JAMES D. SEYMOUR

Although the problem of human rights has always colored relations be-
tween the People's Republic of China and the rest of the world, it did not
become a vital issue until the 1989 massacre in Beijing. In this chapter we
shall examine this impact of the massacre, and also China's evolving par-
ticipation in the international human rights regime. That involvement
has at times been defensive and at other times assertive and positive. We
shall see how foreign governments, despite the limitations on the extent
to which the international community can affect a country's internal af-
fairs, have attempted to influence the human rights situation in China
and to encourage the country to develop in a more democratic direction.

From the seventeenth until the mid- twentieth century it was generally
understood in the West that each state was to enjoy uncompromised sov-
ereignty. This came to mean that a government had absolute authority
over the people within its territory, and therefore outsiders could not le-
gitimately interfere in a country's domestic affairs. In the wake of World
War II, however, the view became widespread that serious human rights
violations in a country were a legitimate subject of transnational concern,
both for moral reasons and because an epidemic of human rights viola-
tions, even if "domestic," could pose dangers to the international com-
munity. In due course, the United Nations adopted four human rights
agreements that together constitute the International Bill of Human
Rights. First came the thirty-article Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, proclaimed in 1948. Though its principles were spelled out only
in general terms and did not necessarily have the force of international

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