This report provides a comprehensive analysis of systemic human rights violations and authoritarian measures within the People's Republic of China (PRC), situating these actions within the state's coherent political and ideological framework. The analysis concludes that the PRC's repressive actions—ranging from mass arbitrary detention in Xinjiang to the formalized system of enforced disappearances known as RSDL, the weaponization of capital punishment for forced organ harvesting, and a sophisticated apparatus of digital and transnational control—are not ad-hoc, aberrant, or disorganized. They are, instead, the logical and deliberate application of a foundational state doctrine: the "Overall National Security Concept" ( zongti guojia anquan guan ).
First promulgated by President Xi Jinping in 2014, this doctrine is an expansive, holistic framework that fuses internal and external security, and explicitly defines political, cultural, social, and economic stability as co-equal components of national security. This doctrine provides the central permissive justification for treating internal dissent, religious practice, and human rights advocacy as existential threats to the state, thereby legitimizing a "war on law" and the deployment of "reformation" systems against perceived enemies.
This state doctrine is paired with a proactive, non-Western philosophy of human rights. Official PRC white papers, targeted at a global audience, subordinate individual civil and political rights to the collective "primary" right of "subsistence" and "development," arguing that "living a life of contentment is the ultimate human right."
This report details the application of this framework through several key case studies:
Finally, this report directly addresses the perception of global inaction. This is not "ignorance" but a calculated geopolitical choice by a significant bloc of nations. The PRC has successfully deployed its "Community of Common Destiny" narrative, which prioritizes economic development and state sovereignty ("non-interference") over the Western-led human rights framework. This was empirically proven in the October 2022 UN Human Rights Council vote, where a coalition of Global South and Muslim-majority nations voted against a motion to even debate the UN's own Xinjiang report. The Western response has, in turn, bifurcated: the multilateral human rights system has failed, forcing the US and EU to retreat to unilateral economic weapons (e.g., the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act) and sanctions. Human rights have thus been subsumed as a vector of great-power "strategic competition."
To comprehend the nature of state-directed atrocities in the People's Republic of China (PRC), it is imperative to first analyze the formal ideological and legal doctrines that legitimize them. The repressive actions observed under the Xi Jinping administration are not a deviation from state doctrine but a logical fulfillment of it. This doctrine, the "Overall National Security Concept," represents a fundamental shift in statecraft, providing a holistic and expansive justification for eradicating any and all perceived threats to the absolute authority of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
The foundational operating system of the Xi Jinping era is the "Overall National Security Concept" (总体国家安全观, zongti guojia anquan guan).[1] This doctrine was first promulgated by President Xi in April 2014 at the inaugural meeting of the Central National Security Commission (CNSC).[2] It is officially defined as the "first guiding ideology for national security work since the founding of the PRC" [2], signifying its paramount importance.
This doctrine is not merely a "concept" or "outlook" but a functioning system composed of three aligned elements [3]:
The core of this doctrine is the deliberate fusion of internal and external security. In his 2014 speech, Xi explicitly stated that the concept stresses "not only... external security but also internal security".[3] It radically redefines "security" to be all-encompassing. The 2014 framework included at least 11 distinct security domains, including political security, economic security, military security, cultural security, and social security, as well as non-traditional domains like cybersecurity, biosecurity, and energy security. [4]
This holistic definition is the central permissive document that legally and ideologically justifies the PRC's most severe repressive campaigns. By defining "cultural security," "political security," and "social security" as co-equal with "military security" [5], the doctrine empowers the state to treat any form of internal dissent as an existential threat equivalent to a foreign invasion.
Therefore, the state's response—mass internment, "reformation," forced assimilation, and enforced disappearance—is framed internally not as a human rights atrocity, but as a legitimate, necessary, and legal national security operation to protect the state's comprehensive "well-being".[3] In 2017, Xi Jinping further directed the entire security apparatus to adopt a "global vision" [11], formally linking this internal security mandate to actions abroad and providing the ideological justification for the transnational repression detailed in Section 6.
