Sovereignty and Human Rights: A Comparison Between Western Liberal and Chinese Marxist Traditions

ABSTRACT

This study offers a comparison between the “rooted universals” of Western liberal and Chinese Marxist approaches to human rights. I begin with sovereignty, which is redefined in formerly colonized countries as anti-colonial sovereignty, predicated on mutual non-interference in the affairs of other states. From here, I analyze the Western liberal tradition, which arose from a unique legal tradition and its connection with private property, leading to a restricted emphasis on civil and political rights. The Chinese Marxist tradition differs, basing itself on anti-colonial sovereignty and emphasizing the core right to socioeconomic well-being, from which flow a range of further rights. The article closes with the point that it is necessary to understand and appreciate these different traditions in a global situation.

KEYWORDS:

• Sovereignty
• human rights
• universals
• anti-colonialism
• Western liberal tradition
• Chinese Marxist tradition
• socioeconomic well-being

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The original research for this article was undertaken for the seventh chapter of my book, entitled Socialism with Chinese Characteristics – A Guide for Foreigners (Singapore: Springer, 2021). Permission for reuse of this material has been granted.

2 Bell, Beyond Liberal Democracy, 1–2.

3 Hou, “On the Power of Ideological Discourse,” 121–24.

4 See Sun Xiangchen, “Shuangchong benti”; Sun and Lu, “Xiandaixing bushi minmie zishen de chuantong”.

5 Sun Pinghua, Human Rights Protection System, 132–35.

6 Wan, “Zhongguo tese renquan guan,” 34–35, 48–49.

7 Jackson, Sovereignty; Grimm, Sovereignty.

8 Maritain, Man and the State; Jouvenal, Sovereignty.

9 Calvin, Institutes; Boer, Red Theology, 75–90.

10 Luther, “Temporal Authority.”

11 Bodin, Les six livres; Hobbes, Leviathan.

12 Adorno, Jargon der Eigentlich.

13 A pertinent example here is Carl Schmitt’s effort to remove territory from the concept of sovereignty: Schmitt, Political Theology.

14 Yang, “Zhongguo tese zhengdang zhidu,” 18

15 Notably, many of the works that seek to dismantle the concept and practice of sovereign states largely ignore the anti-colonial struggles for national liberation: Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty; Krasner, Sovereignty; Teschke, The Myth of 1648; Kalmo and Skinner, Sovereignty in Fragments; Haldén, Sovereignty without Statehood; Pavel, Divided Sovereignty.

16 United Nations, Declaration on the Granting of Independence.

17 Contra Philpott, Revolutions in Sovereignty, 161–64; Gottwald and Duggan, “Diversity, Pragmatism and Convergence,” 42.

18 Wan, “Zhongguo tese renquan guan,” 36.

19 Zhou, “Heping gongchu wu xiang yuanze,” 113.

20 The Dominican Republic also abstained, under pressure from the United States.

21 Wan, “Zhongguo tese renquan guan,” 41.

22 I summarise here the detailed work of Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights, and Kilcullen, “Natural Rights.”

23 Gianaris, Modern Capitalism, 20; Miéville, Between Equal Rights, 95–97.

24 Wolff Roman Law, 67; Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 32; Graeber, Debt, 201.

25 Lin, “Pubian renquan de jiegou,” 74.

26 Losurdo, Liberalism.

27 Grotius, Rights of War and Peace, I.1.5; Boer and Petterson, Idols of Nations, 36-43.

28 For those seeking an English language overview, the best remains that by Sun Pinghua, Human Rights Protection System, while in Chinese the careful study by Wan Qianhui, “Zhongguo tese renquan guan,” is even better.

29 Li and Wang, “Renquan guoji baohu”; Wan, “Zhongguo tese renquan guan,” 42; Jiang Kai, “Makesizhuyi renquan guan,” 36; Wu. “Lun xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi renquan,” 17.

