Foot describes in fascinating detail "the process", as she entitles it, whereby China's approach to human rights and the international human rights regime went through five complex stages of evolution ... Foot interprets official statements with a fine eye for nuance ... pioneering study.

The China Journal

Foot asks how it is that norms not backed by real enforcement mechanisms nonetheless have the power to change at least the external behaviour of a state like China, and even to some extent its internal behaviour. Her answers are informed, insightful, and balanced. The book makes a major contribution both to the literature on Chinese foreign policy and to the new theoretical literature on the role of norms in international relations.

Andrew J. Nathan, Professor of Politics, Columbia University

Rosemary Foot has made the most penetrating analysis of the efforts of the international community and China's own human rights advocates to push China, kicking and screaming, into the global human rights regime. She vividly describes the public and private pressures and the symbolic and material sanctions that have led China to a gradual acceptance of universal human rights norms, though not yet to their implementation. For those interested in the international as well as in the Chinese struggle for human rights, this book must be read.

Merle Goldman, Professor of History at Boston University and author of Sowing the Seeds of Democracy in China