China has long supported the establishment of a permanent international criminal court, but it cast a negative vote at the end of the Rome conference in 1998 due to certain concerns that had not been addressed to its satisfaction. The specific Chinese concerns regarding the Rome Statute to some extent echo China's traditional position with respect to international judicial bodies. This article investigates the ways in which China has characterized the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a human rights court of the traditional kind. It examines the substance of the articulated Chinese concerns regarding the ICC in light of China's engagement with international judicial bodies, and some of the traditional concerns that have had an impact on that engagement. This article argues that the ICC is distinct from the UN human rights treaty bodies, and that China's progressively wider engagement with international adjudication should not be hindered by putting the ICC in a ‘human rights box’.