For the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to find ways to incorporate the naming and shaming literature into a study of human rights reform in China. While some of the literature points to the strategy being effective in autocratic regimes, I have found weak evidence that this holds true in the Chinese case (especially in the context of Xinjiang and Tibet). To try and account for this rift between theory and reality, I’ve been considering possible explanations for exactly why this is. One possible reason (and the evidence I’ve encountered points to this as the strongest) is due to China’s involvement in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a Central Asian security organization headed by Russia and China. All states in the organization have problems with specific ethnonationationalist and separatist groups, and have framed the discourse around human rights to reflect a broader security risk for the state. Considering China has re-framed its domestic issues in Tibet and Xinjiang to fit within the broader context of the global war on terror post 9-11, it seems that the SCO provides an insular environment to promote less-than-democratic norms and to reject Western influence in the region. SCO member states all fall under “authoritarian” or “competitive authoritarian” categories (China, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan), so it seems that the organization provides its members a degree self-made legitimacy. Interestingly, the SCO regularly conducts “peace missions” (not to be confused with the UN’s peace keeping operations, although China participates in those too), which consist of military exercises that simulate terrorist and separatist crises.
So, it seems that the SCO postures itself as an alternative to the liberal democratic structures in the West, which by definition offers its member states a degree of insulation from attempts at naming and shaming. As I’m getting deeper into writing the analysis, I’m finding that exploring situations in which the processes of democratization have stalled can contribute to the overall understanding of the rise of competitive authoritarianism.