NPR

Opinion: China's Long Game On Human Rights

China is taking a more confident and active role in the international human rights system, even as the United States pulls back, writes Ted Piccone of the Brookings Institution.

Ted Piccone (@piccone_ted) is senior fellow, foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

When it comes to the contentious arena of international human rights, China has arrived.

For decades, China's Communist Party largely kept clear of muscling its way onto the global human rights stage, preferring to bide its time while it contended with massive economic and social challenges at home. This began to change in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, when China faced unprecedented criticism of its brutal repression of unarmed citizens demanding more freedoms. Beijing fought

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