A Hegelian Study of Chinese People’s Pursuit of Human Rights in Tiananmen Incident, Falun Gong and the Beijing Olympics

Amy Lai, University of Cambridge

Abstract

Since 1991, Chinese government has issued a series of papers concerning its understanding of human rights and related problems, as well as signing two formal treaties in 1997 and 1998 that represent their effort to come to grips issues pertinent to the subject. Nevertheless, this paper does not focus on the Chinese government; considering the meager scholarship that attempts to apply Hegel to contemporary China, it instead explores Chinese people’s pursuit of human rights in a Hegelian framework. By examining (1) the 1989 Tiananmen Incident, (2) Falun Gong, and (3) 2008 Beijing Olympics, it toes a middle-ground between Western critics and scholars like Yu and Angle, to illuminate how Chinese people’s pursuit of human rights have been informed by Confucianism and other Chinese philosophies, although they have also looked to the West for inspiration and endorsement. This paper not only appropriates the Hegelian concept of right, but also relies on his dialectical view of human history to add to the existing criticisms of his warped, Orientalist view of Chinese society.