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ABSTRACT
China, North Korea, and Viet Nam are three essentially socialist countries that have survived the collapse of the Soviet Union. A salient commonality among them is the homogeneity of their cultural roots and the socialist legal tradition, which have continued to influence every facet of government and society. These lingering cultural and legal affinities have generated a different understanding of constitutional rights in relation to liberal counterparts. For strategic purposes, China and Viet Nam have faced a pressing need to remodel their rights conceptions to a certain universalist degree, while North Korea has remained almost immune to the globalisation of constitutional rights. To overcome historical negligence and cultural insensitivity, this article seeks to probe the interplay of various strands of values in shaping constitutional rights of socialist East Asia. It also demonstrates various implications from the study of socialist constitutional rights that could contribute heuristically and practically to the rights discourse.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Professor Gentian Zyberi (Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights) and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments, suggestions, and encouragement. Tien-Duc Nguyen thanks Thu-Thuy T Tran and Xoai for their love, patience, and support.
Declaration
For bureaucratic reasons, sections 2, 3.1, and 3.3 are authored by Tien-Duc Nguyen, section 3.2 is authored by Pasquale Viola (2017RYJAFW_001). The rest are jointly penned.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Stephen C Angle, Human Rights and Chinese Thought: A Cross Cultural Inquiry (Cambridge University Press 2002), 1.
2 The Bangkok Conference Democracy and Security of the People in the Asia Region, Bangkok, 22–25 August 2002.
3 Mark Tushnet and Madha Khosla (eds), Unstable Constitutionalism: Law and Politics in South Asia (Cambridge University Press 2014); Ran Hirschl, Comparative Matters: The Renaissance of Comparative Constitutional Law (Cambridge University Press 2014).
4 Rosalind Dixon and Tom Ginsburg, ‘Introduction’ in Tom Ginsburg and Rosalind Dixon (eds), Research Handbook on Comparative Constitutional Law (Edward Elgar 2011) 13.
5 Hirschl (n 3) 151.
6 Wen-Chen Chang and David S Law, ‘Constitutional Dissonance in China’ in Gary Jacobsohn and Miguel Schor (eds), Comparative Constitutional Theory (Edward Elgar 2018) 477.
7 Teemu Ruskola, ‘Legal Orientalism’ (2002) 101(1) Michigan Law Review 228.
8 Werner Menski, ‘Beyond Europe’ in Esin Örücü and David Nelken (eds), Comparative Law: A Handbook (Hart Publishing 2007) 191.
9 David S Law and Mila Versteeg, ‘Sham Constitutions’ (2013) 101(4) California Law Review 901. Notably, contrasting the common view, Law and Versteeg’s large-N study characterises North Korea’s constitution as ‘weak’ instead of pure ‘sham’. For discussion, see Patricia Goedde, ‘Beyond Sham: The North Korean Constitution’ (2020) 44(1) Asian Perspective 2.
10 See generally Mark A Graber, Sanford Levinson, and Mark Tushnet (eds), Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? (Oxford University Press 2018); Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z Huq, How to Save a Constitutional Democracy (University of Chicago Press 2018).
11 Rosalind Dixon, ‘Constitutional Rights as Bribes’ (2018) 50(3) Connecticut Law Review 767; Rosalind Dixon and David Landau, Abusive Constitutional Borrowing: Legal Globalization and the Subversion of Liberal Democracy (Oxford University Press 2021).
12 Tom Ginsburg, ‘East Asian Constitutionalism in Comparative Perspective’ in Albert HY Chen (ed), Constitutionalism in Asia in the Early Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press 2014) 32–51. On this issue, the classifications proposed by Karl Loewenstein, Giovanni Sartori, and – more recently – Albert HY Chen might provide a framework for the understanding of such phenomena: Karl Loewenstein, Political Power and the Governmental Process (University of Chicago Press 1965); Giovanni Sartori, ‘Constitutionalism: A Preliminary Discussion’ (1962) 56(4) The American Political Science Review 853; Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes (Palgrave Macmillan 1994); Chen (ed), Constitutionalism in Asia in the Early Twenty-First Century.
13 Michael Dowdle and Michael A Wilkinson, ‘On the Limits of Constitutional Liberalism: In Search of Constitutional Reflexivity’ in Michael Dowdle and Michael A Wilkinson (eds), Constitutionalism beyond Liberalism (Cambridge University Press 2015) 17–37.
