Human Rights and Their Discontents: Hannah Arendt’s Question and Human Rights Debates in Mao’s China

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the ideas and practice of human rights in Maoist China from 1949 to 1976 both from a philosophical and historical perspectives. It primarily focuses on the relations of human rights to citizenship, state sovereignty and political action in Mao's China on the basis of the reflection on Hannah Arendt's critique of human rights. The dissertation first of all gives an philosophical analysis of Arendt's "the right to have rights" and then conducts three case studies in the specific Chinese historical context: the land reform movement (1950- 1953); the Chinese foreign policy (1950s- 1970s) and the Hundred Flower Campaign (1955- 1957). It argues that although the term of "human rights" was dismissed as bourgeois concept in Mao's China, an awareness of human rights surfaced in the discussion of citizenship, state sovereignty and political action. The history of human rights in Mao's period also shows that human rights were primarily wielded as an instrument to achieve political ends by the Chinese government.