Paired with this expansive security doctrine is a coherent, non-Western, and state-centric definition of human rights. This philosophy is not merely for domestic consumption; it is articulated in a series of official state white papers published in English and other languages, explicitly targeting foreign audiences.[12]
These documents frame the PRC's human rights "progress" in a three-phase state-led progression: 1) The founding of the PRC in 1949, which established the "basic political prerequisite" for human rights; 2) The 1978 "reform and opening up," which "emancipated and developed the productive forces"; and 3) The post-2012 "New Era" under Xi Jinping, which "strengthens legal protection for human rights".[13]
The core of this philosophy, as detailed in the 2021 white paper "The Communist Party of China and Human Rights Protection," is the explicit prioritization of collective economic rights over individual political rights. The document states that the CPC "regards the rights to subsistence and development as the primary and basic human rights".[14] This argument is rooted in a historical narrative of the pre-1949 "subsistence crisis" in China, a time of widespread starvation and poverty when, the paper argues, "it was impossible to talk about any other rights".[14]
This framework leads to its ultimate conclusion: "believes that living a life of contentment is the ultimate human right".[14]
This philosophy structurally subordinates all individual civil and political rights—freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and political association—to the state's singular, collective goal of "development".[14] It is a direct and intentional refutation of the liberal-individualist model of human rights.
This "subsistence-first" human rights philosophy is not merely a defensive internal justification; it is a proactive geopolitical tool and a core component of the PRC's ideological competition with the United States and the West. The white papers are explicit in this, stating that the "socialism with Chinese characteristics" model "offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence".[12]
This narrative is designed to resonate with developing nations in the Global South, providing a direct counter-narrative to Western-led pressure on human rights. When the PRC argues at the UN Human Rights Council that "development" is the "primary human right" [14], it is speaking directly to nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who may be skeptical of Western liberal interventions.[15] This philosophy directly enables the geopolitical complicity and coalition-building that successfully shield the PRC from international accountability, as will be analyzed in Section 7.
The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) serves as the most comprehensive and well-documented large-scale application of the "Overall National Security Concept." Under the official pretext of "counter-terrorism" and "de-extremification" [16], the state has deployed its full apparatus of control against the Uyghur, Kazakh, and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups, resulting in what the highest UN human rights body has classified as potential crimes against humanity.
After years of attempting to block its publication [17], the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released its "Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People's Republic of China" on August 31, 2022.[18] This report is the most critical international legal document on the crisis to date.
Though couched in cautious diplomatic language, its conclusions are damning. The assessment found that the "extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups... may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity".[7]
The UN report and supporting evidence from non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch confirmed a wide range of "serious human rights violations" [7]:
The PRC government has consistently rejected these findings, framing the entire apparatus as a successful program for "The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism" [16] and "Vocational Education and Training in Xinjiang".[16] Official state white papers have declared "victory" over extremism and recast the systemic repression as "cultural progress".[27]
The repressive apparatus extends beyond internment. A 2020 report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), "Uyghurs for Sale," exposed a "new phase" in the state's social re-engineering campaign: the mass, state-sponsored transfer of Uyghur laborers out of Xinjiang and into factories across China.[28]
This system is not a free-market labor program; it is a coercive "state-sponsored labour transfer scheme" [28] operating under the "Xinjiang Aid" (援疆) policy.[28] The ASPI report identified the following mechanics:
The treatment of these transferred workers in factories across China meets multiple indicators of forced labor as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO) [28]:
This forced labor transfer system is not merely an economic byproduct of the internment camps; it is a deliberate and distinct vector for systemic cultural erasure and long-term social engineering. It functions as a second, post-internment phase of "re-education" [28] designed to achieve the state's goal of "breaking their lineage".[29] This system achieves three strategic state goals: 1) It provides a captive, subsidized labor force for Chinese industry; 2) It scatters and atomizes the Uyghur population; and 3) It removes Uyghurs from their cultural, religious, and linguistic homeland, forcing their assimilation in Han-majority environments. The economic function (labor) is a vehicle for the political function (social re-engineering).
This fusion of mass surveillance, intimidation, and state-sponsored forced labor has created a human rights atrocity that is resistant to traditional audits. Western corporations, which traditionally rely on "supply chain audits" to ensure ethical sourcing, cannot use this mechanism in Xinjiang. Workers cannot speak freely to auditors for fear of their families being detained.[28] As a CSIS report notes, state-imposed forced labor is "resistant to audits, inspection, and remediation".[30] This systemic opacity forced a paradigm shift in international law, compelling the U.S. to create the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA). The UFLPA employs the "extraordinary measure" [30] of a "rebuttable presumption" [30]—it legally presumes all goods from XUAR are tainted by forced labor unless the importer can prove otherwise, effectively shifting the burden of proof from the state to the corporation.
