The PRC’s impressive economic rise, starting with the opening-up reforms of the late 1970s, coincided with a transformation of the international system and doctrinal debates about international law that questioned sovereignty’s role and meaning. Over the past thirty years, sovereignty, the principle of noninterference, and relations between state and individual have gradually transformed to favor individuals and their rights. Due to China’s seemingly absolutist position on sovereignty, which alongside security and development defines its core interests, it has been criticized by many Western scholars as a stronghold of Westphalian sovereignty, where sovereignty has become a static concept rather than an idea in flux, as Allen Carlson claims: “Chinese policies preserved a static interpretation of territorial sovereignty,[and] promoted an unyielding and increasingly combative stance on jurisdictional sovereignty.”