NGOs in China

Visiting NGOs in Shanghai and Nanjing: are they the future?

2011-12-15T07:04:00.000-08:00

Everywhere I go, it seems I come across new epicenters of NGO activity. When I was in Chengdu, I thought Sichuan was the new epicenter of NGO activity in Southwest China. My recent visits to Shanghai and Nanjing show these cities, particularly Shanghai, are emerging as epicenters of NGO activity in eastern China. I used to think eastern China lagged behind other areas such as Beijing, Yunnan and Sichuan when it came to NGO growth, but no more.

In Shanghai, I visited the Public Welfare Park in the Pudong New District where the Pudong disrict government has constructed an artsy, modern building that houses about 30 nonprofits, providing them with various support services and contracting with them to provide community services.

There I paid a visit to two movers and shakers in China's nonprofit world: Nonprofit Incubator (NPI) and the NPO Development Center. Both provide consulting and capacity building training to nonprofits. NPI is an impressive, professional operation with a public foundation and offices in Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and employs over a hundred people all told. It incubates and supports a number of Shanghai's up-and-coming NGOs. NPI symbolizes the future of what NGOs can be in China. The NPO Development Center (Ying Lv in Chinese) is a much more modest operation, but has been working in Shanghai for many years providing capacity training to Shanghai's nonprofits. It was founded by Zhuang Ailing, who was director of the recently-established China Foundation Center for a few months before returning back to Shanghai where she is heading the RenDe Foundation, a newly established public foundation started by the Nanjing-based Amity Foundation. RenDe will be one of the few foundations in China devoted to making grants to support NGOs.

Much of the credit for what is happening in Pudong and Shanghai more generally goes to Ma Yili, the former director of the Pudong Civil Affairs bureau who is now director of the Shanghai Civil Affairs department. Ma is seen by many as the driving force behind the Pudong Public Welfare Park, and the local government's efforts to promote nonprofits to contribute to the development of local communities. These initiatives have been expanded to other districts in Shanghai, and their effects are being felt in other nearby cities such as Nanjing.

In Nanjing, NGOs are on the rise and the Nanjing city government is now considering similar measures to energize the development of nonprofits. I visited the most prominent NGO in Nanjing, the Amity Foundation, which in 2009 established a NGO Development Center to incubate local nonprofits much as Shanghai's NPI is doing. Like NPI, Amity is an impressive, professional operation located in a beautiful space next to the leafy campus of Nanjing University. It is the only NGO that I can think of that has its name displayed prominently on its front gate.

I spoke with the director of the NGO Development Center who told me Amity was being contracted by the central government to develop policy ideas and strategies to promote the NGO sector in Nanjing. Later I had lunch with the director, and two members of Green Stone, an environmental NGO that is getting Amity support.

I also paid a visit to Tianxiagong (Justice Under Heaven), a new NGO in Nanjing that is essentially a branch organization of the well-known Beijing-based NGO, Yirenping, which engages in advocacy and legal aid for hepatitis B sufferers who encounter discrimination in the workplace. I spoke with Yu Fangqiang, the young, smart and very persistent NGO campaigner who used to work for Yirenping and now heads the Nanjing office. He gave me a book they had just produced of interviews with NGOs and individuals in the east China region who were fighting for just solutions to various social and environmental problems.

As organizations that share a mission of supporting and promoting China's NGOs, NPI, the NPO Development Center, Amity and Tianxiagong will all play a pivotal role in reshaping the civil society landscape in this part of China. Due to their efforts, eastern China is no longer a backwater for NGOs. Indeed, it may represent the future for China's NGOs.

My travels to visit NGOs in Sichuan

2011-11-20T07:27:00.001-08:00

I realize it's been a while since I've posted. China Development Brief just started a new project involving the updating of the Chinese NGO Directory that was last done in 2001. Much has changed since then, and the number of NGOs has grown rapidly, so we thought it was high time for a new directory. This one will focus on the more independent, grassroots, public interest NGOs, unlike the old one which included a number of GONGOs.

I just realized how big an undertaking this directory is when I took a trip to Sichuan to visit some NGOs in Chongqing and Chengdu to get a better sense of the NGO situation in the southwest. I visited Wu Dengming's Green Volunteer League (GVL) which is one of the oldest environmental NGOs in the country, having been established in 1995, a year after Friends of Nature. Wu is a feisty and energetic 72 years old and is still as active as ever. I interviewed him about his life and we talked for about 4 hours. In between, he was visited by two Europeans who were making a documentary about water in China and wanted to interview Wu over the next two weeks. Wu told me there were now a few more NGOs in Chongqing, which used to be a backwater for NGOs.

My next stop took me to the 512 Voluntary Relief Services Center, which started as a network of NGOs that responded to the Sichuan earthquake. I've written in a number of places about this Center which is led by the intrepid husband-and-wife team of Gao Guizi and Guo Hong. Guo Hong is a sociologist and NGO researcher at the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences where the 512 Center is located. I'd visited them twice before over the last few years, and it was good to see them again. Gao took me down the alley next to the Academy where we sat and had a simple bowl of zhajiang mian, which I thought was a Beijing-style noodle dish, but Gao told me Sichuan has its own version of the noodles, less sauce and just some ground pork sprinkled over a bowl of noodles with a little spicy saucy at the bottom. I was told I had to stir the noodles around to get the sauce mixed in. It was very satisfying, and I have to say, better than the Beijing version. And only 6 RMB!

Both Gao and Guo are very thoughtful, knowledgeable observers of the NGO scene, especially in Sichuan, and they spent about 3 hours talking to me about the numerous NGOs that have emerged in the province. I was impressed. It seems that Sichuan may have supplanted Yunnan as the center of NGOs in southwest China.

The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize and Civil Society Activism

2011-10-07T23:43:00.000-07:00

Kudos to the Nobel Peace Prize committee for selecting three women activists from Africa and the Middle East. They are President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, the Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman, a pro-democracy campaigner in Yemen. Their selection turns the spotlight on the pivotal role of women in promoting development, democracy and peace. But I also like the committee's decision because it shows that activism comes in all shapes and forms. One women is an elected leader, another the leader of the Women for Peace movement uniting Christian and Muslim women in Liberia, and the last the founder of Women Journalists Without Chains, a civil society advocacy organization in Yemen.

I also like the fact that civil society activists got much of the credit. Women like Gbowee and Karman did not just burst onto the scene, but have been building their organizations and movements for years. According to the New York Times, Gbowee's Women for Peace was started in 2002, while Karman's Women Journalists Without Chains was established in 2007. Their achievements are the result of years of patient, determined, brave activism. As Thorbjorn Jagland, the head of the committee, noted the 2011 prize recognized those “who were there long before the world’s media was there reporting.”

There are many civil society activists like this in China -- women and men alike -- who have yet to get the attention of the Nobel Peace Prize committee or the international media, but deserve more of our attention for their work.

A View from the Top: will upcoming policy changes make it easier for NGOs?

2011-10-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

Recently, CDB (English) has created a special section, A View from the Top, that monitors changes in official thinking and actions on China's civil society. For the section, I scan media reports and select reports that I think are significant and give us some insight into what is going on in the black box that we call the Chinese government.

Just looking over the reports listed, you can see that over this past year there have been multiple reports suggesting that new policies are forthcoming making it easier for NGOs to register and fundraise. But there are also reports showing that many difficulties remain. One of them is an interview with Zheng Gongcheng of the National People's Congress Standing Committee. Mr. Zheng discusses the obstacles holding up the Charity Law which was originally expected to be passed in 2009. I made some comments on this article in another listserve, and am posting them here.

"I don't think there's much that is new in this interview with Zheng Gongcheng. What he does confirm is that there are multiple reasons holding up the Charity Law, as well as other regulations being revised by MOCA like the registration and management regs for social organizations.

One of these is disagreement among policymakers over the content of these regulations. One contentious issue that Zheng touches on is whether charity organizations (he seems to use this term instead of social organization) should have to get a supervising unit (yewu zhuguan bumen) in order to register. This is an old issue that has been debated for at least the last 10 years, and raises concerns among more conservative, security-minded policymakers who don't want to give charity organizations too long of a leash. Zheng interestingly takes a clear stand on this by saying he thinks a supervising unit violates the independent legal nature of a charity organization.

This disagreement becomes particularly intense when the laws/regs are sent to the NPC and State Council where other departmental interests insert themselves. I think MOCA realizes the regulatory environment for charity organizations is far from perfect and is committed to improving the environment, as we can see from the various initiatives they've taken in the past few years to revise the regs, and issue various other measures including the approval of local experiments in Beijing and other parts of the country. And I think the debates over issues like the nature of charity, fundraising and registration that were renewed after the 2008 earthquake, and the most recent media reports on problems in the Red Cross and other GONGOs, have put more pressure on MOCA to improve the regulatory environment.

But MOCA is a relatively weak ministry and when other departments raise concerns, it lacks the clout to get the necessary support. MOCA's case would be helped if a powerful leader took an interest in their cause and championed it, but I don't see this happening, especially in the run up to the 18th Party Congress next year. Wen Jiabao perhaps, but he seems to be relegated to the sidelines? So I'm not hopeful at least for the short term.

Another reason for the delay has to do with consideration of how these laws and regs may affect other laws and regs in the pipeline. Zheng mentions the laws related to social security and social assistance and says that they might have to precede the Charity Law. MOCA also has to coordinate and get the support of other departments that would be involved in the implementation of these laws and regs. So in addition to security concerns, there are concerns about the timing and implementation of the laws and regs. This is also tied to the local experiments going on in various areas of registration and fundraising. Zheng alludes to this and implies that allowing local experiments and regulations to move ahead of the national level ones may be the preferred and realistic course of action given the logjam at the national level.

I'm interested to see if the recent debates and revelations of scandals in various GONGOs will get the attention of the leadership. It seems the debate over fundraising, charity and other related issues is being ratcheted up, as exemplified by the media scrutiny in the last few months. I'm struck by all the reports of charity scandals that have come out recently, and can't recall this level of scrutiny in the past. We'll have to see if anything comes out of this growing public awareness and scrutiny."

