Freedom of Religion and Conscience in China and Russia: Searching for New Commons (N.I. Shumakova, E.V. Titova, журнал "The International Journal of Law in Changing World (The IJLCW)", Volume 2, Issue 1, June 2023)

Shumakova N.I., Titova E.V. Freedom of Religion and Conscience in China and Russia: Searching for New Commons

N.I. Shumakova - PhD student in Constitutional law at the South Ural State University (National Research University), Chelyabinsk, Russian Federation

E.V. Titova - Doctor of Law, Associate Professor, the Head of Constitutional and Administrative Law Department, the Head of Law Institute of the South Ural State University (National Research University), Chelyabinsk, Russian Federation

The main hypothesis of this article is a possibility of creating a new convention by China and Russia for protecting the fundamental human right to freedom of religion and conscience on a new international level, independent from the West. The need of developing such a convention or even a new international organization is conditioned by the withdrawal of Russia from the Council of Europe and the European Convention on Human Rights. We suggest that this cooperation can be beneficial for both parties because it should help secure their sovereignty and improve the implementation of national legislations. The aim of our research is to propose measures of increasing the efficiency of realization of freedom of religion and conscience in China in Russia. In oder to reach it, we employed such methods of legal comparativistics as functional, normative and external comparative analysis and studied the Chinese and Russian specifics of the legal recognition and protection of this right. The findings of our study suggest that the existing limitations of it should be seen as a response to challenges China and Russia have been facing as developing multicultural and policonfessional states. We also discovered that despite its cultural, ideological and political differences, Russia and China share a number of almost identical mechanisms for the realisation of religious liberty.

Keywords: human rights, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, international law, Russian legislation, Chinese legislation