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China's Socialization in the International Human Rights Regime: why did China reject the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court?
Journal of Contemporary China
Abstract
This article uses a hard law—the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court—to examine the depth of China's socialization in the international human rights regime and the relative weights of sovereignty and human rights norms in determining China's policy choices. It shows that the reasons for China's rejection of the Rome Statute are twofold. On the one hand, Chinese leaders have not fully internalized human rights norms, and they prioritize state sovereignty over human rights when making decisions. On the other hand, the legalized Rome Statute sets up an independent court with mandatory jurisdiction and grants the Prosecutor the ex officio right to investigate a crime. Such treaty provisions may have negative impacts on China's core sovereignty of territorial integration and regime security, thus imposing high sovereignty costs on China. Therefore, China resolutely voted against the Rome Statute, even if such an action made it a small minority outside the international mainstream. These findings indicate that China is still in a weak socialization stage and is not able to take on binding human rights and humanitarian obligations with high sovereignty costs.
... It refused to sign the Rome Statute, and categorized the establishment of the ICC as a matter of 'war-related security politics' rather than one related to human protection and rights. 67 This approach was also discern-ible in relation to specific cases. For instance, China downplayed the usefulness of criminal accountability to the situation of Syria, voted against the relevant UNSC draft resolution (S/2014/348), and suggested that the forcible ICC referral was 'not conducive either to building trust … or to an early resumption of … negotiations'. ...
This article argues that China's rhetorical support for prevention at the United Nations obscures its underlying contestation of atrocity prevention in both conception and practice. It introduces a novel conceptual framework, coined as the two-level norm cluster of prevention, which includes three conceptually aligned yet distinct parts: operational conflict prevention, direct atrocity prevention and root-cause prevention. Drawing on interviews and policy documents, this article finds that China conflates direct atrocity prevention with operational conflict prevention, with a preference for the agenda of conflict prevention, as seen in China's divergent commitments to preventing armed conflicts and peacetime atrocities. This conflation represents a deliberate political choice rather than a result of misunderstanding or lack of knowledge regarding their distinctions. China also endorses a strong linkage between direct atrocity prevention and development-focused root cause prevention. Despite China's growing assertiveness in shaping liberal norms and the favourable perception of its development-focused approaches among elite groups in host states, the Chinese government hesitates to officially promote the scholarly concept of developmental peace and present it as an alternative to the existing liberal principles. This reluctance reflects China's intention to avoid explicit confrontation with liberal norms and its concerns about the potential failure of norm entrepreneurship.
... China voted against the Rome Statute that established the ICC due to its opposition to a number of clauses, particularly the definition of crime against humanity, which is perceived as potentially interfering in China's domestic affairs (Tao 2015). Sovereignty remains a central concern even if the Chinese government has sought to integrate with the international system (Carlson 2005). ...
The US government has shifted strategic focus from war on terror to great power contest with China and Russia. But there has not been corresponding thinking about the role of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the law of war (LOW) in the United States or China. Both IHL and human rights law (HRL) originated from Western legal traditions and advantage the United States and the West. China had to adapt and is now challenging the West-dominated international order, a major source of its tension with the United States. Both China and the United States invoked the Geneva Conventions against each other during the Korean War. The war took place seven decades ago, and much has changed since then. But it is the only precedent between the two great powers. LOW provides a structure for managing conflict between the great powers. In turn, a rivalry between the two greatest powers would make IHL narrowly based on national interests and weaken its linkage to human rights.
... On the other hand, Beijing seriously questions the universality and functional equivalence of civil and political rights (Foot 2000;Zhou 2005;Men 2011). This is because civil and political rights are securitised and believed to be subject to national sovereignty, territorial integrity, and regime security (Inboden and Chen 2012;Tao 2015). These are China's core national interests previously constituted in its 'century of humiliation' caused by colonial and imperial invasions. ...