14 Sujit Choudhry, ‘How to Do Constitutional Law and Politics in South Asia’ in Mark Tushnet and Madhav Khosla (eds), Unstable Constitutionalism: Law and Politics in South Asia (Cambridge University Press 2015) 19.
15 Domenico Amirante, ‘Al di là dell’Occidente. Sfide epistemologiche e spunti euristici nella comparazione “verso Oriente”’ (2015) 17(1) Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo 1; Maartje de Visser and Ngoc Son Bui, ‘Contemporary Constitution Making in Asia-Pacific’ (2019) 7 Chinese Journal of Comparative Law 241; See also Pasquale Viola, Costituzionalismo autoctono (Bononia University Press 2020); Lucio Pegoraro, Blows against the Empire. Contro la iper-Costituzione coloniale dei diritti fondamentali, per la ricerca di un nucleo interculturale, in VVAA, Annuario di diritto comparato e di studi legislativi, ESI, 2020, 447; Serena Baldin, ‘The Concept of Harmony in the Andean Transformative Constitutionalism: A Subversive Narrative and Its Interpretations’ (2015) 17 Revista General de Derecho Público Comparado 1.
16 See more Teemu Ruskola, ‘The East Asian Legal Tradition’ in Mauro Bussani and Ugo Mattei (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Comparative Law (Cambridge University Press 2012) 257–77.
17 Pinghua Sun, ‘Chinese Discourse on Human Rights in Global Governance’ (2016) 1(2) The Chinese Journal of Global Governance 192.
18 Robert Weatherly, The Discourse of Human Rights in China: Historical and Ideological Perspectives (MacMillan Press 1999) 38.
19 Ibid. 39.
20 Ibid. 42.
21 For critical comments, see Joseph CW Chan, ‘Confucianism and Human Rights’ in John Witte and M Christian Green (eds), Religion and Human Rights: An Introduction (Oxford University Press 2011) 87–102.
22 Song Jiyoung, Human Rights Discourse in North Korea Post-colonial, Marxist and Confucian Perspectives (Routledge 2011) 59.
23 Robert Weatherley and Song Jiyoung, ‘The Evolution of Human Rights Thinking in North Korea’ (2008) 24(2) Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 286.
24 Wejen Chang, ‘Confucian Theory of Norms and Human Rights’ in W Theodore De Bary and Tu Weiming (eds), Confucianism and Human Rights (Columbia University Press 1998) 129; Summer B Twiss, ‘A Constructive Framework for Discussing Confucianism and Human Rights’ in De Bary and Weiming (ibid) 41.
25 Daniel A Bell and Chaibong Hahm, ‘Introduction, The Contemporary Relevance of Confucianism’ in Daniel A Bell and Chaibong Hahm (eds), Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge University Press 2003) 1–28; Andrew Nathan, ‘Political Rights in Chinese Constitutions’ in R Randle Edwards, Louis Henkin, and Andrew Nathan (eds), Human Rights in Contemporary China (Columbia University Press 1986) 82–94.
26 Weatherley and Jiyoung (n 23) 282.
27 Karl Marx, ‘Grundrisse’ in David McLellan (ed), Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford University Press 1977) 346.
28 Aryeh Unger, Constitutional Development in the USSR (Pica Press 1981) 36–37.
29 Chris Osakwe, ‘The Common Law of Constitutions of the Communist-Party States’ (1977) 3 Review of Socialist Law 158.
30 Sergei Belov, William Partlett, and Alexandra Troitskaya, ‘Socialist Constitutional Legacies’ (2021) 9(2) Russian Law Journal 8.
31 Ibid.
32 Bui Ngoc Son, ‘Globalization of Constitutional Identity’ (2017) 26(3) Washington International Law Journal 505.
33 See e.g. Chapter 7 of the 1977 Constitution of the USSR.
34 Mark Tushnet, ‘The Inevitable Globalization of Constitutional Law’ (2009) 49(4) Virginia Journal of International Law 985.
35 Zachary Elkins, Tom Ginsburg, and James Melton, The Endurance of National Constitutions (Cambridge University Press 2009) 12–35.
36 See e.g., Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks, ‘How to Influence States: Socialization and International Human Rights Law’ (2004) 54 Duke Law Review 630; David S Law, ‘Globalization and the Future of Constitutional Rights’ (2008) 102(3) Northwestern University Law Review 1311; Thomas Risse, Stephen C Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink (eds), The Power of Human Rights International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge University Press 2009); Mark Tushnet (n 34); Benedikt Goderis and Mila Versteeg, ‘The Diffusion of Constitutional Rights’ (2014) 39 International Review of Law and Economics 1.
