China-Australia Human Rights Dialogue 1997-2007

As a result of the globalization of economic development, the issue of human rights is playing a more and more important role in international relations. China's handling of human rights in its foreign relations is critical to its economic development and its better integration into the process of globalization. The thesis tries to trace the philosophical origin of the concept of human rights and to elucidate the disparate views on the human rights issue in the international community.The focus of the thesis is the decade-old China-Australia Human Rights Dialogue, which calls for some research on the two countries' respective human rights diplomacies. Australia's human rights diplomacy took its form from the visions of its former Minster for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Herbert Vere Evatt, who actively participated in numerous United Nations conferences on human rights after the World War II. China gradually made its stance on human rights known through giving speeches in various international conferences in the 1950s, which laid the foundation for its human rights diplomacy.Due to contrasting views on human rights, China and some Western countries had little communication on the issue and very inadequate systems for communication. Therefore, in 1991, the creative approach of the Chinese government of inviting an Australian human rights delegation to visit China opened a door to reaching mutual understanding with Western countries through human rights dialogue. The rest of the thesis probes into the ten-year-old human rights dialogue between the two countries. The Human Rights Technical Cooperation Program incorporated in the dialogue is another research focus of the thesis.