The PRC's apparatus of control includes a formalized, legal mechanism for "disappearing people for 'reformation.'" This system, known as "Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location" (RSDL), is a primary tool for neutralizing high-value political targets, including the human rights lawyers and activists who once sought to use the state's own legal system to defend citizens' rights.
"Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location" (RSDL) is a system of "secret black jails" [31] implemented into law in 2013. It grants the Ministry of Public Security (police) and the Ministry of State Security (MSS) the full discretion to make an individual vanish for up to six months before they are formally arrested.[31]
This system is a prime example of the PRC's strategy of codifying its most severe authoritarian practices. RSDL is not extra-legal in the manner of a simple kidnapping; it is institutionalized in Article 75 of China’s Criminal Procedure Law .[31] It is a parallel legal system that uses the language of law to provide a legal fig leaf for a practice that is, by international definition, a crime.
The conditions of detention are engineered for psychological destruction:
United Nations human rights experts, including the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), have repeatedly stated that RSDL is "not compatible with international human rights law".[33] They have explicitly classified the practice as constituting:
The scale of this system is vast. Analysis of official data, which is scarce, estimates that between 53,000 and 90,000 individuals were subjected to RSDL between 2013 and 2022.[33]
RSDL was the primary weapon deployed during the "709 Crackdown," which began on July 9, 2015.[8] This "unprecedented assault" [36] targeted China's burgeoning "rights defense movement" [9], with police seizing over 300 human rights lawyers and legal activists across the country.[8]
This event was not merely an attack on lawyers; it was a "war on law" [9] itself. It marked a strategic decision by the CCP to reverse the process of "legalization" [9] that had been underway since the 1980s. The Party sensed that this "fledgling community of lawyers" [8] was using the "existing legal channels" [9] to create a nascent civil society and challenge Party rule. The 709 Crackdown, and the RSDL system that enabled it, was the counter-offensive to "nip it in the bud" [9] and ensure the legal system remains a tool of Party control, not a check on Party power.
Lawyers swept up in the crackdown were disappeared into RSDL, where they were tortured, held in stress positions for extended periods, deprived of food and water, and forcibly medicated with unidentified substances.[35]
This system of formalized disappearance is also used to silence any prominent figure who challenges the Party's narrative or authority, including:
| Parameter | Specification | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Legal Basis | "Article 75, Criminal Procedure Law" | [31] |
| Responsible Agencies | "Ministry of Public Security (Police), Ministry of State Security (MSS)" | [31] |
| Duration | Up to six (6) months | [31] |
| Location | "Secret, undisclosed ""designated location"" (i.e., ""black jail"")" | [31] |
| Legal Counsel | Explicitly denied | [31] |
| Family Contact | Denied; whereabouts kept secret | [31] |
| Detention Status | Pre-formal arrest | [31] |
| UN Legal Classification | "Enforced Disappearance, Arbitrary Detention, Torture" | [32] |
| Estimated Scale | "53,000 - 90,000+ (2013-2022)" | [33] |
The PRC's carceral and punitive systems are characterized by extreme measures, state secrecy, and the strategic use of cruelty as a tool of political control. An investigation into the treatment of death row inmates and their families reveals a reality that is more complex, and in some ways more systemically insidious, than isolated acts of vengeance. The state's punitive power is wielded not only through execution but also through the commodification of bodies and the weaponization of family ties.
The PRC is the world's most prolific executioner, carrying out more capital sentences annually than all other countries combined.[42] However, the exact number of executions is classified as a "state secret" [42], making independent verification impossible and shrouding the entire system in opacity.
The most reliable estimates are provided by the Dui Hua Foundation, which suggest a significant decline in executions since the Supreme People's Court (SPC) reassumed the power to review all death sentences in 2006-2007.[42] Annual executions are estimated to have fallen from a high of approximately 12,000 in 2002 to a range of 2,000 to 2,400 in the 2013-2018 period.[45]
The legal process for execution is defined by Article 252 of the Criminal Procedure Law, which stipulates execution by shooting or injection.[42] Critically, the law mandates that the people's court shall notify the family of the convicted offender after the execution has been carried out.[42] Other regulations state that the family is to be notified to retrieve the ashes, or the corpse if cremation has not been carried out.[47]
The available data does not substantiate the specific query regarding the killing of families of death row inmates as a state policy. The primary documented abuses related to the families of common death row inmates are the intense social stigma [48] and the "discontent at not being able to see their bodies after they have been executed".[47] This denial of access, however, fuels profound fears among families that their loved ones' bodies "may have been subjected to forced organ harvesting".[47]
The fear of organ harvesting is not unfounded. It is at the center of one of the most extreme and well-documented atrocities attributed to the Chinese state.
