China’s rise to prosperity on the international stage has been accompanied by increased tensions with international standards of law and governance. Exporting Virtue? examines human rights as an example of China’s international assertiveness and considers the implications of internationalizing PRC human rights policy and practice. Pitman B. Potter suggests that in the absence of clear and enforceable global human rights standards, China has been free to pursue its political interests and policy initiatives. Couched in terms of virtue but manifested as authoritarianism, China’s international human rights activism invites scholars and policy makers around the world to engage critically with the issue. Drawing on both Chinese- and English-language sources, Exporting Virtue? investigates the challenges that China’s human rights orthodoxy poses to international norms and institutions, offering normative and institutional analysis and providing suggestions for policy response.

Pitman B. Potter is Professor of Law in the UBC Law Faculty and HSBC Chair in Asian Research at UBC’s Institute of Asian Research. His teaching and research focus on PRC and Taiwan law and policy in the areas of foreign trade and investment, dispute resolution, property law, contracts, business regulation, and human rights. Dr. Potter has published several books, including most recently The Legal System of the People’s Republic of China (Polity Press, 2013) and Law Policy and Practice on China’s Periphery: Selective Adaptation and Institutional Capacity (Routledge, 2011). He has also published over one hundred articles and essays.

In addition to his academic activities, Dr. Potter is admitted to the practice of law in British Columbia, Washington, and California (inactive), and serves as a consultant to the Canadian national law firm of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP. He is engaged in international trade arbitration work involving China and is on the panel of arbitrators for the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission as well as several regional arbitral bodies. He has served on the board of directors of several public institutions, including the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada where he is currently a Senior Fellow. He recently chaired the APFC Taskforce Report, "Advancing Canada’s Engagement with Asia on Human Rights: Integrating Business and Human Rights" (2013).

Pitman B. Potter's profile page

Exporting Virtue is a meticulously researched and forcefully argued indictment of faux human rights activism that "seems mainly to be an exercise in justifying authoritarianism, virtue claims notwithstanding."

The Sidebar

This book is a sound corrective to the often-heard but untenable claims by communist dictators in general that economic, social and cultural rights have precedence over civil and political ones.

Europe-Asia Studies Journal