China Development Brief (English) August Updates

2011-09-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

I realize I haven't posted in a while, but below is the reason why. Here's our monthly newsletter about new developments at CDB (English):

Translations for August

This month, thanks to the hard work of our CDB Translators, we are pleased to offer translations of five articles highlighting the diversity of China’s NGO/nonprofit sector. They include articles about:

Lesbian organizing in China

A survey of major public welfare events of 2010 voted on by the readers of CDB and two other NGO publications;

Students who tell their story of starting a NGO in Xiamen;

A Shanghai autism NGO's community building efforts;

The first national forum for NGOs serving the intellectually disabled

Theme of the Month: Mainstreaming

One theme that emerges from the articles on NGOs serving the intellectually disabled is a desire on the part of many NGOs to find ways to join the mainstream of society. Mainstreaming strategies include collaborating with and seeking funding from local governments, media, the business sector, and the communities in which they work. This theme reflects an important change in the thinking and strategies of NGOs that in the past tended to be marginalized and were often better known and appreciated by those in the international community than by the Chinese themselves.

Upcoming Translations in September

Below is a list of articles that will be appearing in the month of September on CDB (English)’s website.

1) “From Opposition to Dialogue”, an article about recent actions taken by the Green Choice Alliance, a network of 34 NGOs, on industrial pollution cases.

2) “An Interview with Ma Jun”, an interview with one of China’s best-known environmentalist who is a central player in the Green Choice Alliance.

3) “A Conversation about Rural Library Projects”, a CDB-moderated discussion with several NGOs about their different approaches and assessments of the effectiveness of rural libraries.

4) “China’s Huiling: Harmonious Cooperation Requires Rule of Law and Culture”, Huiling, one of China’s most prominent NGOs serving the intellectually disabled, discusses some of the obstacles it faces in working with the disabled in China’s communities, including unfavorable legislation for civil society organizations.

5) “Beijing LGBT Center”, a profile of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) Center, one of the best-known LGBT NGOs in China, with a discussion of the future of the LGBT movement in China.

Check Out Our NGO Resources

We also encourage you to peruse our other NGO resources:

A Special Issue: New Trends in Philanthropy and Civil Society in China (August 2011)

A Bibliography of Sources on Civil Society ;

Laws and Regulations Pertaining to the Civil Society Sector;

Announcements about jobs, conferences and activities in the nonprofit sector.

Updating CDB’s Directories of NGOs

We are currently in the process of updating CDB’s Directory of International NGOs in China, and Directory of Chinese NGOs. The updating of these two directories is a rather large undertaking that will take some time. We thank you for your patience as we try to get the new information up as quickly as our limited resources will allow.

Volunteer Translators and Interns

CDB (English) depends heavily on the help of our volunteer CDB translators and interns. If you are interested in being a CDB translator, check our website here. We are always looking for good interns who will play an important part in the development of CDB(English). If you are interested, check our website here.

If you know of others who wish to receive monthly CDB (English) newsletters, please have them email inquiries@chinadevelopmentbrief.cn. If you do not wish to continue receiving newsletters, please reply to this email with the subject line “Unsubscribe” and we will take you off our mailing list.

Best wishes,

Shawn Shieh, Editor

China Development Brief (English)

CDB (English)'s Inaugural Special Issue on Philanthropy and Civil Society

2011-08-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

I am very pleased to announce our inaugural special issue on New Trends in Philanthropy and Civil Society in China is now available on our new website (www.chinadevelopmentbrief.cn). (P.S. We are not the same as the old China Development Brief which is at www.chinadevelopmentbrief.com).

Thanks to the fine work of our CDB translators, the 12 articles that make up this special issue have been appearing on our website for the last month. Together, they provide a compelling and insightful glimpse into an important change taking place in China's nonprofit, philanthropic community. For each article, I have written a brief introduction to provide context, and inserted explanatory notes through the text. To provide coherence and context, I have also provided a Preface and Table of Contents for the special issue.

The Preface

· tells how the special issue was produced;

· provides a short primer on the nonprofit/philanthropic sector in the PRC;

· summarizes the key findings of the 12 articles.

It has been a busy summer for us at CDB(English). In addition to getting our website up, and our special issue released, I have been traveling in the U.S. promoting CDB(English), and meeting with potential funders and partners. I gave two public talks on our special issue at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations in New York City, and the Kissinger Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. The title of the talk was “Same Bed, Different Dreams?: The New Philanthropy and Civil Society in China”. Both talks were recorded and podcasts/videos are available on the websites of the Wilson Center and National Committee for those interested.

We hope you will take the time to explore the articles and other resources we provide on our website. These resources include translations of Laws and Regulations governing the nonprofit sector, a Bibliography of sources on civil society, and Announcements of jobs, conferences, and activities of interest to an international audience.

We will continue to provide translations of selected CDB articles, and develop the other NGO resources on our website. We will be sending you monthly newsletters alerting you to new material on our website in addition to new CDB (English) developments and events. If you know of others who wish to receive monthly CDB (English) newsletters, please have them email inquiries@chinadevelopmentbrief.cn. If you do not wish to continue receiving newsletters, please reply to this email with the subject line “Unsubscribe” and we will take you off our mailing list.

CDB (English) would like to thank CDB, the Ford Foundation, and our CDB (English) translators and interns for their support. As a translation project of CDB, CDB (English) would not be possible without the hard work of CDB staff who invest long hours to report on the nonprofit sector in China. We also appreciate the financial support of the Ford Foundation who believed in us from the very start. Finally, our translations and other resources would not be possible without the work of our CDB Translators, and interns: Emily Chesborough, Stephanie Roach, and Justin Pena.

Promoting CDB (English)'s special issue on philanthropy and civil society in China

2011-08-03T11:08:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to finally announce that our special issue is now online at China Development Brief (English) (www.chinadevelopmentbrief.cn). The special issue comes with a Preface and Table of Contents. The Preface provides some information about the special issue, a brief primer on the nonprofit and philanthropic sector in the PRC, and the key findings from the 12 articles translated for the special issue. I'm very happy with the result and believe CDB's reporting provides a very insightful, thorough look into a very important development in China's civil society. I'll be emailing a monthly newsletter about the special issue and other developments at CDB (English). If you'd like to get on the email list, please send me an email at profshawn@gmail.com.

When I was in the U.S. in July, I also gave two public talks on our special issue at the NationalCommittee on U.S.-China Relations in New York City, and the Kissinger Instituteof the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. The title of the talk was “Same Bed,Different Dreams?: The New Philanthropy and Civil Society in China”. For those interested, both talks were recorded and podcasts/videosare available on the websites of the National Committee (http://www.ncuscr.org/programs/same-bed-different-dreams) and the Woodrow Wilson Center (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/same-bed-different-dreams-the-new-philanthropy-and-civil-society-china).

Improving Human Rights Through Social Change

2011-07-31T15:46:00.000-07:00

Last Monday, I was invited to participate in a briefing on Capitol Hill to Congressional staffers on the topic of "Human Rights and Social Change". It was an opportunity for me to think through the U.S. government's (and more generally the U.S.) approach to the human rights issue in China. Here are my remarks:

The way in which we view China is shaped strongly by our own political, social and cultural biases. We tend to focus on areas that are of importance to us: human rights, rule of law, treatment of ethnic minorities, rights-based activities, freedom of expression and religion, etc. What we might call political and civil rights. These are important issues not only to Americans but to the larger international community, but we should keep in mind that they come out of a specific political, social and cultural context, and are not necessarily the most important issues to many in China’s civil society. These are also areas where the party-state has been more vigilant in opposing reforms, partly because they perceive outside forces pushing hard for changes in these areas.

The problem is that in focusing so much of our attention and energies on these areas, we have developed blind spots in other areas where change is occurring in a more organic fashion, using strategies and methods that are generally accepted and have proved effective in China. These changes have not resulted in the kinds of change we in the U.S. would like to see, particularly a stronger, more independent legal system, and greater protection of legal rights, and the expansion of freedom of expression and religion, for Chinese citizens. But they are nonetheless important changes that have resulted in the expansion of civil society broadly defined. This civil society consisting of voluntary, private, self-governing initiatives, organizations, networks and movements has been growing in numbers and in the diversity of actors involved. They include lawyers, journalists, academics, ordinary activists, NGOs, foundations, informal and virtual groups and networks, and even the occasional government official.

I would argue that we need to do a better job understanding how social action and change is unfolding in China before we try to impose our own template of how political and social change should occur. Why and how has civil society continued to grow through the cycles of relaxation and repression that we keep hearing about in the international media? What are the consequences of this growth? Where will it lead? What if anything can the U.S. government do to support civil society?

We’ve been very good about identifying and calling attention to the ways in which the government has sought to stifle and repress civil society. It seems that every week we read news about activists, writers, lawyers, and monks being restricted, detained, disappeared or arrested. We’ve also done a fairly good job of identifying acts of “mass disturbances”, strikes, protests, riots. But again, these stories are consistent with our concern for rule of law, freedom of expression and religion, and the treatment of ethnic minorities.

What we hear little about are the stories that do not get the attention of journalists. Stories about the quiet work that is being done behind the scenes, the emergence of social actors promoting change in less public ways, the growth of social and virtual networks, and the growing collaboration between civil society actors, the government and business sectors. These are areas where civil society is trying escape marginalization and join the mainstream of Chinese society. They are also trends that get little mention in the media and in U.S. government human rights reports.

Information about these changes is not lacking. It is available and being documented by academics, bloggers, and organizations like China Development Brief. But it does not seem to be filtering up to those in the U.S. government.

Just to give one important change that has happened recently is the rapid rise of private foundations which offer another means of support for civil society. The rise of foundations established by private entrepreneurs suggests that the private sector is gradually becoming more socially engaged. Their support of civil society, while not a direct statement supporting political reform, shows their support for an organizational sphere independent of the party-state. The coming together of private entrepreneurs and civil society has been gathering speed over the last two years. It represents a very significant event that is beginning to change the civil society landscape because now you have independent foundations with lots of money and influence. The question is, will they support civil society?

