Abstract
The issue of human rights has been one of the most sensitive elements in the EU-China relationship. It has been difficult to deal with in the official relationship between the EU and the Chinese government and has also been controversial in public opinion and in the media. The question of human rights often appears to be the aspect of their relationship where the differences between Europe and China are the greatest and the most destabilizing. In recent times we have seen this with regard to specific issues. On the Tibet issue, China was critical of EU President Sarkozy’s meeting with the Dalai Lama in 2008. A generalized criticism in Europe of China’s human rights policies affected events surrounding the Beijing Olympics; notably during the Olympic torch procession and when a boycott of the event by European leaders was widely advocated.
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Notes
See, for instance, Robert Wetherly, The Discourse on Human Rights in China: Historical and Ideological Perspectives, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1999;
Philip Baker, “Human Rights, Europe and the People’s Republic of China”, China Quarterly, vol. 169, no. 1, 2002, pp. 45–63;
Stephen C. Angle, Human Rights in Chinese Thought: A Cross-Cultural Enquiry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002;
Marina Svensson, Debating Human Rights in China: A Conceptual and Political History, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002;
Randall Peerenboom, “Human Rights, China, and Cross-Cultural Inquiry: Philosophy, History, and Power Politics”, Philosophy East and West, vol. 55, no. 2, April 2005, pp. 283–320.
J. Dickson Bruce, Wealth into Power: The Communist Party’s Embrace of China’s Private Sector, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 4.
Ronald Inglehart and Wayne E. Baker, “Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values”, American Sociological Review, vol. 65, no 1, 2000, pp. 19–51.
See also, Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy: The Human Development Sequence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Ronald Inglehart and Christian Welzel, “How Development Leads to Democracy: What We Know about Modernization”, Foreign Affairs, vol. 88, no. 2, March/April 2009, pp. 33–48.
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© 2012 Duncan Freeman and Gustaaf Geeraerts
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Freeman, D., Geeraerts, G. (2012). Europe, China and Expectations for Human Rights. In: Pan, Z. (eds) Conceptual Gaps in China-EU Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137027443_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137027443_7
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