1.1 RECENT HISTORY

The word “quanli”^[2] which has come to be the standard Chinese trans­lation for “rights,” was first used in that sense in the mid-1860s, when the missionary W. A. P. Martin employed it in his translation of Henry Wheaton’s Elements of International Law.

rights were articulated in the earliest Chinese constitutions, and still more rights were claimed by intellectuals frustrated with one or another aspect of their government’s policies.^[3]

Writings on rights continued only sporadically after the early 1930s, thanks first to nearly twenty years of warfare, and then to a communist ideology that was not particularly friendly to rights-talk.^[4] The past two decades, however, have been crowded with theoretical discussion and practical action both for and against human rights in China. The winter of 1978-9 witnessed the Democracy Wall movement in China, in which activists like Wei Jingsheng argued for the importance of human rights. That movement lasted for about six months before its central partici­pants were arrested.^[5] From the 1970s on, human rights played a signifi­cant role in United States foreign policy rhetoric, first focusing on the Soviet Union and then on China. In the United Nations, renewed atten­tion was paid to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, originally adopted in 1948, and to the two international covenants, promulgated in the late 1960s, that fleshed out its details.

In 1989 another popular movement advocating democracy and human rights arose in China, this time centering on Tiananmen Square. The brutal suppression of this movement led to sharp international condem­nation of China. Partly in response, the Chinese government issued its first white paper on human rights.^[6] This document rebutted various criticisms of China and argued against international meddling with the internal affairs of sovereign countries; nonetheless, it represented a new beginning for the discussion of human rights within China. Whereas many of the writings on human rights produced in China throughout the 1990s adhered very closely to the positions outlined in the white paper, some Chinese academics pushed considerably further, engaging in sub­stantive debate with the theories of their more doctrinaire Chinese col­leagues and also the theories of Western scholars.^[7]

Another trend of the 1990s took shape during international meetings leading up to the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights. Leaders of some Asian nations, perhaps feeling a new confidence and sense of autonomy, argued that the United Nations’ understanding of human rights was based too rigidly on the foundation of the Western liberal tradition. They called for more flexibility in the interpretation of human rights so that room could be found for what have come to be called “Asian values.”^[8] While the notion that all Asians share some par­ticular set of values has been widely and justly criticized, and the motives of some of these Asian leaders (in calling for greater deference to author­ity, for instance) questioned, some scholars both East and West have urged that we do need to reconsider how human rights mesh with, or are interpreted within, different cultural traditions.^[9]

Conflicts surrounding human rights and China seem unlikely to dis­appear soon. On the positive side, there is continuing dialogue of various sorts. China continues to participate in international discussions of human rights and recently signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.^[10] Academic discussion of rights and human rights within China also continues, both in international conferences and in publications. On the other hand, China continues to act in ways that appear to contravene most understandings of human rights, a recent example (as of this writing) being its suppression of the Falun Gong reli­gious movement. As a result, China continues to be criticized by Chinese dissidents abroad, by human rights non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International, and by Western governments. I hope that the work of scholars like myself can contribute to better understanding and improved dialogue, and in the end to a greater consensus on the meaning and content of human rights.