China’s Use of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals as an Emerging Post-Human Rights Paradigm

Since the adoption of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the rhetoric and practice of sustainable development has been entrenched across a wide spectrum of political systems, from liberal democracies to absolute monarchies. In the People’s Republic of China (PRC), this global development concept has been increasingly incorporated into the structures of one-party rule, state planning, and a comprehensive ideological narrative. Indeed, China's role in and advocacy for the SDGs, beginning during the negotiations on their formation, has been at the heart of its general foreign policy and international law initiatives. There has also been an increasing permeation of SDG indicators into Beijing's formulation, justification, and evaluation of policies (including for internal audiences of elite policymakers).  

The emerging pattern might be described as “SDG authoritarianism”—a configuration in which the legitimacy of authoritarian governance is extensively reinforced by the discourse and metrics of sustainable development. Far from being peripheral to China’s domestic politics, the SDG targets now serve as guiding principles, integrating social and environmental policy, economic regulation, and state legitimacy claims into a single project. Moreover, the striking achievements of that project may even have implications for a global transition away from civil and political conceptions of human rights, in favor of a similarly universalist but "post-liberal" SDG framework. Meanwhile, however, albeit in many ways a success story, China's model of SDG engagement also includes several paradoxical features that may indicate its own replicability challenges, latent drawbacks or contradictions, and the need to contemplate alternative paths.

Ryan Martínez Mitchell ’17 JSD is an associate professor of law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His work on international and comparative law, legal history, Chinese law, and Asian legal systems has appeared in leading academic journals. His analysis of these issues has also featured in policy-related publications including Foreign Affairs, The National Interest, The Diplomat, and others; and his analysis has been cited in media including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The National Interest, NPR, Bloomberg, Nikkei Asia, Al Jazeera, Foreign Policy, and other major media outlets. His first book, "Recentering the World: China and the Transformation of International Law," was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

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