New Faculty Publication: Dongsheng Zong on China's "Attitude toward Human Rights

Dongsheng Zang, China's "Attitude" Toward Human Rights: Reading Hungdah Chiu in the Era of the Iraq War, 27 Md. J. Int'l L 263-303 (2012).

This article aims to challenge the way these questions [of China's rising economic power and its human rights records] are framed. By examining human rights as an example in the area of international law, this article argues that while China continues to be defensive on human rights, either by overstretching the notion of sovereignty, or by limiting human rights to a developmentalist point of view, a major shift emerged in its basic legal and political strategy in its relations with the United States on human rights after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It shifted from a defensive discourse to an offensive discourse by embracing the legal norms and standards established by existing international law and demanded that the United States comply with them. The popular view about China in the United States still insists on an old-fashioned conceptual framework. It creates new fears and yet offers little new insights. The so-called "realism"—characteristic of the Bush Administration‘s political philosophy within neocon policy circles—is simply out of touch with reality. [Id. at 265.]