486 { China’s Quest
went even further in subordinating individual rights to the state. Nor did
Marxism-Leninism put particular stress on sovereignty. The key stress of
Marxism-Leninism was on internationalism and solidarity among the
oppressed laboring classes of all countries.
Developments in international legal norms associated with post–World
War II decolonization strengthened PRC attempts to employ strong sover-
eignty norms in self-defense after 6-4. There emerged during the post-1945
period a legal philosophy that saw sovereignty as a defense of weak and poor
non-Western states against the predations of the rich and powerful Western
states. As scores of new states emerged during the post-1945 breakdown of
the globe-spanning European empires in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, these
often weak emerging nations, as they were then called, adopted norms of
state sovereignty akin in many ways to the older concept of absolute sover-
eignty. These new and weak states did this to help protect their impoverished
and often disunited nations from pressure by more powerful Western states.
Previously, sovereignty norms had largely upheld the rights of major pow-
ers—concluding treaties, upholding legal rights, waging war, and such. Now
norms of defensive sovereignty became a defense of weak non-Western states
against powerful Western ones. The United Nations and its agencies were key
mechanisms of norm creation of this new tradition of defensive sovereignty,
sometimes dubbed the “revolt of the non-West.”^3
Beijing seized on and utilized this postcolonial revolution in international
sovereignty norms in its defense against post-6-4 Western criticism. The phi-
losophy and practice of defensive sovereignty was quite well developed by
1989, and the CCP grabbed this ready-made tradition to help fend off Western
criticism. This trope also gave Beijing a ready-made Third World constitu-
ency and high moral ground from which to challenge Western charges of
PRC human rights abuses. Before 6-4, Beijing had given occasional nods to
these Third World defensive sovereignty norms as part of the anti-hegemony
struggle, but it had not felt compelled to embrace them for its own defense.
After June 1989, however, defensive sovereignty norms became a key arrow
in the CCP’s arsenal of self-defense. Well-intentioned Western sympathy for
the struggle of the Chinese people for their intrinsic human rights was thus
transformed into arrogant Western interference for malevolent purposes.The Western Response to the Beijing MassacreWidespread and strong Western criticism of the Beijing massacre erupted
almost before silence fell over Beijing on June 4. That very day, President
George H. W. Bush expressed “deep regret” over the Chinese government’s
decision to use force to suppress the peaceful protest movement. The US gov-
ernment had consistently urged the Chinese government to use nonviolent