The always insightful Liu Xiaobo, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, recognizes the importance of social change in reforming the political environment in China. In his 2006 essay, “Changing the Regime by Changing Society”, he states:

“China’s course toward a free society will mainly rely on bottom-up gradual improvement and not the top-down ‘Chiang Ching-kuo style’ revolution. Bottom-up reform requires self-consciousness among the people, and self-initiated, persistent and continuously expanding civil disobedience movements or rights defense movements among the people. In other words, pursue the free and democratic forces among the people; do not pursue the rebuilding of society through radical regime change, but instead use gradual social change to compel regime change. That is, rely on the continuously growing civil society to reform a regime that lacks legitimacy.”

Talking about Chinese Philanthropy and Civil Society in the U.S.

2011-07-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm currently on home leave in the U.S., supposedly on vacation but at this point more work than vacation. I figure now that I've left the Great Firewall I should use this opportunity to blog at least once, just to say I did it. So this post is pure in the sense that it hasn't been filtered or laundered through a VPN or anonymous proxy.

While on home leave, I'm taking advantage of being on the east coast to promote the work I've been doing with China Development Brief, in particular our special issue on New Trends in Philanthropy and Civil Society that is appearing on our website at www.chinadevelopmentbrief.cn. I just finished a talk at the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations today on that topic. The talk was held at the Luce Foundation's conference room in their lovely 30th floor office with beautiful views of the city. There was haze on the horizon which made me feel like I was in Beijing, right at home!

I couldn't imagine a better venue for my talk than the Luce Foundation. Luce is one of the big names in philanthropy and they have a major Asia program to improve U.S. understanding of Asia. There is also a China connection. Henry Luce set up the foundation as a tribute to his parents who were missionaries and educators in China during the first half of the 20th century. All four of the Luce children were born in China. So to give a talk on philanthropy and civil society in China at the Luce headquarters seemed very fitting.

The talk went smoothly, aside from some initial technical problems with the computer. I spoke about my work with China Development Brief (English), and spent some time discussing what constitutes the nonprofit/NGO/philanthropic sector in China before getting to the meat of the talk which was to lay out the major findings from the 12 articles we translated for our special issue on philanthropy and civil society.

For those interested, my discussion of the nonprofit sector and the major findings will be laid out in an introduction to the special issue that should be on our website soon. Given the anxiety in the U.S. about the human rights situation in China, I expected more questions about the political situation for nonprofits in China, but there were none, though that may have had something to do with the limited time for Q&A.

In any case, the main purpose of my talk, beyond promoting CDB, was to send the message that there is a great deal of change going on in the nonprofit world in China despite the recent crackdowns on individual activists.

Next week I'll be giving a talk on the same topic next Tuesday, July 26 at the Kissinger Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

After that, a week in San Diego and then back to Beijing where I may finally be able to take that vacation!

Nice response to my last post from Holly Chang: civil society activism and the international media

2011-06-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

Following is an insightful email response from Holly Chang, who has her been working to support various grassroots NGOs in China through her nonprofit, Golden Bridges. Holly points to how certain kinds of activists who push the boundaries tend to get more play in the international media (think Ai Weiwei), and how this can effect civil society's efforts to exercise influence domestically. With her permission, I'm posting most of her response below.

Shawn,

For international and interested observers, I can understand how difficult it is to study civil society in China because it is a moving stream of activity, it is highly anecdotal, and there is not really a strong "culture" of transparency where successful practitioners write or speak about how they succeed.

In a recent interview with the WSJ, Henry Kissinger says "I have not joined public denunciations in order to preserve the possibility of maintaining influence on human rights issues."

His statement made me think of all the people that are at the frontlines successfully pushing the needle in a very real way - they do not speak out to the international audience in order to "preserve the possibility of maintaining influence". What little time they do have to communicate and speak out, they may do so only within their domestic circles.

This unfortunately creates an incredible imbalance in the tone and mood of international media reports about civil society in China. The negative reporting ironically creates an environment where I feel local government becomes nervous and is pushed to be less tolerant than normal, and therefore potentially worsening the situation for practitioners, potentially creating more distrust in those that represent international groups on the ground (ahem).

In my efforts to be a better "bridge", I am trying to find a balance between "doing the work" on the ground and "communicating to the outside" about both the successes and challenges. This is a challenge for me as an engineer, attempting to do more PR - it is not my strong suit, but this year, I will start to try.

We should not forgive or ignore the realities of the brutality. But we also need reports of hopeful examples that should and can be replicated, to inspire and perpetuate a more conducive and healthy environment for actors (both local and international) to succeed on the ground. Thank you for your post.

Holly

Is China's civil society in danger?

2011-05-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

April 22, 2011 (updated May 29, 2011)

I started this blog out wanting to write more about what NGOs have achieved in their short life in the PRC – their achievements, the people behind the scenes, the challenges they face -- but I find myself returning frequently to the issue of how the party-state controls NGOs. I have to admit that this is driven by international media reports that focus heavily on instances of NGOs being harassed and closed down. Of course, state control and regulation of NGOs is an important dimension, but it’s only one dimension, and the purpose of this blog is to bring to light other aspects of social activism in China that do not get much attention in the international news media.

So you can imagine that I’m writing this post with some trepidation, and I’ve sat on it for over a month before posting this. But it’s hard to ignore the international media reports on the recent spike of repression in China following the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East and calls for a similar uprising in China. It’s also hard to ignore when it affects someone you know. One of my friends, a foreign journalist who was at the Wangfujing area in Beijing which was supposed to be one of the staging grounds for the uprising, was a victim of that repression. He was beaten up by a gang of plainclothes thugs/police because he was carrying around a camcorder filming what ended up to be a nonevent. He suffered cracked ribs and had to be hospitalized. Later, to add insult to injury, he was followed by the police for days.

The April 16-22 issue of the Economist argues that the latest crackdown on activists like the artist Ai Weiwei, rights-defense lawyers, and other human rights activists goes far deeper and wider than previous crackdowns. It then makes the startling claim that this crackdown is the worst since the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen.

I like the Economist but I think this time it went too far. Before I explain myself, let me say for the record that I don’t want to sound like an apologist for the regime, or to downplay the repression that is happening. I too am dismayed by the many arrests and disappearances of activists who are fighting the good fight. What happened to my journalist friend was reprehensible. The Chinese government should be called to account for what they did. And I agree with the Economist when they say that the repression is an overreaction to perceived threats and shows a regime that is not confident but rather very nervous about its position.

But the Economist makes it sound like we’re returning to the days of the early 1990s or even the early 1980s when outlets for activism for few and far between. If so, how do we square this claim with more optimistic trends discussed in this blog and elsewhere showing the emergence of a more vibrant civil society?

I like to think of civil society in China as an iceberg where only a small portion is visible and the bulk lies below the surface. The tip of the iceberg are mostly individual activists – rights lawyers, human rights activists – who dare to venture over that imaginary line that the Chinese government says should not be crossed. A few are activists associated with NGOs. Below the surface lie other activists and groups, including many NGOS, that carry out their work in relative anonymity within the boundaries permitted by the state. Over the last two decades, this iceberg has grown substantially and ever so often we see cycles of repression aimed at the tip of that iceberg. But the bulk of the iceberg below the surface continues to expand without attracting much attention.

The iceberg is also sprouting new tips as we see more of the iceberg below the surface emerging and becoming visible as the government and society begins to recognize the NGOs and activists that are working within permissible boundaries. NGOs are also getting more networked not just with other NGOs, but also with government agencies, GONGOs, businesses, academics, and the media. NGOs are also making some progress in terms of diversifying their funding and attracting more professional staff. These trends – greater legitimacy, networks, professionalization – are all indicators of a more mature, independent civil society emerging in China, even as repression continues mostly against those individual activists who push the boundaries of the permissible.

What bothers me about the kind of coverage we see from the international media is that its coverage of civil society is driven by the harassment, arrest and disappearance of activists. This narrative is misleading on two counts.

One is that it sends a message that human and social agency in China is monopolized by an all-powerful, monolithic government that can squash (or allow) dissent and activism at a moment’s notice. As I’ve written about in other posts, this is not an accurate reflection of the reality here. There is no single, unified view or approach within the government about how to deal with civil society here. Yes, there are efforts to wall off the more vocal activists who push the envelope, but in other areas the government is seeking to find ways to better regulate the growth of independent organizations. Of course, one motive behind greater regulation is control. But government leaders are also beginning to realize that civil society is not going away, and that it will be better to have civil society as allies working together with the government to address China’s immense social problems.

Secondly, this narrative sees these individual activists as representative of the larger civil society in China. That is not the case. Many NGOs are aware of the latest crackdown, and may sympathize with their fellow activists, but they also have different philosophies and approaches to carrying out their work. Like the state, civil society is by no means monolithic.

What is missing from this narrative is accounts of the many expressions of social agency coming from activists, NGOs, bloggers and other groups that are an important part of China’s civil society. How else to explain the expansion and maturation of civil society over the last 20 years? How else to explain their growing partnerships with and acceptance by government, businesses, academics, the media, and society at large? I’ve heard some people say, these trends have happened because the government allows it. But once again, this answer makes the same mistake. It assumes agency on the part of the government, and sees social activists and groups as passive actors trapped within an authoritarian system.

If the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt tell us anything, it is that we should not underestimate the agency and power of society even within seemingly resilient authoritarian states. Yes, we should sympathize with activists who are unjustly harassed or jailed. But we should also call attention to the many other social activists who, by working within permissible boundaries, are changing China slowly from within.

A Progress Report on China Development Brief (English)

2011-05-10T06:34:00.000-07:00

I realize it’s been a while since I’ve posted. April was a difficult month for me personally. I had to return to the U.S. to take care of my parents whose health has declined suddenly. My mother died on April 12 and my father’s health took a turn for the worse, and he’s now living with us temporarily here in Beijing. As a result, I've had to put diversions like this blog aside for the time being.

The good news is that the China Development Brief (English) project is coming along nicely. As of April, we had almost 40 volunteers sign up to translate CDB articles, and many of them are hard at work translating and reviewing the articles for our first special issue on Philanthropy and Civil Society in China. Almost all of the translations for the special issue have come in and are now in the process of being reviewed. We hope to have the special issue ready by next month.

