China's human rights development in the 1990s

The literature on human rights in China is dominated by incriminating documentation of abuses and a lack of theoretical consensus. But China's continuing economic reform has meant the need for Western industrialized countries to adjust their human rights policies on China. Emerging is the shift from the “sanction/isolation” approach to what some would call “positive engagement,” which is aimed at improving China's human rights situation through more international contact. In China, human rights development in the early 1990s can be characterized by the increasing use of Chinese law, and within that legal limit, a more open exercise of dissent and free speech as a basic human right, together with its adverse consequences.