Human Rights for Legitimacy: China’s Co-optation of International Norms

• In Event: Poster Session: New Avenues in Human Rights Research & South Asian Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: New Avenues in Human Rights Research

Abstract

When and how does a rising authoritarian regime co-opt international human rights norms? This article examines what determines China’s varied responses to individual human rights. Previous literature often assumed that illiberal states were primarily motivated to reject or revise the status quo liberal norms. Particularly, the diffusion of individual human rights norms in authoritarian regime has often been understood in connection with the regime’s security and reputation concerns. Indeed, China’s socialization in diverse international venues poses pressure to its reputation concerns. However, the implementation of laws and policies recognizing individual rights more directly influences the social relations of domestic actors. Increased contact with foreign countries has also contributed to a growing acknowledgement of individual rights domestically. Following these developments, China's attitude towards liberal norms has evolved from simple outright rejection to diversified strategies, including nominal introduction to law, providing alternative interpretations, and partial acceptance. Co-optation of non-binding norms is increasingly becoming an effective option for a state seeking to preserve its legitimacy within the status quo order, selectively adopting the norms aligned with the state's interests. Using an original dataset comprising Chinese legal documents and court decisions from 2012 to 2020, this study identifies different levels of co-optation towards political, gender, and labor rights in China. Employing deep learning techniques, we trained a word embedding model enabling semantic searches to extract texts related to distinctive strategies employed each year. By integrating GDELT Project data, we further constructed a panel dataset. Using two-way fixed effects, the article demonstrates that the divergent levels of co-optation are driven by differential accountability and audience structure for each norm In summary, both foreign media coverage and condemnation at international organizations were correlated with the adoption of concepts in legal documents. However, these external pressures did not lead to significant changes at the implementation level. Specifically, foreign media coverage showed a minimal but negative correlation with court cases. This suggests that while international pressure can influence the shift from rejection to introduction in the law, it may not correspondingly affect the transition from nominal introduction into law to the level of court disputes. Furthermore, our heterogeneity analysis, which takes into account the regional variation in legal texts and court decisions, reveals that regions with higher export volumes are more likely to be influenced by international norms, leading them to adopt more receptive strategies.

Authors

• Minha Kim, Georgetown University

• Xinzhuo Xinzhuo HUANG, HKUST