the expression or retention of the group attributes depends on the fulfillment of certain political, territorial, or cultural goals. The putative linkage in turn obligates group members to engage in practices that are believed to facilitate the realization of the aspired goals.
Thirdly, Abdelal et. al. point out that identity is not only normative and purposive, but also relational. The existing identity research has concentrated much on this aspect. The relational component of an identity is usually defined by ―comparisons and references to other collective identitiesǁ, i.e., by ―what it is notǁ (ibid., 23). The social identity theory even suggests that an in-group identity is created among its members almost always along with the formation of a corresponding perception of a debased and unfavorable out-group (ibid., 24).
Lastly, the content of a collective identity includes a particular cognitive model, which conveys a coherent, holistic worldview for its group members to describe and make sense of the social world and the existing state of the identity group in that world. The cognitive model of an identity group hence provides a particular set of ways of understanding, and giving meaning to, the social milieu in which group members are located. Furthermore, the cognitive model of an identity group frames members‘ collective interpretations of their group history, and significantly shapes their perception and aspiration of the
group‘s future. A cognitive model even structures the identity group members‘ collective perception of material conditions, socio-economic interests, and policy preferences.
However, the existing identity scholarship has clearly pointed out that the content of a collective identity is ―neither fixed nor predeterminedǁ (ibid., 33). Instead, identity formation is a process of contestation over its inter-subjective meanings. While a collective identity may be understood as a social structural force that constrains and shapes behavior, it is made so by social agents through discursive reformation and/or power struggle. Contestation over the attributes of an identity group is a matter of degree that dangles between two extremes of sheer fragmentation and seamless coherence. Moreover, contestation over a collective identity may develop concurrently in one or multiple categories of its content—constitutive norms, social purposes, relational comparisons, and cognitive models—in varying degrees. The issue of the degree of overall stability of a collective identity is hence an empirical question.
The brief introduction of the work of Abdelal et. al. is followed by a strategic application of their analytic framework to the empirical examination of China‘s state identity shift, and its implications to the development of China‘s human rights policy. I follow the method of classification of identity attributes devised by Abdelal et. al. to distinguish four major attributes of China‘s state identity: the constitutive rules of the Chinese state, the purposes of the Chinese state in the world, the social meaning of the Chinese state in her relations to international interlocutors, and the social meaning of the Chinese state in her relations to the domestic society. The constitutive rules of the Chinese state refer to the identifiable set of norms of the Chinese state that make China distinct from other nations and political actors. The purposes of the Chinese state in the world entail China‘s general goals in her international relations, as shared by a majority of Chinese political elites. The social meaning of the
Chinese state in her relations to international interlocutors refers to an authoritative understanding of China as constructed in her comparison with her foes and friends in the international society. The social meaning of the Chinese state in her relations to the domestic society involves the essential attributes of the Chinese citizenry (the Chinese-ness) as stipulated by the state.
研究計劃的重要性：
The proposed book project is of significance to several subfields of political science. The project will first make important contributions to China Studies, especially the studies of China‘s human rights in its domestic politics and foreign policy. An exponential growth of academic enthusiasm for the subject resulted in groundbreaking publications during the 1990s. Almost all the political scientists and political philosophers who investigated the state of human rights in China—including, inter alia, Stephen Angle (2001), William Theodore de Bary (1998), Daniel Bell (2000), Rosemary Foot (2000), Anne Kent (1993, 1999), Kenneth Christie & Denny Roy (2001), Marina Svensson (2001, 2002), and Ming Wan (2001)—made their name by publishing influential work before 2002. Nevertheless, scholarly interest in the subject has quickly subsided afterwards, as the epistemic community of China Studies shifted attention to newly emerging issues. The abeyance of inquiries of China‘s rights conditions was reflected in the absence of major publications on the subject after 2001, with Ann Kent‘s Beyond Compliance (2007) as a disappointing exception. My book is meant to fill the void of the literature and to revitalize the intellectual dialogue on China‘s human rights, a topic that requires persistent attention and sophisticated analysis.