When do socialisation efforts succeed? This paper fills a theoretical gap by theorising effective state socialisation in international relations while also tackling an empirical puzzle: why do the EU’s and the US’s respective socialisation efforts towards China produce inconsistent outcomes? We argue that the efficacy of socialisation depends on the socialisee’s perception of whether the norms or roles the socialisers advocate are appropriate, and the socialisee’s perception of whether the socialisers’ behaviours are consistent with those norms or roles. By innovatively structuring Mill’s methods in a two-level hierarchy that accommodates equifinality, we investigate three sets of cases of socialisation outcomes between China and the EU as well as China and the US. The empirical analysis supports our theoretical argument that effective socialisation is a process of constituting the socialisee’s interests and perception.
... On the one hand, China was a global participant, signing treaties and incorporating international laws into its foreign policy. On the other hand, it was struggling with socialization because of its refusal to ratify treaties such as the Rome Statute 7 , which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and which calls into question sovereignty and territorial authority (Tao 2015(Tao : 1093(Tao -1096. China's normative human rights rhetoric included the publication of multiple White Papers (WP), which set the tone for human rights diplomacy. ...
What is the impact of China's official human rights stance on international human rights discourses/norms? Will China's ambition to change the international human rights framework succeed, resulting in a new normative order in the world of human rights? The article attempts to address these questions. First, it identifies the state's practice pursuing different standards when dealing with human rights issues internationally and domestically. Second, it argues that China is no different from other states when it behaves in a double standard way. The paper maintains, however, that China's double-standard human rights approach is critical for the future development of the international human rights regime since the CCP leadership intends to redefine human rights in its own interests. While China's interests align with most states in the third world, its pursuit of normative design is a threat to the current notion of universal human rights.
... On the one hand, China was a global participant, signing treaties and incorporating international laws into its foreign policy. On the other hand, it was struggling with socialization because of its refusal to ratify treaties such as the Rome Statute 7 , which established the International Criminal Court (ICC) and which calls into question sovereignty and territorial authority (Tao 2015(Tao : 1093(Tao -1096. China's normative human rights rhetoric included the publication of multiple White Papers (WP), which set the tone for human rights diplomacy. ...
What is the impact of Chinaâs official human rights stance on international human rights discourses/norms? Will Chinaâs ambition to change the international human rights framework succeed, resulting in a new normative order in the world of human rights? The article attempts to address these questions. First, it identifies the stateâs practice pursuing different standards when dealing with human rights issues internationally and domestically. Second, it argues that China is no different from other states when it behaves in a double standard way. The paper maintains, however, that Chinaâs double-standard human rights approach is critical for the future development of the international human rights regime since the CCP leadership intends to redefine human rights in its own interests. While Chinaâs interests align with most states in the third world, its pursuit of normative design is a threat to the current notion of universal human rights.
... 97 (Johnston 2008 97-98, 109). 98 (Tao 2015). 99 See also (He and Feng 2015). ...
The past few years has witnessed an onslaught of actions by China-from the precarious standoffs in the East and South China Seas, and the alleged cyber-spying and cyber-attacks on American targets to its success in founding the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) despite Washington's overt obstruction-all of which hit international headlines. Owing to the widely perceived Chinese truculence as much as the underlying power shift, in the United States the engagement school of China policy is experiencing a crisis of faith of some sort as relationship between Beijing and Washington slides toward what David Lampton calls "a tipping point" in spite of "remarkable policy continuity" of "constructive engagement" lasting decades. 1 As a result, variants of a balancing strategy are now vociferously called for to respond to the "new normal" of a belligerent China in a great many areas of international dispute. 2 The old paradigm is lost; scholars and practitioners are scrambling for alternatives. How time has changed! Until as late as the mid-2000s, Beijing exercised tremendous self-restraint in global and regional affairs in line with the much propagandized notion of "peaceful rise," prompting experts to declare that China was "more integrated into and more cooperative within international institutions than ever before" on a slate of "major global issues" and that evidence of China hostile to the United States was "murky" at best. 3 For good measure, China had been by and large trekking along the lane of engagement prescribed and prognosticated by Western policy makers and observers, many of whom subscribe to a broad definition of engagement strategy as "[the] use of non-coercive methods to ameliorate the non-status-quo elements of a rising major power's behavior" in order to facilitate a peaceful evolution in the international system. 4 Whereas they also envision that its authoritarian system would become gentler, more democratic and open in the course of economic modernization and political liberalization, their projection for China's international behavior in the short or medium run is that it would be socialized into accepting the established world order entailing "adjustments in territory and 'spheres of influence' and the reallocation of global responsibilities and other 1 (Lampton 2015).
