While the protection of human dignity figures prominently in the laws of the People's Republic of China, it is no simple task to reconcile contemporary liberal democratic discourse regarding human dignity with the exercise of power through law in China. Since its establishment in 1949, the government of China has determinedly rejected liberal democratic models of the state, including the constitutionalization of fundamental rights (Loughlin 2010: 47). China's rise towards the heights of global economic and political power has moreover strengthened the confidence of Chinese Communist Party (‘the Party’) leaders in their domestic model. Eschewing meaningful legal restraints on the powers of government, the Party has maintained a system of political and administrative intervention in legal outcomes (Clarke 2011).

Compared to the violent persecutions of the recent past, most notably including the Cultural Revolution unleashed in 1966 by Mao Zedong, personal freedom and security are undoubtedly much improved in China today (MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006). Nonetheless, the Chinese Party-state's often unrestricted use of power continues to raise vital questions about the exercise of state power and the protection of human dignity under Chinese law. Yet those concerns should not obscure the ways in which questions of human dignity are also at the forefront of current efforts to improve legal protections and remedies addressing harm to the integrity of the body and the mind. While these largely concern the prevention and redress of harmful acts of the state, they also include a widening sphere of private acts in China's fast-changing market economy. New communications technologies and services have, for example, transformed Chinese society and brought demands for more effective legal remedies for injuries to reputation and intrusions into privacy (for example, Yang et al. 2011; Wang et al. 2010: 45).