Better Telling China’s Human Rights Stories and Clarifying the Logic of Human Rights in China

— A Theoretical Review and Prospect of China’s Human Rights Research in 2025

WANG Liwan * & DI Lei**

Abstract: Better telling China’s human rights stories and clarifying the logic of human rights in China are important tasks to build discourse power and influence in the human rights field commensurate with China’s comprehensive national strength and international status. In 2025, China’s human rights research transformed the practical achievements of “handling China's affairs well” into the discourse power and communication effects of “better tell China’s stories” by clarifying the narrative stance of China’s human rights stories, exploring materials for China’s human rights stories, and analyzing the mainstream agendas and core interests of the audiences of China’s human rights stories. It integrated the logic of human rights in China into vivid and specific human rights stories in China by distinguishing the philosophical foundation and cutting-edge progress of the Chinese outlook on human rights, extracting the deep mutually constitutive relationship between China’s path of human rights development and Chinese path to modernization, and explaining the sectoral and field-based legal pathways for the legal protection of human rights in China. Looking ahead, China’s human rights research should continue to uphold fundamental principles and break new ground, so that profound and warm human rights stories in China and the logic of human rights in China featuring Chinese wisdom and values can jointly serve the goal of building an independent knowledge system of human rights in China.

Keywords: China’s human rights stories · contemporary Chinese outlook on human rights · China’s path of human rights development · independent knowledge system of human rights in China