An independent "people's tribunal," the China Tribunal, was established to investigate these allegations.[49] Chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who previously led the prosecution of Slobodan Milošević, the Tribunal delivered its final judgment in 2020. It concluded "beyond reasonable doubt" that [49]:
In June 2021, a group of 12 UN human rights experts corroborated these concerns, stating they were "extremely alarmed" by "credible information" that detainees from ethnic and religious minorities—including "Falun Gong practitioners, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Muslims and Christians"—were being "forcibly subjected to blood tests and organ examinations such as ultrasound and x-rays, without their informed consent".[55] These tests are consistent with preparations for organ matching.
The evidence for this conclusion is based on the logical impossibility of the PRC's official transplant numbers. The Tribunal pointed to the "extraordinarily short waiting times" for organs promised by Chinese hospitals (a matter of weeks, versus years in the West) [49] and the "massive infrastructure development" for transplant operations [49], which cannot be supplied by the official death row execution numbers (approx. 2,000-2,400) [45], let alone the nascent voluntary donor system.[57]
This suggests the existence of two decoupled execution systems. One is the formal criminal justice system for capital crimes. The other is an informal, non-judicial, on-demand execution system where prisoners of conscience are treated as a disposable resource—their bodies commodified and harvested to serve the state's medical and economic "development" goals.
The PRC claimed it would stop using organs from executed prisoners in 2015.[58] However, academic analysis shows this was a semantic reform. The use of prisoner organs remains legal if they "voluntarily donate" [59]—a concept that is meaningless for a prisoner of conscience held in a system that "regularly" employs torture.[31]
| Finding | Detail | Source(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Legal Conclusion | Crimes Against Humanity (Proved beyond reasonable doubt) | [49] |
| Primary Victims | Falun Gong practitioners (Identified as the main source of organs) | [49] |
| Secondary Targets | "Uyghurs (Subjected to medical testing; Tribunal noted evidence of their use as an ""organ bank"" may emerge)" | "[49, 54, 55]" |
| Key Evidence (Supply) | """Extraordinarily short waiting times"" for transplants; Numbers inconsistent with official donor/execution data" | "[49, 56, 57]" |
| Key Evidence (State Action) | """Massive infrastructure development"" for transplants; Widespread, forced medical testing of prisoners of conscience" | "[55, 56]" |
| Status | "Concluded to be ""continuing till today"" (as of 2020)" | [49] |
While the query regarding "killing the families of death row inmates" is not substantiated, the data reveals an extensive, documented state policy of collective punishment.[60] This policy is not directed at the families of common criminals, but is a sophisticated tool of coercive control aimed at the families of political dissidents and human rights defenders.[8]
The state does not typically kill these family members, which would be a singular act of vengeance. Instead, it leverages them as living hostages to "instil fear" [33] and enforce the silence of the activist. A 2024 report by Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) details this policy, "If I Disobey, My Family Will Suffer".[60]
This system of collective punishment, which has "no legal basis" [61], includes:
This policy is a cornerstone of the transnational repression detailed in Section 6. Uyghur activists who speak out from abroad report that their family members still in Xinjiang are immediately targeted for detention, disappearance, or imprisonment.[63] This creates an unbearable psychological burden, effectively making the activist's family the primary vector of their own suppression.
The PRC's political and social control mechanisms are underpinned, monitored, and enforced by a technological apparatus of unparalleled scale and sophistication. This "digital panopticon" creates an environment of pervasive monitoring that enables other atrocities and, perhaps more effectively, promotes widespread self-censorship.
The Great Firewall (GFW) is the multi-layered, distributed system the state uses to control the flow of information into and out of China. Its primary technical mechanisms are well-documented: 1) IP address blocking; 2) DNS tampering and hijacking, where the GFW injects fake DNS responses to redirect users; and 3) Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), which allows for real-time keyword filtering of unencrypted traffic and the identification of encrypted protocols.[66] When forbidden content is detected (e.g., in a TLS SNI field), the GFW injects forged RST (reset) packets to kill the connection.[67]
A massive 2025 data dump from firms associated with the GFW's infrastructure provided an unprecedented look inside its architecture.[68] The leak revealed that the GFW is not a single, monolithic filter but a "distributed yet centrally orchestrated apparatus".[69]
Key internal tools and components exposed in the leak include [68]:
The GFW's true power, however, is not just in blocking access. As analysts note, it functions as a "panopticon".[66] The knowledge that all traffic is being inspected, even if the block is imperfect, is enough to "promote self censorship," which is the ultimate goal of the system.[66]
The digital firewall is complemented by a "digital life" surveillance society.[70] This is led by two major, overlapping physical surveillance programs:
The "Sharp Eyes" program, which began as a pilot in Pingyi County [72], represents a critical evolution from a simple top-down surveillance state to a participatory panopticon. The program's name is a direct reference to a Mao Zedong quote that "the people have sharp eyes" [72] when watching for neighbors who deviate from communist values.
