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Full-Text Articles in Law
Freedom With Chinese Characteristics, Keith Kerr
Freedom With Chinese Characteristics, Keith Kerr
Societies Without Borders
The following “note from the field” is based off of first-hand observations and experiences had while living and working as an affiliated professor at a Chinese university. Noting the well-known political restrictions existing in China, the piece argues that against dominant Western narratives depicting a lack of freedom within China, there ostensibly appear spaces offering levels of emotional and interactional freedoms greater than what one can experience in the West. This argument is framed within the thought of Western intellectuals such as David Riesman, Erich Fromm, C. Wright Mills and Stjepan Mestrovic, and is advanced by considering the vast historical …
China’S Human Rights Footprint In Africa, Timothy Webster
China’S Human Rights Footprint In Africa, Timothy Webster
Faculty Publications
A significant amount of recent scholarship and commentary accuses China of plundering the African continent, coddling its dictators, and flouting labor and environmental standards. This paper makes the counterintuitive claim that, despite irrefutable cases of abuse, China’s engagement with Africa has actually improved the human rights conditions of millions of Africans. First, it places China’s abuses in context, showing that they differ little from the abuses and patronage politics of the major Western powers. Second, it examines the evolution of international relations between China and various African countries, from the exportation of political revolution in the 1950s and 1960s, to …