Making sense of the idea of ‘Human Rights with Chinese Characteristics’

Zhang, Yitian and Wheatley, Steven and Xu, Lu (2025) Making sense of the idea of ‘Human Rights with Chinese Characteristics’. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

China’s divergence from the mainstream human rights position is often explained simply in terms of a rejection human rights. This PhD, by way of contrast, takes seriously the possibility of human rights relativism (i.e., that there can be different versions of ‘human rights’), and the importance of culture on those visions of ‘human rights’. This PhD first details the PRC’s divergent positions on human rights, reflected in the claims that China is on its ‘own path’ of human rights, the importance of non-interference, the priority of economic development, and the pre-eminence of the collective interest. The work then locates this discussion within the wider debate on human rights universality versus cultural relativism. It then examines in detail the extent to which these policy positions can be explained by the cultural (or philosophical) influences on China: Confucianism and Marxism. The analysis demonstrates that the PRC’s policy of ‘Human Rights with Chinese Characteristics’ reflects elements of both Confucianism and Marxism, and that the two philosophies are organically integrated and jointly function within human rights with Chinese characteristics.