We also received a modest grant from the Ford Foundation to translate CDB reports on civil society, and are applying for funds from other sources. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

Finally, thanks to Enway Software Technology Company whose staff has been volunteering their time to develop our website, the CDB (English) website is close to a public launch. I’ve also had the help of an intern who has been putting together a bibliography of sources on civil society in China. That bibliography will be available on our website. This summer, I’ll be assisted by two other interns who will be working on the website development, and updating CDB’s directory of international NGOs in China.

The staff at CDB have been a real pleasure to work for. They have been very responsive, accommodating and professional about working with me, and putting up with my deadlines, even though it means more work for them. I cannot ask for a better group of people to work with.

As many of you have read about in the international media, this is a difficult time for civil society in China with the government’s repression of human rights and legal activists, and news of growing sensitivity to foreign NGOs. I wrote a post about this some time ago, then decided to sit on it until I made more revisions, but I will be posting it soon.

The top 16 "public welfare" events of 2010

2011-03-27T16:57:00.000-07:00

In a previous blog, I listed what I saw as some of “The Best and Worst of 2010 for China’s NGOs”. In the their most recent issue (Winter 2010), China Development Brief came out with the top 16 major "public welfare" (gongyi) events. The term “public welfare” is often used in China in place of nonprofit, civil society, or philanthropy.

These top 16 events were selected from a survey of readers of three major media platforms that cover the “public welfare” or “civil society” sector in China: China Development Brief (with which I am working now), Social Entrepreneur magazine (published by the NGO, NonProfit Incubator or NPI) and NGOCN (NGOCN’s founder, Lu Fei, was profiled in an earlier post on this blog). The list provides a window into what Chinese observers of the civil society sector think have been important trends. Many, but not all, are events that I also listed in my Best and Worst List, which is a good thing because it suggests that I haven’t strayed too far from the perceptions of the Chinese NGO community.

The readers who responded to the survey were from all over China, including Hong Kong, and draw mainly from those working in the “public welfare” sector, but also include people working in government and business, students, and researchers. Many are young, about 84% between 20-40 years of age, and about 42% are from Beijing and Guangdong.

Here in order of the top vote getters are the 16 biggest “public welfare” events of 2010 with the percentage of votes in parentheses. A number of these events were covered in my previous posts, including “The Best and Worst of 2010 for China’s NGOs” so I don’t go into them in detail.

1) Jet Li revealing, in a September 2010 CCTV interview, problems he was having trying to register his One Foundation as a private foundation due to China’s restrictive registration laws, and rumors that the One Foundation might close (61%).

2) The new regulations from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange that went into effect in March 2010 making it more difficult for grassroots NGOs to transfer foreign funds into their accounts (51%)

3) The September visit by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet to discuss philanthropy with some of China’s wealthiest individuals (46%).

4) The establishment in June of 2010 of the Public Welfare (or Philanthropy) Research Institute at Beijing Normal University. The Institute is funded by the One Foundation and headed by a former Ministry of Civil Affairs official, Wang Zhenyao (45%).

5) The announcement by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in July of 2010 requiring 15 national public fundraising foundations to turn the funds they had raised for the Yushu (Qinghai province) earthquake relief over to the Qinghai provincial government, provincial Red Cross and provincial Charity Federation. This decision was criticized for harming the cause of philanthropy in China (43%).

6) The participation of almost 60 Chinese NGOs in the UN climate change talks in Tianjin in October of 2010. The NGOs issued a joint statement, and organized 20 joint activities. It was the largest number of Chinese NGOs to participate in the area of climate change (40%).

7) The slowness of the NGO response to the drought in the southwestern part of China in the spring of 2010 provoked some discussion in the media, especially compared to the quick NGO response to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (35%).

8) The establishment of the China Foundation Center in July of 2010 (33%).

9) The Green Choice Alliance, a group of 34 grassroots NGOs, among them Friends of Nature, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and Green Beagle, released two investigative reports in April and June on heavy metal pollution from the information and technology sector (32%).

10) The Qinghai Gesanghua Educational Assistance Association raised more than 2.59 million yuan online for the Yushu earthquake highlighting the use of new media platforms for NGOs to fundraise and carry out relief work (32%).

11) The Yunnan provincial government piloting new regulations governing international NGO management. The regulations came out in December of 2009 and were implemented in January of 2010. These are the first regulations explicitly aimed at international NGOs (31%).

12) The first New Public Welfare Carnival held in Shanghai in August and September of 2010, an event that brought together businesses, government, academics and NGOs to promote social innovation (30%).

13) The notice by Beijing University cutting its association with the Peking University Women’s Legal Aid Center in March of 2010 (30%)

14) Strikes by workers at Honda Motor Company’s factories in Guangdong starting in May of 2010 (30%).

15) Cao Dewang, chairman of the Fuyao Group, gave the largest one-time donation in the history of the PRC to the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation to help poor farmers in the five drought-stricken provinces in southwest China (28%).

16) The folding of “Friends” publication which was aimed at the gay, HIV/AIDS and public health community and had been publishing since 1998. “Friends” closed because it lost its major source of funding from an international foundation (21%).

Warriors of Qiugang -- environmental activism at its best

2011-03-22T07:12:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday afternoon, I went to the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in the 798 Art Space in Beijing to see “Warriors of Qiugang”, a short documentary about a farmer-turned-environmental activist (to see the full documentary, go to e360.yale.edu). The film was directed by Ruby Yang who had won a Oscar for best short documentary for her earlier 2006 film, “Blood of Yingzhou District” about children in Anhui who had lost their parents to an AIDS epidemic in the province. I had seen the earlier film and a friend of mine, an environmental lawyer in Beijing, had recommended “Warriors of Qiugang” so I was looking forward to the screening. When I heard that Ruby Yang and Mr. Zhang Gongli, the farmer, were going to be in the audience and answering questions afterwards, that made the event even sweeter.

Despite the polluted, overcast, chilly conditions, I hopped on my bike and rode out to the 798 Art Space and got there about 10 minutes late. The film had already started, and the auditorium was almost packed, but luckily I found a seat up front, opened up my Windows document on my phone and started to take notes.

The film is in some ways a familiar story for those of us steeped in environmental horror stories in China. The story is about Qiugang village which is located on the banks of the Huai River in Anhui. The village’s land and waterways are being laid to waste by several highly-polluting factories next door. The villagers are fed up by the pollution and the health problems it is causing, and protest in 2003 but are beaten up. Enter Mr. Zhang whose land is very close to one of the factories. He sues the factory in 2004 and again in 2005 but loses each time, though in an interview he did with me afterwards, he said the factory did settle with him by paying him 500 yuan (about U.S.$65 a year at that time) for three years, but refused to stop its operations. In 2007, Mr. Zhang and Qiugang are helped by Green Anhui, a local environmental NGO, which gets their story to the local media. The villagers then decide to write a petition to the local authorities asking them to close the factories down. The local authorities balk until Mr. Zhang, with the help of Green Anhui and other environmental NGOs in Beijing, bring the story to the national media which in turn attracts the attention of the Ministry of Environmental Protection. Mr. Zhang's message is that the factories should be closed down because they are in violation of existing environmental laws and regulations. Under pressure from the national authorities and Mr. Zhang who keeps up the campaign, local authorities eventually order the factories closed in 2009. The factories are now in the process of being torn down.

The film brings out some important elements of activism in China. It shows that ordinary farmers do care about the damage caused by environmental pollution and are willing to take risks to do something about it. It depicts the role of NGOs in educating individual activists about the laws, and bringing their stories to the media and national authorities. It shows how the media and national authorities can be occasional allies in the fight to enforce China’s laws in favor of social and environmental justice. The combined efforts of these actors can sometimes lead to good results even in an authoritarian state. We see a similar pattern in the environmental campaign against the Nujiang River dam project which ended up being suspended in 2005 (see Andrew Mertha's brilliant account in his book Water Warriors).

After the film, I had a chance to go out to dinner with Ruby Yang and Mr. Zhang and offered to escort Mr. Zhang back to the train station so I could interview him. He told me many of the people in his village and many of the local officials in his area had seen the film. Now that he had achieved a level of fame, he didn’t seem to think the local authorities would cause him any trouble. I hope he's right.

When I dropped him off at the train station, he took out his camera and showed me pictures of the factory being razed. He said there would soon be trees and grass there, and that they've seen some small fish again in the river and waterways. He sounded hopeful.

How to read this blog

2011-03-18T02:39:00.000-07:00

I realize that blogs are by their nature spontaneous and unstructured. There’s no beginning or end. It’s the difference between a swimming pool where serious swimmers are doing laps, and a pool that is crowded with frolicking kids. Books are the former, and blogs are the latter. You just dive in somewhere in the middle and start exploring. Being the type that likes order and organization, though, I thought I’d try to go against the nature of a blog, to create an unblog if you will, by organizing it a bit more like – gasp! – a book. If someone were to ask me how they should read my blog, and to help them organize the blogs into chapters, here’s what I might come up with. I'll be updating this post to reflect future postings. (True blog aficionados are welcome to ignore this post and just dive in.)

CHAPTER 1 PREFACE

My Inaugural post posted on October 1, 2009 where I introduce myself and my reason for writing this blog

CHAPTER 2 SURVEYING THE NGO LANDSCAPE IN CHINA

Defining NGOs in China 1.0, posted on June 28, 2010

Yu Keping on government-led civil society in China, posted on October 23, 2009

Important trends among Chinese NGOs, posted on August 26, 2010

The best and worst of 2010 for China’s NGOs, posted on January 12, 2011

CHAPTER 3 THE VIEW FROM GRASSROOTS NGOs

Three NGOs in Nanjing, posted on November 30, 2009

Discussing the future of China’s NGOs, posted on July 22, 2010

Grassroots activism and public-private partnerships in the Hudson Valley, posted August 1, 2010

Challenges for grassroots NGOs, posted from Asia Catalyst on March 11, 2010

Shaping the future of grassroots NGOs, posted from Asia Catalyst on March 7, 2010

CHAPTER 4 STATE REGULATION AND CONTROL OF NGOs

Is it getting a bit chilly for NGOs? posted on March 8, 2010

The Oxfam HK case, posted on March 8, 2010

Notice on administration of donated foreign funds, posted on April 9, 2010

Peking University Women's Legal Aid Center loses its affiliation, posted on April 13, 2010

Shutting down of NGOCN’s website, posted on April 20, 2010

Why the chill in the air for NGOs? posted May 12, 2010

An exchange between Meg Davis of Asia Catalyst and Shawn Shieh on regulation of Chinese

NGOs, posted on November 9, 2010

Regulating NGOs: why the schizophrenic year for NGOs?, Part I, posted February 7, 2010

Regulating NGOs: why the schizophrenic year for NGOs?, Part II, posted February 9, 2010

CHAPTER 5 THE 2008 SICHUAN EARTHQUAKE: A WATERSHED EVENT FOR

CHINESE NGOs?

