Between freedom and subsistence

The People's Republic of China has long been at the heart of the debate between socialist, Third World, and Western concepts of human rights. In the 1990s, nowhere is the tension between the individual and the State, and between international and domestic law, more intense. This refreshing study places the human rights debate in the context of the profound economic, political, and social changes China's people have undergone in the post-Mao era. Market reforms have undermined Communist-style economic and social rights. At the same time, the demands of China's increasingly pluralist and international society for political freedoms and legal guarantees, remain unreconciled with the Communist regime's desire to retain power. China's challenge, author Ann Kent argues, is to establish human rights protections encompassing both the subsistence rights currently endorsed by its government, and the right to physical security emphasized in the West. Her critical, but balanced, analysis is an essential guide to the historical and cultural roots of China's current human rights dilemmas and the uncertain road ahead.