In the past decade, the international community has generally felt China’s proactive role in the international human rights discourse. China has made substantive contributions in the creation of international human rights law and continues to promote a global moral consensus view of human rights. Additionally, China regularly and positively interacts with international human rights mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and special procedures and treaty bodies. It practises the principles of respect, dialogue and cooperation rather than confrontation, while resisting politicization, selectivity and double standards. Since China emphasizes economic, social and cultural rights, there is an impression that it ignores civil and political rights or selectively safeguards human rights. This conclusion is difficult to support when we review the recent movements within Chinese policy and judicature when it comes to human rights. Considering its positive commitment to civil and political rights during the third UPR and in its fourth National Human Rights Action Plan, China is expected to make substantive progress in the comprehensive, balanced protection of all human rights.

Chapter three examines China’s role in the drafting and adoption of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.By covering the drafting of two different international agreements that occurred nearly a decade apart, this chapter illuminates China’s evolving posture as it shifted from a novice acting as a taker during the CAT negotiations to a more experienced regime participant attempting to constrain the regime during the negotiations over OPCAT.This chapter also documents the emergence in the late 1990s of a group of countries with shared views about resisting the kind of visiting authority envisioned in OPCAT, and the PRC’s cooperation with this group.I also briefly discuss the PRC’s interactions with the Committee against Torture to demonstrate that even though the PRC has been a taker toward this body it is not necessarily in substantive compliance with this convention.