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake and China’s NGOs, posted on February 24, 2010

NGO Participation in disaster relief in China, posted from Asia Catalyst on April 27, 2010

Visiting NGOs along the faultline: Sichuan to Qinghai, posted August 4, 2010

Visiting the Global Village project in Daping, posted on August 8, 2010

Profile of Gao Guizi, coordinator of the 512 Voluntary Relief Center (Sichuan), posted on

September 21, 2010

Volunteering at Global Village's "Lehe Jiayuan" project in Daping, posted on October 18, 2010

Global Village's LOHO Community project in Sichuan -- excerpts from a volunteer's blog,

posted on November 14, 2010

CHAPTER 6 PROFILES OF NGO ACTIVISTS

Profile: Lu Fei, founder of NGOCN (Yunnan), posted on November 1, 2009

Profile of Chen Yongsong, founder of EcoNetwork (Yunnan), posted on December 15, 2009

Profile of Xu Yongguang, secretary general of Nandu (Narada) Foundation (Beijing), posted on

January 24, 2010

Profile of Ma Yinling, founder of (Yuexi county) Poverty and Development Research Center,

posted on September 3, 2010

Profile of Gao Guizi, coordinator of the 512 Voluntary Relief Center (Sichuan), posted on

September 21, 2010

The passing of Liang Congjie, China’s environmental and civil society pioneer, posted on

November 1, 2010

CHAPTER 7 THE INTERNATIONAL CONNECTION

On what Obama can do for NGOs on his visit to China, Posted November 14, 2009

Talking to some NGOs in Sichuan, posted on August 15, 2010

Can Bill Gates and Warren Buffett start a philanthropic revolution in China? Posted October 1,

2010

Volunteering at Global Village's "Lehe Jiayuan" project in Daping, posted on October 18, 2010

Good news for 2011: Starting up China Development Brief (English), posted on January 27,

2011

Getting involved in the nonprofit community in Beijing, posted on January 4, 2011

Global Village's LOHO Community project in Sichuan -- excerpts from a volunteer's blog,

posted on November 14, 2010

CHAPTER 8 THE RISE OF PHILANTHROPY IN CHINA

XuYongguang’s talk at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of China, posted on March 7, 2010

Profile of Xu Yongguang, secretary general of Nandu (Narada) Foundation (Beijing), posted on

January 24, 2010

Can Bill Gates and Warren Buffett start a philanthropic revolution in China? Posted October 1,2010

It's been a while...

2011-03-17T08:37:00.001-07:00

I realize it’s been some time since I’ve posted and wanted to explain my long absence from these pages. One reason (ok, excuse) is that I’ve been busy getting the China Development Brief translation project going. One part of this project is to bring together a community of volunteer translators who can help in translating selected CDB articles for a special report we are putting together on Philanthropy and Civil Society in China. I’m pleased to say that the response has been wonderful. So far, 34 people have signed up to translate the articles from Chinese to English. They are a diverse group, students, scholars, NGO practitioners, and professionals, all with advance bilingual skills. I’m also working on the website which will be linked to the Chinese-language CDB website, www.chinadevelopmentbrief.cn. I hope to have the entire special report ready by June of this year.

My other excuse is the internet in Beijing which has been acting up as a result – I’m just guessing here, but I think it’s a pretty good guess – of the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East, and the call for a similar uprising here in China, using the internet and various social media sites as a springboard. The authorities here are understandably on edge and have made it very difficult to access internet sites outside of China. Gmail is very, very sporadic now, and my VPN provider which I thought would never be blocked was. As a result, I’ve not been able to access my blog until today.

I promise to put more blog postings up soon. My next one will be a blog about how to read this blog.

Regulating NGOs: Why the schizophrenic year for NGOs in 2010? (Part II)

2011-02-09T20:44:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I argued that to understand the schizophrenic year for Chinese NGOs, one has to understand the nature of the system regulating civil society. I brought up Kang Xiaoguang and Han Heng’s analysis of the system which gave us a sophisticated and nuanced model, but I felt it didn’t provide a satisfactory understanding, at least with respect to Chinese NGOs. It was too neat and simple. I think for a more realistic explanation, we need to bring in others who point out that the system is not so neat, or unified, or rational.

One place to start getting a more accurate picture is Professor Deng Guosheng’s article, “The Hidden Rules Governing China’s Unregistered NGOs” published in the Spring 2010 issue of The China Review. Professor Deng, of Tsinghua University’s NGO Research Center, shows that you cannot just look at the official regulations governing NGOs, but also at the “hidden” or “implicit” rules. He notes that the official regulations for social organizations (NGOs included) only apply to legally registered NGOs. But many NGOs are not legally registered as NGOs, but as businesses or a “project” under another organization. How are these NGOs regulated? Kang and Han argue that they are not. The government leaves them alone. But Professor Deng argues that there has been an implicit understanding or ruling made between central and local authorities concerning unregistered NGOs. He calls this understanding the “Three Nos” policy: “no recognition, no banning, no intervention”. In other words, while authorities do not recognize these NGOs as legal, they will not take actions to ban them or intervene in their affairs as long as the NGOs do not harm state security or social stability.

What Professor Deng is saying here about the system is that it gives wide latitude to authorities, especially at the local level, to deal with unregistered or unofficial NGOs. This explanation helps to account for the seemingly schizophrenic gap between policy and implementation/enforcement I mentioned earlier. The policy towards registered NGOs such as foundations is improving, but the authorities attitudes and actions toward unregistered NGOs varies widely because of the “three Nos” policy which gives them a great deal of discretion in dealing with NGOs. Some authorities see unregistered NGOs as serving a positive role, helping government fill gaps in social services, but others may see them as a threat especially if they touch on sensitive areas such as organizing migrant workers (e.g. in Shenzhen), farmers displaced by dam-building (e.g. in Yunnan) or AIDS victims of government-sponsored blood banks (e.g. in Henan).

This view is consistent with a model of the Chinese political system that scholars call “fragmented authoritarianism”. In this model, the Chinese government is not a unified entity, but instead composed of diverse leaders and agencies, each with their own interests and views. Armed with the discretionary power given them under the “three Nos” policy, these leaders and agencies take different attitudes and actions toward unregistered NGOs. In some cases, where NGOs serve their interests, they may carry out experiments to make it easier for these NGOs to register. In others, where particular NGOs threaten their interests, they harass them and even close them down.

Jessica Teets, a professor at Middlebury College, who has written extensively on Chinese NGOs and interviewed a number of Chinese officials on NGO policy, makes a similar point in a chapter written for China Beyond the Headlines, “Civil Society Development in China.” She argues that China’s tradition of local experimentation and the cadre evaluation system provide incentives for local officials to partner with NGOs when it leads to improved or innovative ways of providing services. But because local officials are also evaluated on maintaining social stability, they also have to balance the benefits that NGOs bring with the potential costs.

The fragmented authoritarian system explanation does not just account for the schizophrenic pattern we’ve seen in 2010 but also in the years prior. You could say this schizophrenia is something that has characterized the Chinese government dealings with civil society organizations for some time now.

I’ve argued in another post (“Why the chill in the air”) that fragmented authoritarianism also helps to explain the delays in the revised regulations on NGOs and foundations. While the Ministry of Civil Affairs may support the revisions, they are a relatively weak agency and have to contend with other more influential agencies who have concerns about the potential destabilizing effects of a more liberal NGO policy.

Finally, if this explanation is right, then it means we’ll continue to see this schizophrenia as long as this fragmented authoritarian system is around. As one civil society activist said to me, “we’re not going to see any major changes in the government’s regulation of civil society until the system democratizes.”

Scholars such as Teets and Andrew Mertha (see his chapter “Society in the State” in Chinese Politics) make a similar point. They believe that fragmented authoritarian system allows a wide range of actors, NGOs among them, to insert themselves in the policy process by cooperating with government officials at different levels of the system. The result has been greater pluralization of the policy process. But pluralization, as they remind us, is not the same as democratization. Until the latter happens, China’s NGOs should look forward to a bumpy ride.

Regulating NGOs: Why the schizophrenic year for NGOs in 2010? (Part I)

2011-02-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

In a recent post, I listed the best and worst of 2010 for China’s NGOs. In truth, this best and worst list pretty accurately captures what happened last year in China’s civil society. It was a year of highs and lows. In this post, I try to answer the question: why the schizophrenic year for Chinese NGOs in 2010? I’m actually breaking this post into two parts because I end up giving a longer explanation than I had expected. (What more would you expect from a scholar?)

I would argue that the main reason for this schizophrenia has to do with a rapidly developing civil society sector coming head to head with a government that remains ambivalent and conflicted about how to deal with that growth. The Chinese government wants the resources and services that civil society organizations can provide to addressing China’s many social and environmental ills, but at the same time remains suspicious of those organizations. In terms of policy, we are seeing the Chinese government taking steps to better regulate the civil society sector, and liberalizing the regulatory environment for foundations and business associations. Yet in terms of implementation and enforcement on the ground, we are seeing more of a mixed picture. Some localities are being allowed to experiment with more flexible regulations for registering and managing NGOs, but we also see in other places, heavy-handed measures harassing and even closing down NGOs.

This gap between policy and implementation/enforcement is important because it touches on the nature of the “system” that regulates the civil society sector in China. Getting the “system” right is important to understanding the schizophrenic pattern we are seeing. This requires that I get into some of the academic literature so please bear with me.

