CYIL vol. 11 (2020)

CYIL 11 (2020) ISSUES DECISIVE FOR CHINA’S RISE AND FALL: AN INTERNATIONAL LAW… Chapter Eight of Part Four is devoted to discussing issues on human rights in China, which have always been subjected to the West’s most caustic criticisms. While illustrating how obsessed China has been since 1949 to achieve modernization, the author points out the massive environmental prolusion that arose from the rapid industrial growth. Today, China has become the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and the air quality of many of its major cities fails to meet international health standards. It is reported that in some areas of Northern China, environmental deterioration is cutting short locals’ life expectancy by five years. (p. 149). Corruption is another severe issue identified by the author as the chief obstacle that undermines the sanguine hopes of Chinese development. As stated in this book, corruption has been mainly attributed to the country’s bureaucrats and provincial politicians. The primary obstruction lies in that these Western countries do not have extradition treaties with China. In the absence of an extradition treaty, extradition is usually regarded as a moral duty, not an obligation under customary international law. Wei has described how “the US, Canada, and some EU countries, which, unfortunately, have been popular destinations for Chinese corrupt officials”. (p. 172) The other chink in the armor is the issue of Human Rights where the author has remained focused on the developmental and capacity building agenda of the Human rights, in particular, the health care capacity( page 152,153) and linking it with the mother of all evils, “corruption” in Chapter Nine where he has evidence-based persuasion about the termite capacity that eats away the vitals of China and does violate the human rights where the author argues forcefully that China needs the World to prevail over this mutating menace (p. 172). At the same time, the massive human rights excesses in the south China states with the Uguyurs community and the brutal repression of protests in Hong Kong and Tibet in previous cases in scores of instances have been conveniently forgotten, something that smashes upon heavily on the very section dedicated to the agenda of Human rights. The wicked political and policy problems of China on the territorial issues that can be further aggravated by the exogenous factors coupled with the brutal suppression of human rights create a massive dent in the narrative of the ‘peaceful rise of China’. The author is acutely aware of those deep political and policy problems while China is growing at the unprecedented speed and so is the uneasiness among its partners and neighbors. In the Concluding Chapter Ten the’ responsible great power’, the author argues about the features and conditions of the constructive role, China has in the new international order (p. 186). The author has taken an organized post-positivist and interpretive approach to these twin issues of the territorial disputes and the human rights concerns that bogs down China’s otherwise increasingly vocal and robust standing at the global economic and political order. One of those missing links is the deterioration and slippage of the narrative control on the wicked issue of the identity and aspiration based politics simmering inside China that does not allow the ‘hush-hush rise of China’ any further, at least by the highly nervous neo- liberal- dominated and Washington consensus anointed global order of today and further enabled by the stressed neighbors around it that want the concessionary China of the past back in business, something both the present-day subjects of China and the regime are less likely to accommodate beyond a point.

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