Furthermore, insofar as the state of human rights epitomizes state-society relations in any given polity, my book will contribute to the scholarly understanding of authoritarian politics in transition. Conventional studies on authoritarianism, as represented by Huntington, concentrated on scenarios of power struggle, leadership succession/transition and prospects of political liberalization. In other words, conventional analysis of authoritarianism in its research design presupposed a finale of regime change toward democratization. We could still identify the traces of conventional propositions regarding authoritarian polities in the current research of hybrid regimes, i.e., illiberal democracies metamorphosed from the crumbled socialist regime that formally
adopted electoral democratic institutions but fell hostage to the manipulative and repressive rule of authoritarian elites.
My book argues, however, that neither of the abovementioned regime types— Huntingtonian authoritarianism and illiberal democracy—characterizes the contemporary China. Rather, Communist incumbents at Zhongnanhai were determined to retain political monopoly by way of multidimensional adaptation to new challenges, both internally and externally. The result is adaptive authoritarianism that blends the Leninism-rooted autocratic order with professionalized bureaucracy, efficient administration, growth-oriented economy, and negotiated social space in the larger context of rolling globalization that facilitates trans-border exchanges of goods, personnel, and ideas. My book hence proposes that a society-in-state model, as opposed to Joe Migdal‘s state-in-society model, better characterizes the state-society relations of contemporary China.
Granted, I am not the first one attempting to address the puzzle of the Chinese Communist regime‘s unexpected durability and revived legitimacy. Scholars of China Studies—e.g., Jie Chen, Bruce Dickson, Arthur Kroeberg, Lianjiang Li, Andrew Nathan, Elizabeth Perry, Wenfang Tang, Kellee Tsai, and Dali Yang— have since the late 1990s endeavored to answer the question. Teresa Wright‘s excellent literature review on the subject attributes the resilience of China‘s political status quo to (1) critical social groups‘ dependence on the party-state for the granting of limited access to material well-being, and (2) path-dependent impacts of socialist ideals in China‘s state-society relations. While complementing the existing scholarship on the subject, my book even promises to carry forward inquiries into adaptive authoritarianism by shedding light on the intriguing but under-studied development of state-led human rights institutions. A systematic investigation of China‘s rights apparatuses—its policy origin, discursive evolution, institutional arrangement, and intellectual fallouts—will enrich the understanding and extract generalizable traits of
adaptive authoritarianism, and in turn contribute to the re-invigorated discussion of illiberal political development among comparative political scientists and political theorists.
Since my book project covers international relations and domestic politics, it benefits not only the communities of China Studies, Human Rights Studies, and Comparative Authoritarianism Studies, but also that of International Relations (IR). While human rights research has undergone an apparent hiatus within China Studies, the subject has resurfaced in International Relations, as indicated by the publication of major works by prominent IR scholars of institutionalist orientations. The re-ignited interest in human rights has manifest most conspicuously in the creation of a panel on quantitative methodologies of human rights studies at the 2010 annual meeting of American Political Science Association (APSA).
Not only so, the July 2010 issue of Political Science & Politics (PS)—one of APSA‘s flagship journals—was focused on the relationship of human rights protection and the war on terror. Furthermore, the theme of 2011 APSA annual meeting is exactly human rights. While prior efforts of human rights studies adopted mainly descriptive and prescriptive approaches, recent institutionalist IR scholars, i.e., Emilie Hafner-Burton (2008), Beth Simmons (2009), and James A. Piazza & James I. Walsh (2009), carried forward Human Rights Studies in IR by employing a rationalist framework and/or quantitative methods to analyze correlations and, to a lesser degree, causations between rights conditions of individual states and other subjects of concern, such as interstate trade relations, participation in international institutions, domestic political systems, and anti-terrorism strategies. Their large-N analyses offered a generalizable argument: the state of human rights in individual countries is a function of the dynamic interaction between international socialization and domestic political imperatives. While the normative force of international human rights regimes matters, so do the operations and actors of national
political systems, in determining the progress and quality of domestic human rights protection. My book project complements their research argument by adding a single case study of a disproportionate significance.