One attempt at describing “the system” is made by Kang Xiaoguang and Han Heng in their 2008 article in Modern China, “Graduated Controls: The State-Society Relationship in Contemporary China”. In this article, the authors argue that over time, the Chinese government has developed a finely-tuned “system” of control for social organizations. The system is now able to exercise different degrees of control over social organizations depending on (a) their ability to challenge state power; and (b) the nature of the public goods they provide. The highest level of control is for politically antagonistic organizations such as Falun Gong or Charter 08 which are banned outright because they pose the biggest challenge to the government. The second highest level of control is for labor unions and community organizations such as residence committees. The third level is for religious organizations, the fourth is for business associations and GONGOs, and the fifth and lowest level of control is for grassroots NGOs and informal organizations.

Kang and Han’s most interesting observation is the last one for grassroots NGOs. They say that because grassroots NGOs do not pose a challenge to the government and do not provide essential public goods, the government pretty much leaves them alone.

The director of Renmin University’s NPO Research Center, Professor Kang is a noted scholar and a keen observer of China’s NGO scene, and there is much to be admired about their “graduated controls” framework because it seeks to explain how the system regulates a wide range of social organizations, not just civil society organizations, and it recognizes that the system is nuanced. But I find their description of the system too neat and simple. They make the governmental apparatus out to be a finely-tuned machine that has figured out a way to regulate and control many different kinds of social organizations. But we know from practice that the reality is never this neat, and government is rarely if ever a unified rational actor.

More to the point, this system of “graduated controls” does not explain the schizophrenic pattern we’ve been observing in the civil society sector. The government does not leave grassroots NGOs alone, nor does it see NGOs as harmless or the public goods they provide as nonessential.

A more realistic explanation is provided by others who point out that the system is not so neat, or unified, or rational. More on that in my next posting.

Good news for 2011: Starting up China Development Brief (English)

2011-01-27T07:21:00.000-08:00

January 27, 2011

I’m pleased to announce that we’ll be starting up China Development Brief (English) this year. The mission of CDB (English) is to improve understanding and cooperation between the international community and China’s growing nonprofit and philanthropic community by providing authoritative and timely English-language coverage of China’s civil society sector.

To achieve this goal, CDB (English) is partnering with the Beijing Civil Society Development Research Centre which publishes the Chinese-language CDB and maintains a website, www.chinadevelopmentbrief.cn. The content for CDB (English) will come from translated reports from CDB, the Chinese media, and Chinese academics, as well as translations of government laws and regulations governing the civil society sector.

After that rather long-winded announcement, a bit of explanation is in order here. In my first post for this blog, written in October of 2009, I mentioned that I'd been thinking of starting up the English-language China Development Brief (CDB) that was closed down in 2007, but found the environment was not quite right and decided to start writing this blog instead. For those who are not familiar with CDB, it had been providing some of the most authoritative and timely English-language coverage of development and civil society issues in China over the previous decade. Since its closure in 2007, the civil society sector in China has been undergoing substantial and complex changes, some of which I've discussed in this blog, yet there has been little English-language coverage aside from occasional media reports, and certainly no informed and sustained coverage. The Chinese-language CDB, which is a spin-off of the English-language CDB, has however continued to operate and provide quality, detailed coverage on the civil society sector in China.

A few months ago, I decided to give it another go by approaching the Chinese-language CDB about starting up an English-language service. Not knowing what to expect, I was a bit surprised to find my proposal welcomed enthusiastically by the CDB staff.

In the coming months, we will be applying for funding and working on developing a website, a pilot newsletter and a special issue on New Trends in Philanthropy and Civil Society in China. I’m looking to use a “crowd-sourcing” model that relies on communities of volunteer translators to translate the content for the website, newsletter and special issue. More on that later.

I’m excited about working with CDB on this project and hope it lays the foundation for high-quality, timely, authoritative yet accessible coverage of China’s civil society sector. I’m convinced that the time is now ripe to start this project. Civil society in China has encountered some setbacks, but most informed observers that I know, myself included, have been impressed by the gains made by civil society organizations over the past two years, and we are hoping that those gains build momentum over the next few years. Whatever the trends maybe, CDB (English) plans to be around to cover them.

With wishes for a Happy Year of the Rabbit,

Shawn Shieh, Founding Editor, China Development Brief (English)

Two More Additions to the Best of 2010 for China's NGOs

2011-01-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

After posting The Best and Worst of 2010 for China's NGOs, I received two emails adding a few other items to Best of 2010:

The Red Ribbon Forum in Beijing in December of 2010 was the government's second ever meeting with NGOs on human rights and HIV/AIDS. The Forum was a productive and lively discussion. At the meeting, UNAIDS for the first time publicly called for compensation for victims of China's blood disaster, and for the release of imprisoned AIDS activist Tian Xi.

Tian Xi was also named one of Housing Works' 5 AIDS heroes of 2010:
http://www.housingworks.org/blogs/detail/2010-five-aids-heroes-you-should-know-about-and-the-five-aids-villains-you-/

In October, Beijing Yirenping Center, an anti-discrimination grass root NGO, was accepted as a voting member by the World Hepatitis Alliance. It is the the second voting member from China and the only Chinese grass root NGO that was accepted as a voting member by the WHA.

The Best and Worst of 2010 for China's NGOs

2011-01-12T23:03:00.000-08:00

January 13, 2011

I generally avoid these kinds of lists, but then got emails from two different people in the NGO community, each with their own list of what had happened in 2010 that were complete opposites. One listed all good things, and the other listed all the bad things. This led me to construct my own list that seeks to reconcile these very opposite views of what happened in China's civil society sector in 2010. The reality is that if you combined both of these lists, you wouldn't be far off the mark. The year 2010 was truly a schizophrenic year for Chinese civil society with rapid progress in the Chinese philanthropic sector, but setbacks for grassroots NGOs in other sectors. If 2008 was seen by many as the “Year of the NGO” then 2010 could be said to be the “Year of Philanthropy”. It was (with apologies to Charles Dickens) the “best of times and the worst of times” for China’s civil society.

Following are some (and I stress “some” because this list is by no means exhaustive) of the best and worst moments of 2010 for China’s civil society.

The Best of 2010

APRIL – after the Yushu earthquake in Qinghai, a number of NGOs participated in the earthquake relief, including NGO networks that had formed in response to the Wenchuan earthquake, as well as new networks.

APRIL – The Green Choice Alliance, a group of 34 grassroots NGOs, among them Friends of Nature, Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and Green Beagle, released an investigative report on heavy metal pollution from the information and technology sector. The Alliance is yet another sign of the growth and maturation of China’s civil society networks.

JUNE -- The Beijing Normal University Philanthropy Research Institute was established with funding from Jet Li’s One Foundation. In a move that signals how much progress civil society has made in China, Wang Zhenyao resigned his post as a government official in the Ministry of Civil Affairs to head the Institute. The Institute will provide training and counseling to promote professional philanthropic talen in China.

JULY -- The China Foundation Center was established after a decade of effort led by private foundation leaders such as Naruda’s Xu Yongguang. The CFC is modeled after the U.S. Foundation Center and seeks to strengthen transparency and accountability in China’s foundation sector, and thereby strengthen public trust in philanthropy, by providing a database on foundations' financials, activities, and performance.

In response to public dissatisfaction with government restrictions on fundraising for the Yushu earthquake (see the Worst of 2010 below), the Ministry of Civil Affairs established a special office to collect public opinions. With more than 420 million internet users and more than 805 mobile phone users in China, this mechanism may be an opportunity for social media to shape policy making in China.

SEPTEMBER -- The Social Innovation Forum in Shanghai—also called the New Philanthropy Carnival—was organized by the China Social Entrepreneur Foundation (or YouChange) to encourage new thinking on addressing China’s social, economic, and environmental challenges. The Shanghai municipal government was one of the first local governments to invest in and support social innovation centers in China.

SEPTEMBER -- Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) launched CiYuan, an initiative that builds innovative, cross-sector partnerships to enhance the value of social investment in China. Working with the Taproot Foundation, BSR will introduce a skills-based volunteerism model in China to leverage corporate human capital to build NGO capacity.

SEPTEMBER --Bill Gates and Warren Buffett held a dialogue with Chinese billionaires about investing their money in philanthropy. The dialogue generated a nationwide discussion on how China’s growing class of wealthy entrepreneurs in China can make social investments and become strategic philanthropists.

About this time, news also came out about the Shenzhen experiment to make it easier for NGOs to register. Jet Li’s One Foundation was able to use the more liberal rules to register as a public foundation (see below). These experiments have been going on for some time and in different localities for different types of social organizations, and illustrate just how complex and fluid the regulatory environment for nonprofits is in China.

OCTOBER -- Liu Xiaobo receives the Nobel Peace Prize.

JANUARY 2011 (Ok, technically not a 2010 event but close enough!) The Jet Li One Foundation was the first private foundation to be legally registered as a public fundraising foundation in Shenzhen— yet another sign that the government is loosening its control over philanthropy.

The Worst of 2010

FEBRUARY -- the Ministry of Education issued a notice asking all Chinese universities to not work with Oxfam HK and other international NGOs that seek to recruit college volunteers for their projects.

MARCH (This story did not come out in the media until March, 2010 when these new regulations went into effect but other sources say the regulation was first issued in December of 2009) -- the State Administration of Foreign Exchange issued a new set of regulations that made it more difficult for Chinese enterprises to receive donations from foreign organizations by asking for notarization and additional paperwork. These regulations have especially made life harder for grassroots NGOs registered as businesses who are receiving funds from international donors.

MARCH – Peking University announced that it was disassociating itself from the well-known NGO, Peking University Women’s Legal Aid Center. The Center continues to operate and has registered as both a law firm and an enterprise.

MARCH -- NGOCN (NGO Development and Exchange Network), a Kunming-based NGO that serves as a information clearinghouse and training center for grassroots NGOs was closed down, supposedly for encouraging NGOs to participate in activities to combat the drought in southwestern China. It has since reemerged as NGOCN.info.

MAY -- Since January 14, 2010, Beijing Aizhixing Institute, one of China’s foremost HIV/AIDS NGOs has been investigated and harassed by numerous government departments, and faced difficulty in getting its funds. In May, saying he could no longer tolerate the harassment, Wan Yanhai, founder of Beijing Aizhixing, left for the U.S. with his family.

