Over the five decades since the establishment of the UN Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, human rights issues have become a dominant feature of the international system, embracing new actors, eroding the traditional Westphalian concept of sovereignty, and leading to an acceptance that the treatment of individuals and groups within domestic societies is legitimately a focus of global attention. This book examines the affect that this normative evolution has had on the individual, state, institutional and advocacy network behaviour. Having described this normative environment it assesses its impact on key actors' relationships with China, especially in the period since the Tiananmen bloodshed in June 1989. It also examines China's responses-international and internal-to being the focus of global attention in this issue area. The book's theoretical concerns are to uncover the conditions under which international human rights norms influence behaviour, including domestic changes within states, and about the operation of norms in the global system.
Reviews
Rosemary Foot has written the best book to date on the international relations of human rights in China. * International Relations of the Asia-Pacific *
Foot effectively demonstrates the impact of the regime on the domestic and foreign policy of China and China's efforts to influence the regime. * Choice *
Well sourced ... Rosemary Foot's study is exemplary in its precision and analytical clarity, and is a landmark in the study of external influences on both external and domestic policy in China. * The China Journal *
Foot describes in fascinating detail "the process", as she entitles it, whereby China's approach to human rights and the international human rights regime went through five complex stages of evolution ... Foot interprets official statements with a fine eye for nuance ... pioneering study. * The China Journal *
Rosemary Foot has made the most penetrating analysis of the efforts of the international community and China's own human rights advocates to push China, screaming and yelling, into the global human rights regime. She vividly describes the public and private pressures and the symbolic and material sanctions that have led China to a gradual acceptance of universal human rights norms, though not yet to their implementation. For those interested in the international as well as in the Chinese struggle for human rights, this book must be read. * Merle Goldman, Professor of History at Boston University and author of Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China *
[Foot's] answers are informed, insightful, and balanced. The book makes a major contribution both to the literature on Chinese foreign policy and to the new theoretical literature on the role of norms in international relations. * Andrew J. Nathan, Columbia University *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198297765
Author Rosemary Foot
Format Paperback
Page Count 308
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 445g
Dimensions(mm) 232mm * 156mm * 16mm