... On the other extreme, China appears as the archetypical case of low support for the Rome Statute, with low scores on Western-ness (0.04/3) and high involvement in militarized interstate dispute (57/77). In line with this expectation, China acted as a Detractor, arguing for a court with limited jurisdiction over restricted types of crime (Tao 2015(Tao : 1097. Finally, the United States, which on the basis of its Western-ness score should have been an Entrepreneur, voted against the Statute. ...
This paper contends that despite it functioning as a catalyst, the ICC “Africa problem” did not start with the arrest warrant against al-Bashir. To fully comprehend the current legitimacy crisis we must understand the nature of the negotiation process that led to the adoption of the Rome Statute and its enduring impact. In particular, we must acknowledge the uneven ability of states to formulate and signify their preferences on the basis of their identity and interests during the negotiation process. Drawing from Wiener’s theory of contestation, the paper contends that the absence of meaningful engagement with issues germane to some ICC stakeholders before and during the Rome Conference facilitated the adoption of the Rome Statute, but also plausibly created difficulties for the Court in the long run. Specifically, it postponed unavoidable conflict over contentious issues and undermined the likelihood that specific stakeholders would develop a sense of ownership over the Statute.
... Instead, China will continue to bypass, 'pay lip service' and maneuver in international negotiations and human rights governance as evidenced by its behavior at the U. N. Human Right Council since 2006 [12]. In addition, when China deems necessary, it will refuse to sign new treaties in this fi eld such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court [13]. ...
The paper explains the tendency of China’s Arctic policy by locating it in general patterns of China’s uneven rise in global governance across fields. Among the four major pathways of China’s enhanced participation in global governance, the Arctic case is best explained by the ‘push in’ pathway, where a significant increase of lobbying and engaging activities can be found. The paper highlights that the Arctic is an issue area where China will experiment with new tactics to exert influence on the reform of the existing multilateral institutions and to promote its own normative principles for global governance.
This Chapter analyzes China’s socialization in multilateral institutions that resulted in the emergence and development of its 21st-century-style postmodern global power identity. To ensure the success of economic reforms, the post-1979 leadership in Beijing embraced multilateralism and international institutions. Details are provided of China’s participation in the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the international environmental regime, the UN Conference on Disarmament, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and the international human rights regime. A common pattern of socialization is identified based on micro-processes of role playing/mimicking and social influence involving Chinese experts, high-ranking officials, and the political elite. However, this only led to Checkel’s first, less advanced type of socialization. Not all the norms of multilateral institutions were adopted and a reciprocal socialization phase typically followed the apprenticeship one. This is a Chinese effort to change the norms of multilateral institutions in ways beneficial to Beijing’s interests. This process often brought significant results but was unable to take China beyond the situation of a ‘body’ nation caught in a center-periphery economic relationship and subordinated to Western-controlled socializers. Before President Xi launched the construction of a new international order, China’s 21st-century-style postmodern global power identity was only half-developed.
