Understanding the Chinese discourse of human rights as cultural response

In this paper, I present a theoretical and empirical analysis as well as assessment of Chinese political discourse from a culture-interactive and culture-competitive perspective. Against the background of the common political-economic, and West-centric frame of Chinese communication, it is argued that Chinese political discourse is not in isolation from wider international culture and history and especially the intercultural context of power struggle, but should rather be seen as a dynamic, culturally responsive agent in both localized and globalizing interaction. Accordingly, this perspective is applied to the particular case of the Chinese discourse of human rights in the past two decades. Through this culturally-minded discourse analysis, it is shown that the Chinese discourse of human rights constitutes as a hegemony-resistant response through active participation, claiming conceptual and operational diversity, and direct confrontation in response to especially the American-Western subordinating discourse on the issue, achieving a significant advancement in the human discourse of human rights thereby.