Britta Meys

The Role of Human Rights in Contemporary U.S. Foreign Policy towards China Britta Meys

Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: USA, grade: 1,0 (A), Ripon College (Department of Politics and Government), course: Senior Seminar, language: English, comment: Senior Thesis , abstract: Due to economic reforms that were started in the late 1970s, China has stepped into the center of international politics and economy during the past years. These reforms helped the country to achieve an immense economic upturn with annual growth rates of almost ten percent and thus made China an ever more important actor on the international stage of politics. The United States strongly support China's economic development by granting it permanent Normal Trade Relations, for example, and investing directly in China's manufacturing sector. But whereas China has been liberalizing its market, using American interests to gain profits, it largely maintains its defensive and rejecting attitude about changing its human rights situation. There are controversial opinions about how the United States should respond towards China human rights situation. In order to make aware of the stagnated situation of the human rights issue in U. S. China policy, this paper explores how the Clinton administration handled human rights in China policy and looks at the role of human rights in the Bush jr. administration's policy towards China.