37 For a critical view, see more Rosalind Dixon and Eric Posner, ‘The Limits of Constitutional Convergence’ (2011) 11 Chicago Journal of International Law 419.
38 David S Law, ‘Globalization and the Future of Constitutional Rights’ (2008) 102(3) Northwestern University Law Review 1277.
39 Wen-chen Chang and Jiunn-Rong Yeh, ‘Internationalization of Constitutional Law’ in Michel Rosenfeld and Andras Sanjo (eds), Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law (Oxford University Press 2012) 1172–73.
40 Risse, Ropp, and Sikkink (n 36).
41 Robert Lawrence Kuhn, ‘Xi Jinping’s Chinese Dream’ New York Times (4 June 2013) <www.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/opinion/global/xi-jinpings-chinese-dream.html> accessed 27 December 2021.
42 A James Gregor and Maria Hsia Chang, ‘Anti-Confucianism: Mao’s Last Campaign’ (1979) 19(11) Asian Survey 1088.
43 GD Deshingkar, ‘Mao Against Confucius?’ (1974) 10(1–2) China Report 7.
44 Andrew G Walder, ‘Rebellion and Repression in China, 1966–1971’ (2014) 38(3–4) Social Science History 513.
45 Gregor and Chang (n 42) 1090.
46 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China <https://web.archive.org/web/20121213182749/http://www.marxists.org/subject/china/documents/cpc/history/01.htm> accessed 6 July 2022.
47 Randall Nadeau, ‘Confucianism and the Problem of Human Rights’ (2002) 11(2) Intercultural Communication Studies 109.
48 Qingxiu Bu, ‘To Legislate Filial Piety: Is the Elderly Rights Law a Panacea?’ (2021) 42(2) Statute Law Review 219.
49 Donald Munro, The Concept of Man in Contemporary China (University of Michigan Press 1977) 16; Andrew Nathan, Chinese Democracy: The Individual and the State in Twentieth Century China (Tauris 1986) 141.
50 Weatherly, The Discourse of Human Rights in China (n 18) 10–64.
51 Qianfan Zhang, The Constitution of China: A Contextual Analysis (Hart 2012) 57.
52 Robert Weatherly, Making China Strong: The Role of Nationalism in Chinese Thinking on Democracy and Human Rights (Palgrave Macmillan 2014) 127–28.
53 Andrew Nathan, ‘Political Rights in Chinese Constitutions’ (n 25) 97.
54 Elizabeth J Perry, ‘Chinese Conceptions of “Rights”: From Mencius to Mao – and Now’ (2008) 6(1) Perspectives on Politics 40.
55 Chengxin Pan, ‘A Development-based Approach to Human Rights: The Case of China and Its Implications for North Korea’ in Baogang He, David Hundt, and Chengxin Pan (eds), China and Human Rights in North Korea Debating a ‘Developmental Approach’ in Northeast Asia (Routledge 2022) 83.
56 Article 8 of the 1982 Constitution of the PRC.
57 Weatherly, Making China Strong (n 52) 78.
58 Chengxin Pan, ‘A Development-based Approach (n 55) 73–97.
59 Ibid. 86.
60 Baogang He, ‘Village Elections, Village Power Structure and Rural Governance in Zhejiang’ (2002) 20(3) American Asian Review 55; Phil CW Chan, ‘Human Rights and Democracy with Chinese Characteristics?’ (2013) 13(4) Human Rights Law Review 645.
61 Chengxin Pan, ‘A Development-based Approach’ (n 55) 87.
62 Qianfan Zhang, ‘A Constitution without Constitutionalism? The Paths of Constitutional Development in China’ (2010) 8(4) International Journal of Constitutional Law 950; Jianfu Chen, Chinese Law: Context and Transformation (Brill 2016) 197; For a discussion, see more Bui Ngoc Son, Constitutional Change in the Contemporary Socialist World (Oxford University Press 2020) 298–304.
