Human Rights and Social Criticism in Contemporary Chinese Political Theory

Political Theory

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 396-408

  Bell, Daniel A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34248045286     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591703254979     Document Type: Review

References (24)

1. See, for example, Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction, 2d ed. (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002)
2. Adam Swift, Political Philosophy: A Beginners' Guide for Students and Politicians (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2001)
3. Raymond Plant, Modern Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991)
4. Jonathan Wolff, An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996)
5. Jean Hampton, Political Philosophy (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997)
6. Terence Ball, Reappraising Political Theory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995).
7. I say “among the best” because there are some equally interesting works that cannot be discussed here, due to lack of space (not to mention my own slow pace reading Chinese-language material). For example, Ci Jiwei's book Zhengyi de Liang Mian [The Two Faces of Justice] (Beijing: San Lian Shu Dian, 2001) has been receiving very favorable reviews in mainland Chinese academic publications.
8. Gan Yang, “Zhongguo Ziyou Zuopai de Youlai” [The Origin of Chinese Left Liberalism], in Political Theory in China.
9. Consider, for example, Rawls's argument that basic liberties should have priority over the fair distribution of material goods in cases of conflict. As Will Kymlicka notes, “The idea that people should have basic liberties protected is the least contentious part of his theory” (Contemporary Political Philosophy, 56). In China, that would perhaps be the most contentious part of his theory.
10. Marina Svensson's book Debating Human Rights in China: A Conceptual and Political History (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002) is another useful account of Chinese rights discourse. While not as original as Angle's book, it is a more reliable qua intellectual history, and particularly on the relation between political history and intellectual history.
11. Angle and Svensson have coedited and cotranslated The Chinese Human Rights Reader (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharp, 2001), which includes many (but not all) of the key Chinese-language documents and essays on human rights.
12. Jiang Yi Hua, “Taiwan Ziyou Zhuyi Sixiang de Fazhan Yu Kunjing”. [The Development and Dilemmas of Liberal Thought in Taiwan], in Political Theory in China.
13. The heated debate over Article 23 of Hong Kong's Basic Law is the exception that proves the rule, because defenders of this national security legislation argue that it will not in fact endanger basic civil liberties. The debate over democracy, however, has been explicitly normative, with different sides taking different positions regarding the desirability of expanded political rights. Lu Da Le and Chen Jian Min argue that a form of civil society developed without democracy in Hong Kong, but that civil society become “politicized” in response to such events as anticolonial movements in the late 1960s and the brutal June 4, 1989, crackdown in Beijing (“Zai Jiating Yu Zhengzhi Shehui Zhijian: Xianggang Minjian Shehui de Goucheng” [Between the Family and Political Society: The Structure of Hong Kong's Civil Society], in Political Theory in China.
14. Metzger's essay will appear in his forthcoming book A Cloud across the Pacific: Essays on the Impasse between Chinese and Western Political Theories. I have been given an advance copy of the essay.
15. In his contribution to Political Theory in China (“Ziyou Zhuyi Yu Xiandai Guojia: Zhongguo Ziyou Gaige Xia Guojia Jianzhe de Tiaozhan” [Liberalism and the Contemporary State: The Challenge of State Building under China's Liberal Reforms]), Li makes it explicit that the liberal state should be concerned with social justice (pp. 145, 151, 168).
16. Of course this view needs to be qualified. As Li points out, an important aim of the U.S. founding fathers was to build a strong state that would overcome the weaknesses of the confederation. Political Theory in China (“Ziyou Zhuyi Yu Xiandai Guojia: Zhongguo Ziyou Gaige Xia Guojia Jianzhe de Tiaozhan” [Liberalism and the Contemporary State: The Challenge of State Building under China's Liberal Reforms]), Li, 149, 150.
17. This is a reference to Michael Walzer's inversion of Plato's cave metaphor in Spheres of Justice (Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1983), xiv.
18. Li Han Lin, “Weiwu Shiguan, Minzhu Shichang, Shehui Zhuyi Yu Zhongguo” [Historical Materialism, Democracy, the Market, Socialism and China], in Political Theory in China.
19. See, for example, Tu Wei-ming, ed. Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
20. Wang Xiao Ying, “Zhongguo de Gaige: Meiyou Zichang Jieji Zhuti de Ziben Zhuyi Geming” [China's Reform: A Capitalist Revolution without the Bourgeois Subject], in Political Theory in China, 268, 277–78. Wang argues that the moral demands of Maoism (self-sacrifice, self-denial, etc.) failed to be internalized. My own experience with my Chinese mother-in-law suggests otherwise. Educated in communist China, she still promotes an extreme form of thriftiness in the family context.
21. Three of my philosophical colleagues at the City University of Hong Kong—Chan Ho Mun, Fan Ruiping, and Julia Tao—have written works that draw on the Confucian tradition for inspiration. In mainland China, some intellectuals have also (re)turned to Confucianism: see Chen Yan, L'éveil de la Chine (Paris: éditions de l'aube, 2002), 198–202.
22. Some of the otherwise interesting mainland Chinese works still manifest an unfortunate tendency to evaluate the desirability of Confucian ideals according to less-than-sophisticated forms of Marxism: see, e.g., Tang Kailin and Cao Gang, Chongshi Chuantong: Rujia Sixiang de Xiandai Jiazhi Pinggu [Reinterpreting Tradition: Contemporary Evaluation of Confucian Thought] (Shanghai: East China Normal Publishing House, 2000), 398, 401.
23. I have relied on an English-language version of this essay. “Moral Autonomy, Civil Liberties, and Confucianism,” Philosophy East and West 52, no. 3 (July 2002): 281–310.
24. Those interested in pursuing this question may want to consult Daniel A. Bell and Hahm Chaibong, eds., Confucianism for the Modern World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003). The contributors to this book spell out in concrete detail the Confucian practices and institutions that may be relevant for the contemporary world.