SUMMER – Authorities sought to restrict NGO participation in the Yushu earthquake, asking a network of Qinghai NGOs to disband, and restricting NGOs from fundraising for the earthquake. The Ministry of Civil Affairs asked 15 national-level foundations to turn the relief funds they had raised over to relevant government agencies so the funds could be better managed.

NOVEMBER – One the eve of World AIDS Day 2010, another AIDS organization, Ai Yuan, “Beijing Loving Source Information Consulting Center" announced that it was closing its doors because of tax audits by Beijing tax authorities.

NOVEMBER – Liang Congjie, founder of Friends of Nature and one of the leaders of the first generation of China’s NGO leaders, passed away in Beijing.

DECEMBER – A number of activists who were invited to Oslo for Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony were not allowed out of the country.

Finally, the Charity Law that was expected to come out this year was held up for further review in the NPC. Revisions of the registration and management regulations for social organizations continue to be held up as they have for the past few years.

The big question of course is why we’re seeing this schizophrenic pattern in China’s civil society. I’ll address this question in my next blog.

Getting involved in the nonprofit community in Beijing

2011-01-04T22:12:00.000-08:00

January 5, 2011

Happy new year! For those interested in getting involved in Beijing’s nonprofit, charitable community, but may not have the Chinese language skills needed to participate in Chinese NGO activities, there are a growing number of groups and events that seek to bring together both foreigners and Chinese in helping China’s nonprofit community. The following list consists of organizations/events that I, or others I know, have participated in. It is certainly not a comprehensive list, and if anyone knows of other groups and events that are not included here, please contact me and I’ll make sure they get on my next list.

Beijing Community Dinner – BCD was started in 2007 and has been organizing dinners every two weeks at a Beijing restaurant specializing in Chinese regional cuisine. Interested individuals can go for a meal and hear someone from a Chinese nonprofit talk about their work. Diners pay for the meal and are encouraged to add a donation which goes to the nonprofit. BCD has also organized several fieldtrips to visit selected nonprofits in Beijing.

To be added to their mailing list, email bcd@beijingcommunitydinner.org. Their website is http://www.beijingcommunitydinner.org.

Chi Fan for Charity – Chi Fan was started by Michael Crain to bring together local opinion leaders, celebrities and other individuals who get together to share a meal at some of Beijing’s hippest restaurants. The proceeds go to local charities such as the Dandelion School for Migrant Children, Prevention through Education which works on HIV/AIDS awareness, and Rural Women.

To sign up for their events, go to: http://chifanforcharity.org/index.aspx.

Compassion for Migrant Children – this nonprofit was started by Jonathan Hursh in 2006 to help China’s urban migrant children by offering social and educational programs. CMC has also started a collaborative network called the Migrant Resource Network to link together organizations and resources to benefit migrant children and their communities. They offer numerous opportunities for people to get involved in helping migrant children ranging from paying jobs to volunteer and internship opportunities. See their website at: www.cmc-china.org.

Crazybake – this nonprofit organization was started in 2004 by several expatriates who wanted to use baking to improve the lives of the mentally ill in Beijing. The organization works with the Chaoyang Mental Health Center, a privately-run organization, to provide therapeutic work for its patients as well as a source of income. They make delicious white farmer’s bread and sweet challah bread for 20 RMB a loaf, and bagels which cost 10 RMB for a bag of 3 plain bagels. Those interested in purchasing bread from Crazybake can contact Natascha Prigge at 135-2089-3359 or email pils.prigge@yahoo.de.

Roundabout Charity Distribution Store -- Roundabout was started by Leslie Simpson as a way to collect gently used clothing and household items for redistribution to communities in need across the country. You can also shop their Shunyi store for paintings, sofas, and other secondhand treasures. Goods can be donated there or at their downtown drop-off location at Links Moving (9B, Tower D, Ginza Mall at Dongzhimen). Volunteers welcome.

Roundabout, Kaifa Jie, Xi Baixinzhuang, Houshayu, Shunyi, near Mrs Shannen's Bagels, Shunyi District
顺义区开发街后沙峪顺义区
Mon-Sat 9.30am-6pm
13718 777 761 ( English ) 13718 053 814 (Chinese)
Website: http://www.roundaboutchina.com

Wokai Beijing Volunteer Chapter’s Drinks for a Better World (DFBW) – the Beijing Volunteer Chapter of Wokai, a U.S.-based nonprofit that does microlending in China, organizes a bimonthly get together called Drinks for a Better World in which people come together for drinks and to hear speakers on a range of development issues and social causes.

To get on the mailing list for these events, email the Chapter president, Eric Pasewalk at epasewalk@yahoo.com.

Global Village's LOHO Community project in Sichuan -- excerpts from a volunteer's blog

2010-11-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

Below I've posted some excerpts of a blog written by my son, Simon and his friend, Wen who are volunteering at the LOHO Community project started by one of China's earliest and best-known environmental NGOs, Global Village. I've written about this project in some previous posts.

The entries below were posted October 17, 2010 on their blog which can be accessed at http://blog.sina.com.cn/dapingvillage:

We arrived at Da Ping Mountain on Wednesday, October 13th. Da Ping Mountain is located in SiChuan, two hours west of ChengDu.

It is very different from the city life style that we led in Beijing. The toilets are squatty potties, and showers are taken right outside the cubicles. -.- The food is good. (: So far we have been eating the same dishes, fresh vegetables cooked in various ways along with rice. These plain dishes contrast with the oily, MSG-filled food in Beijing, which turns out to be a nice healthy change of diet.

Day 1:

We were woken up by the hustling and bustling of the other volunteers - preparing breakfast for the sleepyheads. Walking out of our dorms to the smell of man tou's and fresh clean air (unlike Beijing's polluted weather), we were prepared for whatever the villagers had planned for us. We were also greeted by an American volunteer called Ted that had been at Da Ping Mountain for a week. After a filling and warm-welcomed breakfast, a retired volunteer called Lu Lao Shi guided us down to a field (what was it called??) to pick yams (called shan yao zi in Chinese). These yams are not what you think, as to my surprise, they were pea-sized yams. Crawling on our knees in the muddy earth and picking pea-sized yams was definitely a first. On top of that, dodging massive spider webs that would appear out of nowhere at eye-level was also on our minds (I saved my friend from a huge spider web). After doing that for the whole morning, Ted, Simon and I carried three bags full of yams back to the village (a bag per person... but of course Ted - with experience - had the fullest bag).

When we arrived at the village, lunch was served. Man, we were hungry from picking all 'em yams. After lunch, we had an opportunity to use our free time however we wished; we used that time to read, play solataire on our iPods, wander around and enjoy the scenery and natural environment. Then we had dinner and went to sleep.

Day 2:

Today Wang Pan (the station director) went with Ted and some others to the city at the bottom of the mountain, Tongji, so Wen and I slept in until 9 am. and decided we should probably wash some of our clothes. We brought out the plastic basins and detergent, hand washed everything then hung it out to dry. Ted warned us that is normally takes longer for clothes to dry up here which makes sense considering we're up in the clouds most of the time, but we've been lucky with the weather so far-clear skies during the day and sun enough for t-shirts. With weather like this during the day and mostly cloudy skies and mist in the afternoon and through night, our clothes took a day to dry.

Ted, looking to get some photos and explore the mountain, wanted to go for a hike and we, having nothing else to do and eager to get better aquainted with this moutain, decided to join him. We hiked up muddy paths, if you could call them paths-most of the paths have been washed over by rain and muddled by small landslides and mudslides, but we managed. A motif on this mountain, we noticed for the first time, is the vegetable that serves as a medicine called Hua Lian. It's grown in large patches of land and covered by black tarp as it prefers the shade, but covers a surprising percentage of the mountain and is grown all the way up to the highest peak. But between dodging spider webs woven in between cedars and slipping up muddy hills, we saw some great views and got a better idea of the layout of this huge mountain and it's agricultural inhabitants.

Lunch today consisted of fried rice, left-over xifan from breakfast and some pickled vegetables...also left-over from breakfast. But don't worry, Wen has a secret stash of cookies that we share. After lunch was down time where, again, we read, napped, talked etc. until it was time to get farming.

We walked down the mountain through a corn field to another "team" of houses and fields, of which there are a total of 11 on Daping. Here we planted rows and rows of vegetables that we don't know the name of but which will probably either feed the next wave of volunteers or go down to the city to be sold. What we planted weren't seeds, but plants in their ealy stages of growth-with stems and leaves about 6-10cm. tall and with which we buried the roots into the tilled soil. Once all of the vegetables were planted we watered them and by this time were both ready for dinner.

On our way back we noticed the sunset and how nice it was up there, with the hills rolling up all around us and the leaves starting to change color, and curtains of harvested corn hanging in front of every house. We walked through the corn field again to get back to the station where the office and dorms are and where we eat every day. Dinner was squash, sichuan style (spicy) which was really good actually, and the sichuan specialty Huiguorou which is basically steamed slices of pork fat that's not quite as tender as you'd expect, but good nonetheless. After dinner was more down time which Wen and I used to sit outside and talk, read, and talk some more. Then bed at around 10 pm, and by that time we're pretty dead. So far we have a good feeling about this place.

An exchange between Meg Davis of Asia Catalyst and Shawn Shieh on regulation of Chinese NGOs

2010-11-09T06:12:00.000-08:00

In a recent posting on her Asia Catalyst blog, Meg Davis reprints an exchange between the two of us on how China's new nonprofit regulations - including new regulations on international NGOs in China's Yunnan Province (for a text of the regulations, see http://www.yunnan.cn/html/2010-02/23/content_1082060.htm) -- were affecting grassroots groups. The essay was reposted to Chinapol (aka C-Pol), an email list of professionals working on Chinese policy issues.

I'm posting it here as well because it gets to an important issue that Meg and I disagree on, and that is, whether or not new regulations (when there were none previously as in the case of Yunnan) represent a tightening of control over NGOs. This is an important issue because China currently has very few laws and regulations governing the NGO/nonprofit sector, and we'll undoubtedly see more laws and regulations. Will this be beneficial or detrimental to NGOs? I realize some people will see regulations as an effort by an authoritarian state to control NGOs, but I'm keeping an open mind. I think having some kind of regulatory structure is better than having none at all for reasons I state below.