63 Li Li, ‘China’s Constitutional Amendments and Their Implications’ (2005) 41(1) China Report 75.
64 Chang and Law (n 6) 505.
65 Zhang, ‘A Constitution without Constitutionalism?’ (n 62) 951.
66 Charlotte Gao, ‘Xi: China Must Never Adopt Constitutionalism, Separation of Powers, or Judicial Independence’ The Diplomat (19 February 2019) <https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/xi-china-must-never-adopt-constitutionalism-separation-of-powers-or-judicial-independence/> accessed 27 December 2021.
67 Yu-Jie Chen, ‘China’s Challenge to the International Human Rights Regime’ (2019) 51 NYU Journal of International Law and Politics 1209.
68 Bui Ngoc Son, ‘Constitutional Mobilisation in China’ (2018) 14(3) International Journal of Law in Context 335, 347.
69 Chang and Law (n 6).
70 Ibid.
71 Geir Helgesen, ‘Political Revolution in A Cultural Continuum: Preliminary Observations on the North Korean Juche Ideology with Its Intrinsic Cult of Personality’ (1991) 15 Asian Perspective 187.
72 Atsuhito Isozaki, ‘North Korea Revamps Its Constitution’ The Diplomat (26 August 2019) <https://thediplomat.com/2019/08/north-korea-revamps-its-constitution/> accessed 27 December 2021.
73 Bui Ngoc Son, ‘Constitutional Change’ (n 62) 125.
74 Weatherley and Jiyoung (n 23) 278–79.
75 Ibid. 279.
76 Ibid. 280.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid. 282.
79 Articles 63, 68, 77, and 78 of the 1972 Constitution with amendments through 1998.
80 Nathan, ‘Political Rights in Chinese Constitutions’ (n 25).
81 Kim Young-guk, cited in Weatherley and Jiyoung (n 23) 283–84.
82 Ibid. 286.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid. 289–90.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid. 287.
87 Bui Ngoc Son, “Constitutional Change” (n 62) 125.
88 Duy Nghia Pham, ‘From Marx to Market: The Debates on the Economic System in Vietnam’s Revised Constitution’ (2016) 11(2) Asian Journal of Comparative Law 263.
89 Quan Xuan Dinh, ‘The Political Economy of Vietnam’s Transformation Process’ (2000) 22(2) Contemporary Southeast Asia 360; Adam Fforde, ‘From “Constructing Socialism” to a “Socialist-oriented Market Economy” in Contemporary Vietnam: A Critique of Ideologies’ (2019) 71(4) Europe-Asia Studies 671.
90 Son Ngoc Bui, ‘Anticolonial Constitutionalism: The Case of Hồ Chi Minh’ (2018) 19(2) Japanese Journal of Political Science 197.
91 See e.g. Uông Chu Lưu (ed), Hiến pháp năm 1946: Những giá trị lịch sử [The 1946 Constitution: Historical Values] (The National Politics and Truth Publishing House 2017); Mark Sidel, The Constitution of Vietnam: A Contextual Analysis (Hart Publishing 2009); Ngoc Son Bui, ‘Restoration Constitutionalism and Socialist Asia’ (2015) 37 Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review 67; Bui Ngoc Son, ‘The Global Origins of Vietnam’s Constitutions: Text in Context’ (2017) 2 University of Illinois Law Review 525.
92 Nguyen Tien Duc, ‘Constitutional Nostalgia: The Contemporary Relevance of Vietnam’s 1946 Constitution’ (Forthcoming in 2022), 17(4) Journal of Vietnamese Studies.
93 Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2010) 84–85.
94 Ibid.
95 See Hồ Chí Minh, Complete Works Volume IV (National Politics Publishing House 2000) 22, 101.
96 Sidel, The Constitution of Vietnam (n 91) 142–43.
97 Viet Nam’s 1980 Constitution, art 25.
98 Viet Nam’s 1992 Constitution, ch 5.
99 Mark Sidel, Law and Society in Viet Nam: The Transition from Socialism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2008) 141.
100 Mark Sidel, ‘Analytical Models for Understanding Constitutions and Constitutional Dialogue in Socialist Transitional States: Re-Interpreting Constitutional Dialogue in Vietnam’ (2002) 6 Singapore Journal of International and Comparative Law 42.
101 Sidel, Law and Society in Vietnam (n 99) 1–17; Bui Ngoc Son, ‘Constitutional Mobilization’ (2018) 17 Washington University Global Studies Law Review 117.
102 Cong Giao Vu and Kien Tran, ‘Constitutional Debate and Development on Human Rights in Vietnam’ (2016) 11(2) Asian Journal of Comparative Law 243.
