For more than three decades, China has struggled to contain criticism of its human rights record. It faced a storm of outrage over the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and condemnation of its mass incarceration of Muslim Uyghurs in recent years. Each time, the Chinese government has had to deal with the diplomatic fallout of its own repression.
To deflect this criticism, Chinese diplomats and propagandists have promulgated a series of different claims.
On the one hand, they have tried to rally developing countries behind the idea that the “right to subsistence” trumps concerns over other human rights.
