China’s design for human rights

President Xi’s China is now a major player at the United Nations, supporting peacekeeping operations and emphasising global cooperation to protect human rights. But there are fears that China’s more active role could erode multilateral intervention and even lead to the demise of international human rights laws.

As the United States appears to retreat from its global leadership role, China has moved to fill the vacuum by presenting itself as a prominent advocate of internationalism and free trade. It has also emerged as a pivotal player in international human rights.

Over the last few years, China has developed an increasingly influential seat at the United Nations. In 2018, it provided just over ten per cent of the UN’s total peacekeeping budget – a significant increase from the 3.9 per cent it contributed only six years earlier. China is also now the third-largest contributor to the UN’s regular budget.

The US, on the other hand, has taken a backseat. In December 2017, the Trump administration announced it was cutting funding to the UN by $285m, while it has also reduced financial contributions to peacekeeping operations. Last June, President Trump decided to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), opting to pull out of what then US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, called a ‘hypocritical and self-serving organisation that makes a mockery of human rights’, rather than supporting reform from within.

Now on the front foot, China has trained more than 8,000 troops to serve as standby militia for peacekeeping missions. At the 2015 Leaders’ Summit on Peacekeeping in New York, President Xi Jinping pledged to provide $1bn to UN peacekeeping over the next five years. This led UN Secretary-General António Guterres to describe China as an ‘honest broker’ and ‘bridge-builder’ in international conflict.

But others remain sceptical about China’s more active role at the UN, believing that its peacekeeping efforts – from its early contribution in Cambodia in 1992–1993 to more recent deployments in Darfur, Mali and South Sudan – are largely motivated by a desire to enhance its global reputation. There are also concerns that the values of President Xi may not be compatible with many other countries; in particular, that China’s growing influence at the UN could erode multilateral intervention, reduce state accountability and even lead to the demise of international human rights laws.

‘There’s no doubt that under Xi Jinping, China’s foreign policy has become more assertive,’ says Federica D’Alessandra, Co-Chair of the IBA Human Rights Law Committee and founding Executive Director of the Oxford Programme on International Peace and Security at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict.

‘President Xi has claimed a different, stronger role for China as a world power,’ she adds, ‘whether by virtue of its increased participation in peacekeeping, through a surge in foreign direct investments and development aid, or its increased activity in the South China Sea and elsewhere in the Pacific.’

Xi’s China is also more muscular – reflected in its increasing military engagements abroad and the modernisation of its military. ‘When you couple this with increased Chinese support for development programmes and its leadership on climate change control, it’s reasonable to assume these efforts might, at least in part, be explained by China’s attempts to boost its image as a world power,’ says D’Alessandra.

Dr Sophie Richardson, the China Director at Human Rights Watch, agrees that Beijing has its global image in mind when it comes to peacekeeping. ‘A Chinese team recently went on a UN peacekeeping training junket, where it was able to show the world it is a peaceful, benevolent actor,’ she says. ‘China hopes that images of its peacekeepers can wipe out memories of Chinese tanks in Tiananmen Square.’

China pushes its agenda

China’s historical relationship with the protection of human rights through the UN dates back to 1948 and the creation of the UN itself. Chinese academic and diplomat Peng Chun Chang was one of the authors of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and served as Vice-Chairman of the drafting committee under Eleanor Roosevelt.

Since then, China’s approach to human rights – the third pillar of the UN system, along with peace and security, and development – can be broken down into three distinct timeframes:

• before the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989;
• from 1989 to 2013, when China fended off international scrutiny by engaging more with the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) and, from 2006, its more robust successor, the UNHRC; and
• from 2013 onwards, China, under President Xi, has promoted its own interpretation of human rights.

With Xi as President, China has more confidently pushed its agenda, despite its own deteriorating human rights record. For example, during the 29th Session of the UNHRC in 2015, China’s delegation made 35 discrete, formal interventions – raising objections to new UN resolutions or amendments to resolutions – compared to 26 a year earlier. These included on country-specific situations in Belarus, Eritrea and Syria.

It’s been suggested that China has adopted a more activist role on the UNHRC to block international criticism of its human rights record, and to promote its belief in non-interference in internal affairs. This approach directly goes against the UN’s 1993 Vienna Declaration, which underlines the role of international action and state accountability to protect universal human rights (see box: Universal human rights – the Vienna Declaration).

Votes on seven specific proposed resolutions presented by China at the UNHRC between 2016 and 2018 support this argument. In two cases, China led sponsorship of a resolution for the first time. These presented Chinese interpretations and terminology, and won endorsement by a majority of Council members.

The first resolution, in June 2017, suggested that respect for human rights depends on ‘people-centred development’, as opposed to being inherent to human dignity regardless of a country’s level of development. It also recognised ‘a community of shared future for human beings’ and welcomed ‘win-win outcomes’.

The second, in March 2018, reflected China’s insistence that ‘mutually beneficial cooperation’, constructive dialogue, technical assistance and capacity-building should be the primary tools for promoting human rights at the UN – rather than resolutions that ‘name and shame’ specific countries for their egregious human rights violations.

China was an active co-sponsor in the other five cases, which unsuccessfully sought to weaken international norms to protect civil society or enhance the principle of non-interference in sovereign affairs.

There are also examples beyond the UNHRC, where China has influenced human rights decision-making at the UN and elsewhere. For example, alongside Russia, it has sought to defund and suppress some 170 key human rights posts through closed-doors budget negotiations, including in the immediate office of the UN Secretary-General.

Top ten contributors to UN peacekeeping

Source: UN Peacekeeping – Effective rates of assessment for peacekeeping operations, 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2018, based on the scale of assessments (adopted by the UN General Assembly) to gross national income data

A gameplan to tackle dissent

In a national report to the UN in 2018, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs outlined how its rationale is to develop human rights with Chinese characteristics. ‘There is no universal road for the development of human rights in the world,’ it argued. ‘As an important element in the economic and social development of each country, the cause of human rights must be promoted on the basis of the national conditions and the needs of the people of that country, and cannot be defined on the basis of a single authority.’

‘China’s gameplan behind its talk of “win-win” cooperation is a systematic approach to dismantling the concept of state accountability,’ says Richardson. ‘This could be devastating for human rights.’ D’Alessandra says that while China’s rejection of norms that conflict with national sovereignty and non-interference in domestic affairs is not new, the country has recently adopted a more assertive strategy to silencing civil society and human rights groups.

‘By leading on normative agendas such as international development and climate change, China has boosted its credibility as an important international actor willing to engage on the international level and able to play by international rules,’ she says. ‘Its strategy, however, has been to use this influence to contest the substantive content of the rules by which it is threatened, and to counter them by participating more actively and forcefully within the bodies and agencies tasked with their support and implementation – thereby reducing the space for dissenting voices.’