103 See generally Mark Sidel, ‘A New Generation and New Thinking in Vietnamese Legal Scholarship’ (2016) 11(2) Asian Journal of Comparative Law 193; Pip Nicholson, ‘Vietnamese Constitutionalism: The Reform Possibilities’ (2016) 11(2) Asian Journal of Comparative Law 199.
104 Cong Giao Vu and Kien Tran (n 102) 249.
105 Ibid.
106 Nguyen Tien Duc (n 92).
107 Bui Ngoc Son, ‘The Discourse on Constitutional Review in Vietnam’ (2014) 9(2) Journal of Comparative Law 191; Pasquale Viola and Duc Tien Nguyen, ‘Convergences and Divergences in Southeast Asian Constitutional Systems: A Comparative Study of Thailand and Vietnam’ (2021) 23(4) Diritto Pubblico Comparato ed Europeo 1042.
108 Bui Ngoc Son, ‘Contextualizing the Global Constitution-Making Process: The Case of Vietnam’ (2016) 64(4) The American Journal of Comparative Law 931.
109 H Chung, ‘Quyền con người không còn là chuyện nhạy cảm [Human Rights No Longer a Sensitive Issue]’ Vietnamnet (23 January 2013) <https://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-su/quyen-con-nguoi-khong-con-la-chuyen-nhay-cam-106613.html> accessed 27 December 2021.
110 David Golove and Daniel Hulsebosch, ‘A Civilized Nation: The Early American Constitution, the Law: Of Nations, and the Pursuit of International Recognition’ (2010) 85 New York University Law Review 932–1066.
111 GD Deshingkar, ‘Mao Against Confucius?’ (1974) 10(1-2) China Report 4. With the aim of suggesting a ‘super partes’ dialogues beyond cultural factions: Bui Ngoc Son, Confucian Constitutionalism in East Asia (Routledge 2016), 209: ‘in the age of globalization, the line between west and east blurs and mutual learning and respect is always necessary. Communitarians, communitarian constitutionalists, libertarians, liberal constitutionalists, mixed constitutionalists, regardless of their western or Confucian backgrounds, should engage in global dialogues for world constitutional justice.’
112 Benjamin Schwartz, Communism and China: Ideology in Flux (Harvard University Press 1968) 172.
113 Nguyen Tien Duc (n 92).
114 See generally Duy Trinh, ‘Explaining Factional Sorting in China and Vietnam’ (2021) 68(3) Problems of Post-Communism 171.
115 Tom Ginsburg and Alberto Simpser, Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge University Press 2013) 2–3.
116 Ibid.
117 Bui Ngoc Son, ‘Constitutional Change’ (n 62).
118 Bui Ngoc Son, ‘The Discourse on Constitutional Review’ (n 107).
119 As far as Chinese legal tradition vis-à-vis foreign constitutional borrowings is concerned, see Shiping Hua, Chinese Legal Culture and Constitutional Order (Routledge 2019) 122: ‘In retrospect, China’s legal culture has been characterized by pragmatism, instrumentalism, statism, and favoritism, as demonstrated in the country’s striving for a constitutional order in the last century. These characteristics had roots in the last several thousand years in the Chinese history.’
120 Benjamin Ho, ‘Understanding Chinese Exceptionalism: China’s Rise, Its Goodness, and Greatness’ (2014) 39(3) Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 164; For a discussion on the invention of China’s history, see Bill Hayton, The Invention of China (Yale University Press 2020) 7–32.
121 Benjamin Ho, Ibid 165. But exceptionalism is not exclusive to China. It is argued that superpower nations have often formulated their own ideas and visions. See Anu Bradford and Eric A Posner, ‘Universal Exceptionalism in International Law’ (2011) 52(1) Harvard International Law Journal 1.
122 Chen (n 67) 1214–21.
123 Do Thanh Hai, ‘Vietnam and China: Ideological Bedfellows, Strange Dreamers’ (2021) 10(2) Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies 162.
124 Bui Ngoc Son, ‘Constitutional Change’ (n 62).
125 Baogang He, ‘China’s Roles in the UN Human Rights Council Regarding North Korea’s Human Rights’ in He, Hundt, and Pan (n 55) 53. But for a justification of certain types of prioritisation of rights, see Alberto Quintavalla and Klaus Heine, ‘Priorities and Human Rights’ (2019) 23(4) The International Journal of Human Rights 679.