Sino-American Competition for Global Primacy and Post-Cold War Civil Rights

How do the People’s Republic of China and the United States employ racial equality human rights to criticize each other? What are the effects of these criticisms on global public support for racial equality human rights? To address the first question, I focus on Chinese criticisms of discrimination and human rights violations, especially but not exclusively, those highlighted by Black Lives Matter protests; and US criticisms of Chinese autocracy and its human rights violations against Uyghurs. Based on rigorous qualitative content analysis of over 10,000 texts, the first part of the project will offer a textured understanding of how great powers’ use of human rights as rhetorical resources. The second part designs experimental vignettes based on these real-world criticisms. It then plans to employ survey experiments involving 21,000 respondents in seven countries to examine what the impact of these criticisms is on global public opinion on human rights and democracy. The project promises significant contributions to the study of racial equality, human rights, global public opinion, and great power rhetoric.