Current Research

China is becoming much more vocal on the international stage on the subject of human rights and engaging in debates. While much of the current literature about this topic has looked at China’s non-compliance with human rights from a political perspective as being valuable, however, there is notable gap to make sense of China’s human rights in a philosophical theorized way. As there is an asymmetry with China’s understanding of human rights, this project is to make sense of China’s distinctive human rights foreign policy which we called “Human Rights with Chinese Characteristics” (HRCC). The best way to explain the distinctive approach is by the philosophical underpinnings of Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism. It is helpful to discern the conflict between HRCC and Western notions of human rights as a philosophical conflict not a political conflict.