How does the Chinese government’s preoccupation with maintaining political stability collide with its own laws and aspirations to improve human rights?

“Stability preservation” (weiwen) has long been an imperative of China’s one-party state. At the same time, China has recently embedded a commitment to the protection of human rights in its constitution. This book examines the multiple and shifting ways in which weiwen impinges on the implementation of human rights. Using case studies, Sarah Biddulph methodically examines the state’s response to labour unrest, medical disputes, and forced housing evictions. As she demonstrates, the state’s reaction can vary from taking steps to ameliorate the underlying causes of the citizens’ grievances to the repression of rights-related protests and the punishment of protestors. The Stability Imperative: Human Rights and Law in China reveals how the systematic failure of the legal system to protect rights coupled with an overemphasis on coercive forms of stability preservation is undermining the authority of law in China and could, ultimately, damage the Communist Party’s leadership.

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Biddulph has written an outstanding contribution to the field of human rights and law as well as to the field of governance and social stability/protests. The uniqueness and strength of the book lie in the author’s ability to bridge and unite insights from different research areas and in her rich empirical material. [Biddulph] shows how issues of human rights and governance are intertwined and shape the life of individual citizens as well as the work of different state and non-state actors and institutions.