The system is explicitly designed to co-opt citizens as state monitors. In pilot programs, special TV boxes were installed in homes, allowing residents to watch live security footage from their villages. They were encouraged to "press a button to summon police if they saw anything amiss".[72] This system, integrated with mobile apps, is a form of digital "grid management" (网格化管理).[74] It is a 21st-century implementation of the Cultural Revolution's collective surveillance mechanisms, outsourcing the act of monitoring to the populace itself and atomizing society by chilling social trust.
No discussion of the PRC's control architecture is complete without analyzing the Social Credit System (SCS). However, it is essential to separate the pervasive Western media myth from the reality.
The Myth: The common Western narrative describes a single, unified, "techno-dystopian" [75] national "social credit score" for every citizen, algorithmically calculated from all their online and offline behavior to determine their place in society. As the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) reports, "such a score simply does not exist".[75]
The Reality: The actual national-level SCS is "lowly digitalized, highly fragmented, and primarily focuses on businesses".[75] It is, at its core, a market regulation tool designed to create "blacklists and redlists" for companies to enforce compliance and "punish" corporate malfeasance.[76]
The real threat of individual-level social engineering is more fragmented and bureaucratic. While the national system is corporate, localized "national models" for individual scoring do exist. A 2019 Stanford analysis of the "Meritown" model (a city of 1 million) provides a clear blueprint [78]:
The Western "myth" of the unified score paradoxically obscures the real, more mundane threat. The SCS is a toolbox of fragmented systems: one for national-level corporate and economic control, and a series of localized, experimental "labs" for enforcing political obedience beyond the scope of formal law.
The PRC's authoritarian apparatus is not constrained by its own borders. As directed by the "global vision" [11] of the "Overall National Security Concept," the state projects its internal security mandate globally, engaging in a sophisticated and "unparalleled" [79] campaign of transnational repression. This campaign targets Chinese diaspora, dissidents, and entire ethnic and religious groups, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Falun Gong practitioners.[79]
In 2022, the human rights organization Safeguard Defenders exposed a network of "overseas police stations" run by PRC authorities.[81] This network was found to include at least 102 stations operating in 53 countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Italy, and the Netherlands.[81]
These stations are not typically run by the central government but are the "brainchild" of regional Public Security Bureaus (e.g., from Fuzhou and Wenzhou) from areas with large overseas populations.[81] They operate with a dual function:
The "overseas police stations" are just one physical node in a "full spectrum" [79] campaign of repression. According to research by Freedom House and Safeguard Defenders, the CCP's methods include [80]:
The most common, effective, and insidious tool of transnational repression is "coercion by proxy".[79] This is the central mechanism of the "persuade to return" operations and directly links to the policy of "collective punishment" (Section 4.3).
The state weaponizes the family members of an activist who remain in China, effectively holding them as living hostages.[63] This is a "regular practice" [63] against Uyghur activists. Those who speak out about the atrocities in Xinjiang from the safety of the US, Europe, or Turkey report that their relatives back home are immediately visited, harassed, detained, or disappeared by state security.[64]
Chinese police then often force the detained relatives to make recorded or live video calls (e.g., via WeChat) to the activist abroad, warning them to be silent or face consequences for their family.[80] This tactic "severs" human contacts, creates a powerful "chilling effect" [19], and outsources the act of suppression to the victim's own loved ones. The "overseas police stations" [81] serve as the local, physical infrastructure for monitoring the diaspora, identifying targets, and coordinating this "coercion by proxy" campaign.
The perception that the world "ignores" these documented atrocities is a central paradox of modern geopolitics. The analysis concludes that this is not "ignorance" but a complex reality rooted in economic interdependence and the PRC's successful ideological counter-offensive, which has functionally fractured the post-Cold War consensus on human rights.
