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ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that different political systems are the essential reason for the conflicts between the United States and China. However, more profound causes of the disagreement between the United States and China on human rights issues lie in the different levels of economic development and the divergent cultures and basic values of the two countries. The notion of the responsibility of the state for individuals, the lack of the concept of rights in traditional Chinese thought, and humiliation in recent history and corresponding sensitivity to sovereignty, count for the ordinary Chinese attitudes toward US policies on human rights towards China.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the post-Cold War era, one of the most important points of contention in Sino-American relations is the issue of human rights. While there are also conflicts over Taiwan, trade, and arms control, Sino-American conflicts over human rights are more difficult to resolve. This is due to the competing perspectives that are deeply rooted in the different historical, ideological, political, and social conditions characteristic of each individual country.
II. US HUMAN RIGHTS POLICIES TOWARDS CHINA
Until the end of the Cold War in 1989, Sino-American relations fluctuated greatly. However, there had always been a strategic foundation upon which the relationship between China and the United States had rested. The United States maintained its durable strategy of containing Soviet expansion in the world. Based on this, China and the United States established a kind of strategic partnership.1 Although the Carter administration vigorously and systematically introduced human rights into US foreign policy in 1977, the target of this policy was not China. With few exceptions, human rights had never been a topic of dispute in Sino-American relations and the issue of China's human rights had not been an obstacle to improving relations between the two countries until the end of Cold War.2 It was under the Reagan administration that the human rights issue was pointedly used in the US struggle against its major Cold War rival-the Soviet Union and the Soviet-led communist bloc.3
The end of the Cold War eliminated the anti-Soviet strategic basis for a Sino-American alignment and the strategic foundation for Sino-American relations quickly crumbled.4 The Tiananmen crisis, which occurred in China on 4 June 1989, "brought the human...