Description
The existing literature has regarded China as a ‘norm shaper’ that contests liberal norms and principles in the field of human protection and human rights, including the Protection of Civilians (POC), the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and long-term principles such as those related to peacebuilding and development assistance. However, what remains relatively unexplored in these studies is whether, and if so, how and why China adopts varied contestation practices towards these norms and principles.
To deepen our understanding in this regard, drawing on elite interviews and English- and Chinese-language official documents, this paper conducts a comparative analysis of China’s approaches to three sets of human protection norms, including POC, R2P, and liberal development assistance. This paper identifies three patterns of variations in China’s contestation practices: differing intensities of contestation practices; various types of contestation practices; varying levels of engagement in norm entrepreneurship, and relatedly, China’s decision to contest within established dominant institutions or outside of them. The study introduces three groups of factors – norm-related factors, space-related factors, and agency-based factors – to shed light on these variation patterns. Building on these analyses, this paper offers implications for the impacts of a rising China on liberal international norms and orders. It specifically provides insights into China’s advocacy for a vision of human protection and human rights that is more state-centric and development-focused, which has the potential to the cosmopolitan underpinnings of international norms.
