Description
How does China execute normative contestation towards liberal principles of human protection? Most studies focus on China’s discourses on the institutionalisation of liberal principles but overlook China’s practices to delegitimise liberal principles when these principles are implemented in real-world scenes. To address this gap, this paper examines China’s approach to atrocity prevention and argues that rather than explicitly voicing its disapproval, China tends to let its action do the talking and prefers subtle ways of behaviourally contesting liberal principles in the implementation process, with an aim of reducing reputational costs and projecting a positive international image.
Three ways of China’s contestation on atrocity prevention are distinguished based on elite interviews with Chinese diplomats and UN officials in New York and Geneva. First, China links atrocity prevention to related but distinct normative agendas that are favoured by the country, including conflict prevention and state-centric, development-focused peacebuilding. Second, China contests the measures of atrocity prevention by implementing peaceful means of direct and structural prevention. Third, China contests atrocity prevention through strategic non-implementation, namely its reluctance to adopt implementation mechanisms to prevent atrocities. Compared with mere rhetoric, through behavioral contestation, China is more competent in promoting Chinese interpretations of what constitutes good practices of atrocity prevention.