This book argues that China’s Belt and Road Initiative should be seen more as a geopolitical project and less as a global economic project, with China aiming to bring about a new Chinese-led international order. It contends that China’s international approach has two personas – an aggressive one, focusing on a nineteenth century-style territorial empire, which is applied to Taiwan and the seas adjacent to China; and a new-style persona, based on relationship building with the political elites of countries in the Global South, relying on large scale infrastructure projects to help secure the elites in power, a process often leading to lower democratic participation and weaker governance structures. It also shows how this relationship building with elites leads to an acceptance of Chinese norms and to changes in states’ geopolitical preferences and foreign policies to align them with China’s geopolitical interests, with states thereby joining China’s emerging international order. Overall, the book emphasizes that this new-style, non-territorial “empire” building based on relationships is a major new development in international relations, not fully recognized and accounted for by international relations experts and theorists.
This book analyzes the Chinese-centered globalization ‘from below’ brought about by China’s entrepreneurial migrants and conceived of as a projection of Chinese power in the Belt and Road Initiative partner states. It identifies the features of this globalization ‘from below,’ scrutinizes its mutually reinforcing relationship with China’s globalization ‘from above,’ and shows that these two globalizations are intrinsically related to the construction of a new international order. It outlines how the actors in China’s globalization ‘from below’ include Chinese emigrants who are located in informal transnational economic networks. It reveals that Beijing has enacted many laws that compel these emigrants to contribute to the development of their country of origin but also influences them through the successful promotion of a specific type of deterritorialized nationalism; and that China is ready to impose harsh punitive actions on political elites in partner states which fail to protect its migrants or limit their economic activities. Finally, it argues that China’s globalization ‘from below’ is fundamentally different from the non-hegemonic globalization ‘from below’ represented by, among others, Lebanese and East Indian traders, and that China’s globalization ‘from below’ is rather a self-interested national strategy intended to support the construction of a Chinese-centered international order.
What are the prospects of U.S.-China relations in the area of human rights? Skeptics maintain that human rights is no longer an issue between the United States and China. A traditional understanding of U.S.–China relations ignores the role of norms, while the constructivist perspective recognizes their independent effects. This paper links the traditional understanding of power politics between the United States and China with the study of constructivist norm research. The three findings of constructivist norm theories are relevant and applied to predict the status of human rights in U.S.-China relations: the historical construction of norms, the long-term and multifaceted effects of norms, and the persistence of norms. Based on these theoretical predictions, it is expected that, although convergence is not completely impossible, the past dynamic of competition and confrontation will continue and human rights will still be a contentious issue in U.S.-China relations.
This book argues that China’s international socialization of the political elites of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) partner states is an exceptionally effective instrument of China’s current foreign policy. It shows how the BRI-related process of socialization generates shared beliefs in the legitimacy and therefore in the acceptability of a Chinese international order among target elites and how in turn the policies and actions of states controlled by these elites tend to become aligned with the norms ‘taught’ by the Chinese socializer. It goes on to show how this serves the interests of China’s government, firms, and citizens at national, regional, and global levels; and how the resulting increased support for Beijing’s version of the international order creates a virtuous circle that further enhances China’s international position and potential.
The first proposal for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1994 envisioned a weak institution. Over the subsequent four years, states surprisingly strengthened the draft to create a robust ICC with novel enforcement authority. What happened and why? We argue that during negotiations governments adopted the positions of the international partners on whom they depend for a diverse set of goods that includes trade, security, and foreign policy success in international organizations. We label this set of partners a “dependence network.” In our approach, leaders watch closely how other governments behave within their dependence network and alter their own actions accordingly. We test this theory against a variety of other explanations on a new database that codes state negotiating positions relative to four key institutional features of the ICC. We find that trade networks substantially influence state negotiating positions on the ICC even taking into account an array of other factors.
The creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute war crimes poses a real puzzle. Why was it created, and more importantly, why do states agree to join this institution? The ICC represents a serious intrusion into a traditional arena of state sovereignty: the right to administer justice to one's one nationals. Yet more than one hundred states have joined. Social scientists are hardly of one mind about this institution, arguing that it is (alternately) dangerous or irrelevant to achieving its main purposes: justice, peace, and stability. By contrast, we theorize that the ICC is a mechanism to assist states in self-binding, and draw on credible commitments theory to understand who commits to the ICC, and the early consequences of such commitments. This approach explains a counterintuitive finding: the states that are both the least and the most vulnerable to the possibility of an ICC case affecting their citizens have committed most readily to the ICC, while potentially vulnerable states with credible alternative means to hold leaders accountable do not. Similarly, ratification of the ICC is associated with tentative steps toward violence reduction and peace in those countries precisely least likely to be able to commit credibly to foreswear atrocities. These findings support the potential usefulness of the ICC as a mechanism for some governments to commit to ratchet down violence and get on the road to peaceful negotiations.
International courts and tribunals are flourishing. Depending on howthese bodies are defined, they now number between seventeen and forty.1In recent years we have witnessed the proliferation of new bodies and astrengthening of those that already exist. When future internationallegal scholars look back at . . . the end of the twentiethcentury ,one analyst has written, they probably will refer to the enormousexpansion of the international judiciary as the single most importantdevelopment of the post Cold War age.
As China emerges as an international economic and military power, the world waits to see how the nation will assert itself globally. Yet, as M. Taylor Fravel shows inStrong Borders, Secure Nation, concerns that China might be prone to violent conflict over territory are overstated. The first comprehensive study of China's territorial disputes,Strong Borders, Secure Nationcontends that China over the past sixty years has been more likely to compromise in these conflicts with its Asian neighbors and less likely to use force than many scholars or analysts might expect.By developing theories of cooperation and escalation in territorial disputes, Fravel explains China's willingness to either compromise or use force. When faced with internal threats to regime security, especially ethnic rebellion, China has been willing to offer concessions in exchange for assistance that strengthens the state's control over its territory and people. By contrast, China has used force to halt or reverse decline in its bargaining power in disputes with its militarily most powerful neighbors or in disputes where it has controlled none of the land being contested. Drawing on a rich array of previously unexamined Chinese language sources,Strong Borders, Secure Nationoffers a compelling account of China's foreign policy on one of the most volatile issues in international relations.
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
International Security 27.4 (2003) 5-56
[Figures]
The People's Republic of China (PRC) is more integrated into,
and more cooperative within, regional and global political and
economic systems than ever in its history. Yet there is growing
uneasiness in the United States and the Asia-Pacific region about
the implications of China's increasing economic and military power.
Characterizations of Chinese diplomacy in the policy and scholarly
worlds are, if anything, less optimistic of late about China's
adherence to regional and international norms. In the 1980s there
was little discussion in the United States and elsewhere about
whether China was or was not part of something called "the
international community." Since the early 1990s, however, scholars
and practitioners alike have argued increasingly that China has not
demonstrated sufficiently that it will play by so-called
international rules and that somehow it must be brought into this
community. The subtext is a fairly sharp othering of China that
includes a civilizing discourse (China is not yet a civilized
state) or perhaps a sports discourse (China is a cheater).
Many of the most vigorous policy debates in the United States in
recent years have been over whether it is even possible to
socialize a dictatorial, nationalistic, and dissatisfied China
within this putative international community. Engagers argue that
China is becoming socialized, though mainly in thesphere of
economic norms (e.g., free trade and domestic marketization).
Skeptics either conclude that this is not the case, due to the
nature of the regime (for some, China is still Red China; for more
sophisticated skeptics, China is flirting with fascism), or that it
could not possibly happen because China as a rising power, by
definition, is dissatisfied with the U.S.-dominated global order (a
power-transition realpolitik argument). A logical conclusion is
that both groups view the problem of China's rising power as the
primary source of instability in Sino-U.S. relations and by
extension in the Asia-Pacific region.