In a sense, rights scholars of the new generation are joining the ranks of an expansive group of IR scholars—liberal institutionalists, constructivists, and international lawyers—who have re-discovered the explanatory power of variables at the unit and/or sub-unit level, rather than simply attributing the phenomenon of state socialization to systemic causes. The institutional and behavioral effects of state socialization by international norm, as Finnemore (2003) and Johnston (2008) argued, are mediated and shaped by domestic ideational and material factors. Acharya (2009), in his seminal work of regional institutions in Southeast Asia, also highlights the explanatory power of local beliefs and practices. Hence Checkel (2005) urged a ―middle path agenda for the research of state socialization by ―bring[ing] the domestic back in.ǁ My book project complements such intellectual development in the field of IR, by extending the research dialogue of state socialization to the less explored issue areas, i.e., the East Asian region and the subject of human rights. Furthermore, my project advances the constructivist notion of state socialization by presenting a least likely case—human rights progress in China—of co-constitution between the individual state and the international society.
Lastly, an investigation of a major power’s (such as China) engagement with the international human rights regime is more likely than minor international actors to lay bare and contribute to scholarly understanding of the perennial tensions inherent in the relations between two constitutive norms of the modern international society, i.e., the liberality of state sovereignty at the systemic level, and the commensurability of state attributes at the unit level.
研究方法：
The empirical investigation of my project adopts mixed methods, including archival analysis, deep interview, and on-site observation to carry out the research. The empirical investigation and intensive writing takes two years to work out a complete manuscript for publication.
I do not construct my project from scratch; instead, the research grant provided by the National Science Council (case number 98-2410-H-004-186) from November 2009 to October 2010 had enabled me to build up a research framework. Already I identified and categorized 520 UN documents pertaining to China‘s human rights foreign policy from 1990 to the present. Also, my research team has collected over 470 documents of the Chinese government, roughly 900 Chinese journal articles, and about 1,630 Chinese news reports on China‘s human rights policy from 1990s to the present. Furthermore, I traveled to mainland China twice in 2010, and conducted 13 interviews with 16 Chinese officials, retired ambassadors, and professors. With the provision of new NSC research grants (2012-2014), I am able to not only keep up the work of document collection and deep interviews, but also move forward to archival analysis and process tracing.
For the year of 2012 I plan to have two field trips to China in September (Beijing, Changchun) and November (Xi‘an, Jinan) respectively for interviewing with Chinese foreign affairs officials, retired (but influential) Chinese diplomats, rights-related officials, and scholars affiliated with state-sponsored human rights institutes (the most important of which is the China Society of Human Rights Studies, or CSHRS). Especially, I will check with Chinese human rights officials on the fate and functions of the newly established Consortium for National Human Rights Action. Besides interviewing officials and getting acquainted with state-sanctioned human
rights discourses, I will also use my time in Beijing to cultivate professional relationship with independent human rights scholars, rights practitioners (rights-defending lawyers and legal aid workers), and China offices of Nordic human rights organizations (the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, the Danish Institute of Human Rights, and the Sweden‘s Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights in China).
For the year of 2013 I plan one field trip in May to the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, the Danish Institute of Human Rights, and the Sweden‘s Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights in China, for archival collection and interviews. I will have two more field trips to China in September (Beijing) and November (Wuhan, Guangzhou) for interviews. Finally, I believe a trip to Geneva, Switzerland, in March 2014, is in point, because that where the UN Human Rights Council and the General Headquarters of OHCHR are located. My project requires that I retrieve useful information of China‘s influence to the UPR mechanisms, by on-site observations at Human Rights Council sessions and deep interviews with diplomats of member states.
