China, Human Rights And The 'Authoritarian International Law' Thesis Prologue – Anniversaries - The May 4th Movement of 1919 challenged traditional Chinese values and authorities and demanded freedom of speech and democracy. - 70 years later - 40 years after PRC founding students, scholars, and other citizens mobilized again in defense of freedom of speech, human rights, and democratic values; but were crushed on June 4th 1989. - 100 years later, President Xi Jinping celebrated the anniversary by exhorting China's youth to 'study May 4th's significance for the dream of the great Chinese nation's rejuvenation' and to 'obey and follow the Party' Prologue - 'Rules-Based Order' • [At a meeting in London yesterday, US Secretary of State] 'Blinken said it was "not the US purpose to contain China, or hold it down", adding: "What we are trying to do is to uphold the international rules-based order, that our countries have invested so much in over so many decades to the benefit, I would argue not just of our own citizens but of people around the world, including, by the way, China. • "And when any country – China or otherwise – takes actions that challenge or undermine or seek to erode that rules-based order and not make good on the commitments that they've made to that order, we will stand up and defend the order."' The Guardian China's Autocratic Trajectory - Law in the domestic autocracy • Deteriorating human rights situation • Crimes against humanity (XUAR) • Change of constitutional system enshrining Party leadership - CarlSchmidtian model of 'law' under state capitalism - Transnational autocratic expansion: • 'Rights-free development projects around the world (Richardson) • 'Making the world a safer place for autocrats' (Chen-Weiss) • Overlapping economic, discursive, coercive and normative strategies China's Global Reach: Economic Tools and mechanisms of economic influence -- examples: - Belt and Road Initiative, launched 2013 - Role of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank - Role of Trade Agreements (cp. Current discussion about CAI) - Role of development projects with funding controlled by Chinese party- state, affecting wide range of sectors (including higher ed) China's Global Reach: Discursive Global outreach towards media/publications industry and into academia – examples: • 'In 2014, the international arm of ABC announced a blockbuster deal with the Shanghai Media Group...Some observers welcomed the arrangement as a breakthrough that might give ...more access to BC Chinese audiences... [but] ABC management had agreed to eliminate news and current-affairs content objectionable to Beijing from the respected ABC Mandarin-language service (Walker) • Cambridge University Press censoring articles in China Quarterly at China's request • CGTN airing forced confessions & Peter Humphrey's complaint against Ofcom, upheld July 2020, resulting in sanctions in 2021 China's Global Reach: Coercive Overt and covert uses of coercive power – examples: - Cross border fugitive repatriations through • Extradition, partly based on treaties • Use of deportation by host country • 'Persuasion to return' • Abduction - Cross-border domestic violence to control targets abroad - 'Sanctions' in response to Magnitsky sanctions imposed on researchers, thinktanks in Europe China's Global Reach: Normative? • Changes of international law institutions such as HRC by its members – examples: ∼ UPR - e.g. Saudi Arabia and other countries supporting Xinjiang's (concentration) camps; China opposing resolutions condemning human rights violations in Myanmar, Syria, Iran, the Philippines, Burundi, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Yemen, Eritrea, and Belarus ∼ Promotion of UNHRC 'win-win' resolutions on 'mutually beneficial cooperation' that 'reposition international human rights law as a matter of state- to-state relations' (Richardson) • Note that under Trump, exacerbated by U.S. withdrawal from UN Human Rights Council, UNRWA, UNESCO, WHO, Paris Agreement, etc. under Trump (Hathaway) • 2020 Hong Kong National Security Law: ∼ Introduces crimes of secession, subversion, terrorist activities, and 'collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security' establishes a PRC -led security apparatus within HKSAR ∼ Ousts judicial review over NSL matters ∼ Allows some cases to be diverted entirely into Mainland criminal justice system • Through art 37, HKNSL asserts global jurisdiction – anyone, anywhere may be held criminally liable • 'Mainland station' of Hong Kong: through laws, as well as through lawlessness • Hong Kong as 'canary in the coalmine'? 'Sharp Power'? ∼ Ludwig and Walker: sharp power 'exploits the asymmetry' between open liberaldemocratic systems and closed authoritarian systems, making democracies, in particular 'the spheres of culture, academia, media and publishing,' more vulnerable. ∼ ''"[S]harp power" pierces, penetrates, or perforates the political and information environments in the targeted countries. In the new competition that is under way between autocratic and democratic states, the repressive regimes' “sharp power" techniques should be seen as the tip of their dagger – or indeed as their syringe ∼ Are liberal democracies passive victims of sharp power? 'Authoritarian International Law'? - Emergence of 'authoritarian international law' (Ginsburg 2020)? -- 'We should anticipate the possibility of a specifically authoritarian international law, defined as legal rhetoric, practices, and rules specifically designed to extend the survival and reach of authoritarian rule across space and/or time.' - Ginsburg argues that autocracies • Do not merely emphasize sovereignty ('sovereignties') and oppose public international dispute resolution • Do not merely cooperate, despite internal differences • But also 'promote normative development that e.g..... facilitate cooperation across borders to repress regime opponents... [and] discourage freedoms of expression and association... turning general international law more authoritarian.' - Ginsburg brilliantly describes important recent trajectories in international law / relations - But his assumption of international law's content-neutrality / instrumentality (Hurd) is questionable - it reflects diplomatic jargon of 'rules-based international order' but fails to account for the idea of international rule of law, reflect both in domestic and international rights based legal orders - Does not discuss of lawless transnational repression as characteristic tools of global autocratic control (rule by fear)