Extant research elucidates the debates underpinning a universal or relative approach to human rights. While closely related, human rights education (HRE) is elusive, as there are different views about appropriate goals and content, though teaching human rights has been globally recognized in various international documents. Since 2006, the Chinese government has officially promoted a series of national action plans for human rights, requiring schools at all levels to promote HRE through existing forms of education. This case study investigates HRE in a public junior secondary school in China from a teacher perspective. With qualitative data collected through documents, interviews and observations, this article investigates teachers' responses to HRE policies coming from central authorities, and their resultant practices, ranging from faithful implementation per policy provisions, to positive promotion by adapting policies into contextualized situations, and to unsupportive acceptance by changing some policy requirements.