ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of research on human rights in China thus far and identify and address some of the “white spots” in the fi eld. I also want to discuss some recent debates as well as point out promising new approaches and work. I will argue for the adoption of new and more diverse frameworks and conceptual tools, and for the necessity of more interdisciplinary work, as I believe that this will both help us to identify new topics and trends as well as better explore how human rights are embedded and contested in Chinese society. The study of human rights in China is a relatively new fi eld of research. Before 1989 there was only a handful of academic works in English (see for example Edwards et al . 1986 ). There had been a rich pre-1949 debate on human rights in China but later the topic became more or less taboo in China itself, and these earlier debates also remained unknown and under-studied by Western scholars until the 1990s (Svensson 1996 , 2002 ). Furthermore, until 1989, few Western human rights organizations and foreign governments paid much attention to human rights violations in China, although organizations such as Amnesty International did publish reports on the country beginning in 1979. China’s incorporation in the global human rights regime had furthermore been weak and half-hearted well into the late 1980s. The year 1989 and the crushing of the democracy movement changed all this. Thus 1989 is a watershed in many respects, and since then human rights issues in China have been on the international agenda and addressed by governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international bodies, and the academic community alike.
