Program Spotlights

Leveraging the comprehensive disciplinary advantages of ZJU and the regional characteristics of the Yangtze River Delta, the Center has long been dedicated to research in human rights law. By deeply integrating multidisciplinary resources—including law, political science, sociology, digital science, and international relations—and precisely aligning with national strategies for human rights development and regional governance needs, the Center has established three prominent, distinct, and interconnected research directions:

Direction one: Research on the Construction of an Autonomous Human Rights Knowledge System

Positioning and Features: Centered on studying and expounding Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, especially General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important expositions on respecting and safeguarding human rights, this direction is grounded in the grand practice of Chinese-style modernization. It aims to systematically summarize China’s original experiences in human rights protection, extract remarkable concepts with both theoretical depth and practical value, break the monopoly of Western human rights discourse, and construct a new era Chinese human rights theory system, discipline system, and discourse system that embody China’s stance, demonstrate Chinese wisdom, and possess academic autonomy. This direction closely follows “localized theoretical innovation,” achieving deep synchronization between human rights theoretical research and national development practice. Based on the intrinsic link between democracy and human rights protection, it explores how whole-process people’s democracy transforms the right of the people to be masters of the country into concrete human rights protection practices through institutional design; delves into the dialectical relationship between common prosperity and human rights realization, investigating pathways for equal protection of basic rights such as employment, education, healthcare, and elderly care in the process of promoting common prosperity through high-quality development; focuses on the coordinated development of ecological civilization and human rights, exploring the legal definition and protection mechanisms of ecological and environmental rights to empower human rights in building a Beautiful China; excavates the contemporary value of traditional Chinese thought such as “the people are the foundation of the state” and “the world belongs to all,” sorting out modern transformation paths for traditional human rights ideas, thereby providing a profound cultural foundation for China’s independent knowledge system of human rights.

Foundation and Strengths: Building on and further developing the profound academic accumulation of the former Public Law Research Center in fundamental disciplines such as jurisprudence, constitutional law, and administrative law, we have established a well-structured core team led by senior professors and supported by a strong contingent of young and middle-aged scholars. Team members have long been engaged in deep research on the foundational theories of human rights. They have presided numerous national-level projects, including major and key projects funded by the National Social Science Fund of China, published a series of high‑impact papers in authoritative academic journals, and authored multiple monographs of significant scholarly influence. Together, these achievements provide solid intellectual support and a robust academic foundation for the construction of an independent knowledge system.

Direction Two: Research on Frontier Issues in Human Rights Protection in the Digital Age

Positioning and Features: Facing the needs of the Digital China strategy and the high-quality development of the digital economy in the Yangtze River Delta, this direction focuses on new human rights issues arising from iterative advances in digital technology, making it the most cutting-edge, interdisciplinary, and practice-oriented research area of the Center. It precisely responds to the tension between data resource development/utilization and personal rights protection in digital society, actively aligns with the construction needs of the national digital governance system, and explores the establishment of a legal normative system and multi-party collaborative governance framework that balance innovation-driven development and rights protection, thereby offering solutions for human rights protection in the digital age that combine theoretical depth with practical feasibility.

Specific Content: Key research areas include clarifying the attributes and legal characterization of data rights,  refining protection rules across the entire chain of personal information collection, storage, use, and transmission, and addressing prominent problems such as excessive collection and misuse of personal information; in-depth exploration of the legal justification logic of digital human rights, clarifying the connections and extensions between digital human rights and traditional human rights, and exploring protection pathways for emerging rights such as digital personality rights and digital property rights; focusing on human rights risks in the research and development of artificial intelligence and application, researching core issues such as algorithmic discrimination, transparency, and accountability, and delineating ethical and legal boundaries for AI governance; examining rights protection in the platform economy context, including research on platform monopolies, labor rights protection for workers in platform employment, and the boundaries of freedom of speech in platform content governance; focusing on the protection of rights of digitally vulnerable groups such as the elderly, persons with disabilities, and rural residents, exploring empowerment mechanisms under digital inclusion to help bridge the digital divide; studying top level design and specific implementation pathways for algorithm regulation, and constructing a multi-level, differentiated algorithm governance system.

Foundation and Strengths: Leveraging Zhejiang University’s strong digital disciplinary clusters—computer science and technology, artificial intelligence, big data management and application—this direction has established an interdisciplinary research paradigm of “Law plus Digital Science.” Integrating forces from digital law, criminal law, administrative law, civil and commercial law within Guanghua Law School of ZJU, the Center has formed a specialized digital human rights research team. The team has produced a number of academically influential domestic and international achievements, with multiple papers published in top law and interdisciplinary journals, and several policy advisory reports adopted by relevant national and local authorities, providing important intellectual support for policy making and legal improvement in human rights protection in the digital age. Meanwhile, the Center maintains close cooperative relationships with digital enterprises and regulatory agencies in the Yangtze River Delta, establishing an industry-academia-research-application collaborative innovation platform to ensure research outcomes precisely meet practical needs.

Direction Three: International Exchange and Comparative Research in the Field of Human Rights

Positioning and Features: Closely serving the strategic layout of China’s foreign-related rule-of-law work and the reform needs of the global governance system, and based in the forefront of opening-up in the Yangtze River Delta, this direction focuses on improving and innovating the global human rights governance system. Through refined comparative research and in-depth regional and country-specific studies, it systematically explains the unique advantages and practical achievements of China’s path of human rights development, accurately conveys China’s human rights outlook to the international community, actively participates in formulating and improving global human rights governance rules, helps enhance China’s voice and influence in the international human rights field, and contributes Chinese strength to building a fairer, more just, and reasonable global human rights governance order.

Specific Content: Key research areas include studying reform and improvement pathways for global human rights governance mechanisms, analyzing the operational mechanisms and development trends of UN and regional human rights bodies to provide strategic support for China’s participation in global human rights governance; conducting in-depth research on the transformation and implementation mechanisms of international human rights standards in China, ensuring organic alignment between fulfilling international obligations and domestic human rights protection practices; exploring innovative models of international exchange and cooperation in the human rights field, deepening mutual learning with countries around the world; focusing on human rights protection under the Belt and Road Initiative, studying human rights development needs of countries along the routes, and constructing a Belt and Road human rights protection coordination mechanism to help build a community with a shared future for mankind; carrying out targeted regional and country-specific research, deeply analyzing the historical evolution and practical dilemmas of human rights policies and laws in European and American countries, and systematically studying the human rights development paths and practical experiences of Global South countries to provide reference for China’s South–South cooperation in the human rights field; researching the due diligence obligations concerning human rights for Chinese enterprises operating overseas, constructing systems for preventing and responding to overseas human rights risks, thereby helping enterprises operate compliantly and enhancing national image.