Conceptual Approaches to Human Rights in the European Union and the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

The article presents a comparative interdisciplinary study of approaches to the problem of human rights in relations between the European Union and the People’s Republic of China. This factor is traditionally used by the EU and the West to criticize the policies of other countries, combining pressure and encouragement in order to Westernize them ‒ to accept and practicallyl implement the Western concept of human rights.However, modern China, having carried out rapid socio-economic and scientific-technological development, not only did not change its political system, but also began to reform the international sphere of human rights in accordance with their understanding. Ideological inertia and simplification of the problem do not contribute to understanding in Europe how, while retaining the socialist ideology, China became the second economy in the world, acquiring global primacy and promoting its model, without setting, like the West, special political conditions.At the same time, there are contradictions between the Western countries, and international law, including the field of human rights, which have a historical, dynamic character, and a very diverse implementation. In the socio-philosophical sense, the competition between the constructivist and functional approaches in the forms of the liberal-bourgeois and socialist systems is developing between the EU and the PRC.