The single most important event demonstrating the mechanism of global "inaction" occurred on October 7, 2022. On that day, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva held a vote on draft decision L.6, "Debate on the situation of human rights in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China".[84]
The motion was not a resolution for sanctions, condemnation, or even an investigation. It was a simple, procedural motion to hold a debate on the UN's own 2022 OHCHR Assessment [85]—the one that had concluded the situation "may constitute... crimes against humanity".[20]
The motion was REJECTED.[84]
The vote was 17 in favor, 19 against, and 11 abstentions.[86] The "No" vote was the crucial element. It was led by the PRC and a powerful coalition of developing nations. Most critically, this "No" vote—a vote against even discussing atrocities against Muslims—included numerous Muslim-majority countries, such as Indonesia, Pakistan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).[17] Key abstentions included major regional powers like India, Malaysia, and Ukraine.[17]
This "shameful" [17] vote was a catastrophic failure for the international human rights system. It demonstrated, empirically, the PRC's diplomatic and economic power to shield itself from even basic scrutiny for acts classified as crimes against humanity by the UN's own experts.
Data compiled from UN OHCHR records [86] and media reports [17]
| Voted FOR Debate (17) | Voted AGAINST Debate (19) | ABSTAINED (11) |
|---|---|---|
| Czechia | Bolivia | Argentina |
| Finland | Cameroon | Armenia |
| France | China | Benin |
| Germany | Cuba | Brazil |
| Honduras | Eritrea | India |
| Japan | Gabon | Malaysia |
| Lithuania | Indonesia | Libya |
| Luxemburg | Ivory Coast | Malawi |
| Marshall Islands | Kazakhstan | Mexico |
| Montenegro | Mauritania | Ukraine |
| Netherlands | Namibia | |
| Paraguay | Nepal | |
| Poland | Pakistan | |
| Republic of Korea | Qatar | |
| Somalia* | Senegal | |
| United Kingdom | Sudan | |
| United States | UAE | |
| Uzbekistan | ||
| Venezuela |
*Note: Somalia was the only Muslim-majority state in the OIC bloc to vote in favor.
The 2022 UNHRC vote was not an act of "ignorance." It was a calculated political victory for the PRC, proving the success of its alternative global vision: the "Community of Common Destiny for Mankind" (人类命运共同体).[87]
This ideology, the "overall goal of China's foreign affairs work" [87], is the external counterpart to the internal "Overall National Security Concept." It is frequently linked to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).[87] The "sell" of this vision is an international order based on "dialogue and development" [89] and, most importantly, the sacrosanct principle of "non-interference" in other states' internal affairs.[87]
The "buy" from the Global South is clear: This narrative is highly attractive to other authoritarian and developing nations who are wary of Western human rights pressure and "color revolutions." It allows them to access PRC-led "development," infrastructure, and capital [89] without the "assimilation of liberal values" [12] or lectures on internal governance.
The 2022 UNHRC vote is the "Community of Common Destiny" in action. It proves that the PRC's "subsistence-first" [14] and "non-interference" [87] narratives are more persuasive to this key bloc of nations than the US-led [85] "human rights" narrative. The PRC successfully framed the Xinjiang issue not as a human rights crisis, but as a sovereignty issue and a geopolitical attack by the West. The 19 "No" votes were not "ignorant"; they were actively siding with the PRC's ideological framework over the West's.
For the Western world, the "inaction" is not ideological agreement but a function of the intractable conflict between "strategic competition" [15] and "deep economic" interdependence.[90]
"Economic decoupling" is defined as the "process of weakening interdependence" [90] by adopting separate standards and supply chains.[91] However, after decades of globalization, this is extraordinarily difficult. As one analyst has described it, attempting to decouple the US and Chinese economies is like "attempting to separate Siamese twins, with common organs".[92] This deep economic integration [93] means that muscular, meaningful action on human rights (which would jeopardize market access) has a massive and immediate economic cost.
The international response has therefore not been monolithic "ignorance." It has bifurcated.
When the EU sanctioned PRC officials for Xinjiang, the PRC immediately counter-sanctioned EU Members of Parliament and academics. This, in turn, froze the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI).[96]
This demonstrates the concluding reality: in an era of "strategic competition," human rights have been fully subsumed into the domain of geopolitics and political economy. The "world" is not ignoring the PRC's atrocities; it is fighting over them using economic weapons like sanctions and trade laws rather than moral appeals in human rights treaties.