30 Fang, China’s Democratic Path, 107–11.

31 Sun Pinghua, Human Rights Protection System, 121.

32 Lin, “Pubian renquan de jiegou,” 76–78; Wan, “Zhongguo tese renquan guan,” 42–43; Jiang Kai, “Makesizhuyi renquan guan,” 37–38; Li, “Goujian renlei mingyun gongtongti,” 3–5; Wu, “Lun xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi renquan,” 13–14; Guo and Zhao, “Xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi renquan guan,” 27–28. This emphasis on economic and social rights is not seen as a “second generation” of human rights, with civil and political rights as the “first generation.” So Vasak, “Human Rights”. The idea of these generations indicates the European tradition.

33 Hegel, Berliner Schriften 1818-1831, 109; Losurdo, Hegel and the Freedom of the Moderns, 69, 89.

34 Losurdo, Hegel and the Freedom of the Moderns, 186.

35 Marx, “Kritik des Gothaer Programms,” 14–15.

36 Engels, “Dell’ Autorità,” 86. This is a consistent emphasis of Chinese scholarship: Lin, “Pubian renquan de jiegou”; Wan, “Zhongguo tese renquan guan”; Jiang Kai, “Makesizhuyi renquan guan.” By contrast, non-Chinese scholars frequently ignore or downplay the Marxist emphasis: Bell, East Meets West, 49–105; Angle, Human Rights and Chinese Thought, 200–204, 240–49; Freeman and Geeraerts, “Europe, China and Expectations for Human Rights,” 100; Biddulph, The Stability Imperative.

37 Weatherley, Discourse of Human Rights in China, 97–98; Lin, “Pubian renquan de jiegou,” 75–76.

38 Wang and Cui, “Gaige kaifang 40 nian.”

39 Sima, Shiji, 2595, 3952. The sentence appears on two occasions in Sima Qian’s Shiji, once in the Guanyan liezhuan section, and once in the Huozhi liezhuan section. Some readers may be reminded of Bertolt Brecht’s aphorism from The Threepenny Opera – “Food comes first, then morality” – but Brecht was himself influenced by Chinese thought.

40 Deng, “Zhongguo ben shiji de mubiao”; Xi, Juesheng quanmian jiancheng xiaokang shehui; see further Boer, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, 139–64.

41 Wan, “Zhongguo tese renquan guan,” 38.

42 Other examples would include: the development of a socialist rule of law – Wang and Cui, “Gaige kaifang 40 nian”; socialist democracy – Guo and Zhao, “Xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi renquan guan”; and the international policy of a “community with a shared future for humankind” – Li, “Goujian renlei mingyun gongtongti.”.

43 Huang, “Shehuizhuyi shichang jingji lilun.”

44 In a global perspective, this means that 75 percent of people lifted out of poverty around the globe were in China.

45 Zwart, “The Contribution of China.”

46 Zhu, “Zhongguo fuchi renkou.”

47 Jiang Zemin, “Zhengque chuli shehuizhuyi xiandaihua jianshe,” 465–67.

48 Tian and Xue, “Xianggang guo’an fa.”

49 ASEAN, ASEAN Human Rights Declaration.

50 Wu, “Lun xinshidai Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi renquan,” 14–15.

51 Quoted in Álvarez, “Chinos, quienes mejor realizan.”

52 Pope Francis, “Trump?”; Faggioli, “China-Vatican Talks.”

53 Sun Pinghua, Human Rights Protection System; Li, Buyun, Chen Youwu, Yang Songcai, Liu Zhiqiang, and Yuan Bingxi “Zhongguo tese shehuizhuyi renquan lilun,” 68–69.

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Roland Boer

Roland Boer is a professor in the School of Marxism, Dalian University of Technology, China. Among numerous publications, he is the author of the five-volume work, The Criticism of Heaven and Earth (Brill, 2007-2014). In 2014, it was awarded the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize. Most recently, he has published Socialism with Chinese Characteristics - A Guide for Foreigners (Springer, 2021).