This article explores the degree to which China's leaders are
pursuing status quo or revisionist foreign policies. It examines
the evidence for and against the most common characterization of
China—that it is a dissatisfied, revisionist state, expressed in
everything from a desire to resolve the Taiwan issue in its favor
to excluding U.S. military power from the Asia-Pacific region to
replacing U.S. unipolarity with a multipolar distribution of power.
This characterization generally draws on or hews to various realist
insights into why rising powers are almost invariably interested in
challenging extant institutions, norms, and power distributions.
That is, the argument falls generally within a power-transition
version of realism where a static set of interests—the desire to
establish a great power's sphere of influence—interact with
changing Chinese relative capabilities to give China more
opportunities to challenge U.S. power. I suggest that this line of
argument is insufficiently attentive to the analytic ambiguities in
the terms "status quo" and "revisionism" as used in international
relations theory and practice. Moreover, this hypothesis fails to
examine both the status quo elements in Chinese diplomacy over the
last couple ofdecades and the problematic status of the empirical
evidence used to makeclaims about PRC revisionism. In short, it is
not clear that describing China as a revisionist or non-status quo
state is accurate at this moment in history.
What Is a Revisionist State in the Twenty-First Century?
In the last decade or so in the United States, many scholars,
pundits, and policymakers have characterized China as a state
operating outside of, or only partly inside, the so-called
international community on a range of international norms. As
Secretary of Defense William Perry noted in a speech in Seattle in
1995, engagement was a strategy for getting China to act like a
"responsible world power." In March 1997, in outlining national
security policy for President Bill Clinton's second term, National
Security Adviser Samuel Berger referred to Sino-U.S. engagement as
designed to pull China "in the direction of the international
community." Stanley Roth, assistant secretary of state for East
Asian and Pacific affairs, noted that "[the United States wants]
China to take...
This article examines the Chinese approach to territorial sovereignty and border relations during the 1980s and 1990s. It argues that the Chinese position during this period was characterized by a set of striking continuities and subtle changes. More specifically, foreign policy elites in Beijing have consistently worked to stabilize China's boundaries, but have also de-emphasized the use of confrontational claims and increasingly used international legal agreements to accomplish this goal. In brief, these diplomatic and representational practices have cemented the status quo along China's territorial boundaries.
The 5 July event in Urumqi inspired rethinking about Beijing's policy towards Xinjiang. This paper will examine Beijing's interests in Xinjiang from historical, political, economic and security perspectives, and the challenges Beijing faces in pursuing and protecting its interests. By examining the tensions between the Han and ethnic minorities, especially the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the paper argues that the Xinjiang issue involves China's core interests and the most serious challenge Beijing faces is how to cope with ethnic tension in a highly sensitive region surrounded by big powers.
China's attitude towards UNPKOs has experienced two shifts since the 1980s. One is about changing from non-financial-support, non-voting, and non-participation concerning peacekeeping to financial-support, voting, and participation in 1981. The other shift concerns China's gradual change in its attitude toward non-traditional peacekeeping over the 1990s. This paper provides a norm perspective on the issue. Specifically the author argues that China's attitude toward UNPKOs changed as a result of the change in international norm from prioritizing sovereignty to prioritizing human rights, and the diffusion of the norm of human rights into China through a variety of agents such as foreign policy elites and two special groups of PLA officers.
For many political observers the successful creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) came as a surprise, as major powers, in particular the United States, had opposed the plans for the ICC. Moreover, the institutional design of the ICC entails enormous sovereignty costs for states but only uncertain benefits. An analysis of the negotiations suggests that the court's successful creation can be attributed to persuasion and discourse within negotiations, that is, a shift in states' interests. The article develops a theoretical model of institutional change that defines the conditions under which persuasion and discourse can affect collective decision making. In particular, this study attempts to show that if (traditionally) weaker actors alter normative and institutional settings of negotiations they can further the chance of persuasion and discourse.