This paper argues that the EU's declining soft power is vividly illustrated by its human rights diplomacy with China. While the EU took the lead as a significant actor in human rights diplomacy with China in the 1990s (especially between 1989 and 1997), Beijing has been increasingly skillful at undermining and breaking down common EU positions that target and embarrass China’s human rights record in international human rights fora. In recent years, Chinese officials have also used the language of human rights to showcase China’s success in achieving second-generation (economic, social and cultural) rights, while downplaying its shortfalls in first-generation (civil and political) rights.
Interactions between between China and the EU in human rights diplomatic fora can be understood as a confrontation between two normative identities: one, a declining 'normative power' promoting a Western-style universalist conception of human rights norms and the other, a rising power promoting a culturally relative notion of human rights to protect its conception of national sovereignty and emerging great-power status. Using concepts by J. Donnelly, A. Follesdal, Chinese and other Asian scholars, this paper is an attempt to make sense of how and why the EU is losing its edge in human rights debates with China.
