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The Chinese government is imposing the most severe repression since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. As Xi Jinping begins a third term as the country’s leader, China is flouting human rights not only within its own borders, but around the world.

In the past year alone – which saw some of the biggest anti-government protests in over thirty years – China enforced one of the world’s strictest COVID-19 policies, with millions of people subject to highly restrictive lockdowns that disrupted their lives; attacked press freedom in Hong Kong; and prosecuted its citizens for social media posts or private conversations about political issues.

However, China is also sensitive to its international standing, and is determined to undermine global human rights accountability mechanisms. Just months after the UN released a report condemning Chinese authorities’ treatment of the Uyghurs, China and its allies voted to cancel a Human Rights Council debate on the issue.

What are the prospects for human rights in China? How is the Chinese government using the international system to suppress debate on its human rights record and weaken accountability for human rights more broadly? Could international pressure ever change China’s repressive policies? Learn more at this Perry World House event.

Speaker

Kenneth Roth is the Thakore Family Global Justice and Human Rights Visiting Fellow at Perry World House. He served for nearly three decades as the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations, which operates in some 100 countries. Before that, Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Roth has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world, meeting with dozens of heads of state and countless ministers. He is quoted widely in the media and has written hundreds of articles on a wide range of human rights issues, devoting special attention to the world’s most dire situations, the conduct of war, the foreign policies of the major powers, the work of the United Nations, and the global contest between autocracy and democracy. Roth is currently writing a book about the strategies used by Human Rights Watch to defend human rights, drawing on his years of experience.

Moderator

Gady Epstein is the Economist’s Eyewitness editor, responsible for commissioning narrative stories that deepen our understanding of news events around the world. Previously he was China affairs editor, writing about China's growing influence globally, US-China relations and human rights, including a cover story on the atrocities committed against Uyghurs. Before that he served as media editor, writing about how technology is changing TV, film, music, and other media. He also previously served as Beijing bureau chief and China correspondent, writing about Chinese politics and society, including a special report on China’s authoritarian model for the internet. Prior to joining the Economist in 2011, he was Beijing bureau chief for Forbes for four years, and was Beijing bureau chief and international projects reporter for the Baltimore Sun, where he won a Gerald Loeb Award. He also appeared in the HBO show “The Wire” for approximately two seconds. He studied English language and literature at Harvard.