“Stability preservation” (weiwen) has long been an imperative of China’s one-party state. At the same time, China has recently embedded a commitment to the protection of human rights in its constitution. This book examines the multiple and shifting ways in which weiwen impinges on the implementation of human rights. Using case studies, Sarah Biddulph methodically examines the state’s response to labour unrest, medical disputes, and forced housing evictions. As she demonstrates, the state’s reaction can vary from taking steps to ameliorate the underlying causes of the citizens’ grievances to the repression of rights-related protests and the punishment of protestors. The Stability Imperative: Human Rights and Law in China reveals how the systematic failure of the legal system to protect rights coupled with an overemphasis on coercive forms of stability preservation is undermining the authority of law in China and could, ultimately, damage the Communist Party’s leadership.

Sarah Biddulph's profile page

• Winner, Clio-North Prize, Canadian Historical Association
• Short-listed, Canadian Law and Society Book Prize, Canadian Law and Society Association

Sarah Biddulph is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2014-18) and professor of law at the University of Melbourne Law School. She specializes in the research and teaching of Chinese law. Her research focuses on the Chinese legal system with a particular emphasis on legal policy, law making, and enforcement as they affect the administration of justice in China. Her particular areas of research are contemporary Chinese administrative law, criminal procedure, labour, comparative law, and the law regulating social and economic rights. Her recent publications include: Legal Reform and Administrative Detention Powers in China (2007) and Law and Fair Work in China: Making and Enforcing Labour Standards in the PRC (2013), co-authored with Sean Cooney and Ying Zhu.

Biddulph has written an outstanding contribution to the field of human rights and law as well as to the field of governance and social stability/protests. The uniqueness and strength of the book lie in the author’s ability to bridge and unite insights from different research areas and in her rich empirical material. [Biddulph] shows how issues of human rights and governance are intertwined and shape the life of individual citizens as well as the work of different state and non-state actors and institutions.

Pacific Historical Review