Shawn Shieh writes:

Meg,

Thanks for writing this up. I'm actually in the middle of translating the Yunnan regs, so if anyone has the translation already and would be willing to share, I'd be most grateful.

I had one question and a comment. In your discussion of the Yunnan regs on foreign NGOs, you note that foreign NGOs will have to apply for approval with the provincial Civil Affairs and then go on to say that this will make them [government-organized NGOs, or] GONGOs. I didn't understand the connection. How does applying for approval translate into becoming a GONGO?

My comment has to do with the larger question of NGO regulation which has been the subject of some lively discussion on this listserv. You call the Yunnan regs a tightening of control over foreign NGOs, but let me present another way of looking at it. My understanding is that foreign NGOs in China at this point aren't really clear how to register because there are no specific regs governing them, except for foreign chambers of commerce. It's a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" policy where different govt depts and local govts have to deal with them on a case by case basis. Foreign NGOs have been able to work in China by entering into some creative arrangements with their local counterparts, but it's not an ideal situation. I think it's in this context that the Yunnan govt is now experimenting with clearer regulations governing foreign NGOs, just as other provinces are experimenting with regs for other kinds of NGOs such as community-based organizations (CBOs), trade associations, and foundations. Perhaps the experience with these different experiments may eventually percolate upwards to the center and shape the revisions of the NGO regs that we've been expecting to come out for so long.

So I see these regs as a way to clarify the regulatory environment, rather than as a tightening. It seems preferable to have some kind of clear standards and guidelines for foreign NGOs than to have none at all, although of course the devil is in the details and the implementation. If foreign NGOs continue to be stymied by bureaucratic red tape and are unable to register using these regs, then they may just go back to the old way of doing things. Either way, with or without these Yunnan regs, foreign NGOs that are not registered with Civil Affairs are technically illegal.

I'd be interested to hear what people working in foreign NGOs think about this, on or offline.

On the issue of regulating both domestic and foreign NGOs, I'd like to highly recommend Deng Guosheng's article that just came out in Spring 2010 issue of The China Review, "The Hidden Rules Governing China's Unregistered NGOs: Management and Consequences". It sheds a lot of light on a murky subject.

Shawn

Meg Davis replied:

Dear Shawn and colleagues,

Many thanks to Shawn for his thoughtful comments and questions. I'd like to start by referring to Shawn's useful interventions on other C-Pol threads about the fact that there are a lot of different kinds of GONGOs, some of which are empty shells for the purpose of collecting grant money, and some of which do valid and life-saving work (Shawn, I was hoping to find a post to this on your blog that I could cite in the article - if there is one, could you send it offline?). Saying a group is "like a GONGO" is not necessarily a statement about the value of the work the organization does, but more a comment on the restrictions and controls on that work.

When I wrote the blog post on China's NGO regulations, I would have spent more space elaborating on the Yunnan regs, but the post was already quite long; I'm happy to have a chance to do so now. To start, I need to make reference to international rights law, quoting from the report I wrote for HRW in '05 on restrictions on AIDS NGOs in China:

"Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed but not ratified, China has the right to restrict freedom of association, so long as those restrictions are 'necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others'. Any restrictions should be interpreted narrowly, and be proportionate to the reasons for them; a government should use no more restrictive means than are absolutely required. While the state has the right to ensure that NGOs are honest and transparent, legal requirements should be minimal, clear, and attainable, permitting maximum flexibility for NGOs to establish themselves and perform their daily work. They should be enforced without discrimination."

In other words....states do have a right to restrict registration or establishment of NGOs, and this is something that all countries do. To take the US as an example (not because it's a model, but because it's the system with which I'm most familiar), someone registering a nonprofit needs to first file incorporation papers with the state, and then file much a much longer application with the federal government in order to obtain tax-exempt status. In founding Asia Catalyst, I went through both those processes with the help of a pro bono lawyer. While this was certainly a lot of annoying paperwork that had to be done carefully, the requirements were clear, attainable, non-discriminatory, and did not prevent our organization from getting down to business right away. I didn't have to have guanxi [personal connections] in the state attorney general's office, or in the IRS. My lawyer and I didn't have to buy gifts or take anyone out for expensive meals. We sent in the paperwork registered mail and got a letter of determination back within the legally-mandated time frame, end of story.

The Yunnan regulations are not minimal, clear, and in many cases will not be attainable. They also are not simply a matter of filling out paperwork and mailing it in. They require foreign NGOs to obtain "approval" for their work from multiple different, sometimes vaguely defined departments; the documents required are left to the discretion of those departments.

More to the point, because of the vague way in which these regs are written, in practice there is broad leeway to implement them in a discriminatory manner. In practice, in order to register with the Civil Affairs Bureau, the foreign NGO in question is going to basically need a "mother-in-law" agency (a la the GONGO registration requirements); that is, some senior official or friendly high-ranking department that can pull strings, make calls, maybe take some people out to lunch, and smooth the way to registration. That official or agency will then be held accountable for whatever the foreign NGO does, and will have some say over decisions the foreign NGO makes. If the foreign NGO plans something that someone in power finds anxiety-producing, the first call is probably going to go to the Chinese friends who helped facilitate registration.

Of course, to some degree this is already what happens for foreign NGOs that open offices in China, as most of them will say off the record. Most of them won't say it or anything critical about NGO management on the record (as one journalist pointed out, writing to me offline about how she'd like to write about the Yunnan regs but can't find any foreign NGO to comment for the article). This is just part of why some ticked-off Chinese AIDS activist friends tell me they already think of most foreign NGOs working in China as being GONGOs. If Asia Catalyst ever tries to open an office in Beijing, I expect we'll have to become the same way - it's the nature of the game.

That said, Shawn, I'm intrigued by your reference to "other provinces...experimenting with regs for other kinds of NGOs such as community-based organizations (CBOs), trade associations, and foundations" and would be grateful for references/info, either online, offline or on your blog. If this is part of a larger trend, it would be interesting to do some comparing and contrasting.

However, I'm not persuaded by your prediction that organizations that fail to register in Yunnan will just go back to doing things the way they were before. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see how the regs are implemented.

Meg

Shawn Shieh replied:

Meg,

I think we have somewhat different interpretations of what a GONGO is, and maybe that's where my original confusion came from. To me, a GONGO is an "NGO" established by a party or government agency but registered with Civil Affairs as an NGO with the agency that established it being its "mother-in-law" or professional supervising unit. The state provides funds and staff for the GONGO, and determines its leadership. Most GONGOs also have an administrative rank. Then there are "real" NGOs, some of which are registered with Civil Affairs and have a professional supervising unit, but nevertheless are private, formed voluntarily and self-governing. I think there is an important and very real distinction to be made between the former (e.g. GONGOs or top-down NGOs) and the latter (e.g. bottom-up NGOs), and we shouldn't conflate them simply because they have a "mother-in-law". It's one thing to have a "mother-in-law" for registration purposes (and as a number of NGOs I've spoken to indicate, the "mother-in-law" is largely pro forma and doesn't really supervise the NGO that closely). It's quite another to have your funding, staff and leader come from the party-state.

I've written a post on the distinction between GONGOs and NGOs in my blog that is available in the June 2010 section of this blog.

The passing of Liang Congjie, China’s environmental and civil society pioneer

2010-11-02T03:25:00.000-07:00

On a personal note, Liang Congjie is one of the few first-generation NGO founders that I never had a chance to interview due to his illness. I hope to gain a better understanding of this fascinating man and his impact through the eyes of those who were close to him.

November 1, 2010

On October 28, 2010, Liang Congjie died in a Beijing hospital after a long illness. His death marks the passing of one of the leading lights of the first generation of civil society activists in China. Amid all the post-Nobel Peace Prize buzz about Liu Xiaobo who received the award for advancing “fundamental human rights in China,” Liang’s life and legacy should be remembered and celebrated for contributing to the same cause. His work as one of the founders of Friends of Nature has been less dramatic than Mr. Liu’s but equally important in advancing many of the human rights laid out in the Charter 08 document that Liu coauthored.

Since its founding in 1994, Friends of Nature has been the standard-bearer for a rapidly growing community of environmental NGOs and activists that is widely-regarded as the most independent, assertive and successful civil society sector in China. As the head of Friends of Nature, Liang emerged as one of China’s leading public intellectuals and advocates on behalf of environmental protection and civil society.

Mr. Liang’s distinguished pedigree is already known to many. He was the grandson of Liang Qichao, the famous Qing-dynasty reformer, and son of Liang Sicheng, a famous architect known for his work in trying to preserve Beijing’s city walls, and Lin Huiyin, a poet and writer who contracted tuberculosis during the war and died in 1955 when Liang was 23.

Liang followed in the footsteps of his parents, training to be an academic, but for the next few decades, did nothing particularly remarkable. During the 1950s, he studied history in college and entered graduate studies at Beijing University but his studies were interrupted by the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. In 1958, he was assigned to Yunnan University to work as a lecturer. During the Cultural Revolution, he was sent down to the countryside in Jiangxi for nine years. In 1978, he was allowed to return to Beijing where he was offered a position as editor of a general knowledge magazine, Encyclopedic Knowledge.

Liang’s big break came in 1988 when some prestigious intellectuals set up the private Academy of Chinese Culture, and invited Liang to join them. Liang accepted, quitting his position at Encyclopedic Knowledge. It was a risky move but as he said later, “I gained my freedom.” Shortly thereafter, he was invited to be a member of the Population, Resources and Environment committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC). It was a position he would later leverage with considerable success in various environmental campaigns.

When the Tiananmen protests began in 1989, he was overseas in the U.S. to speak to overseas Chinese student communities in California. He returned a few days before June 4 and observed the crackdown from the sidelines as colleagues and friends were either arrested or criticized.

Liang became aware of China’s environmental problems when he was editor of Encyclopedic Knowledge. In the early 1990s, he began talking with his friends about what could be done to address the environmental problem in China. Liang and three of his friends who became cofounders – Yang Dongping, Liang Xiaoyan and Wang Lixiong – talked about establishing an NGO. They knew that NGOs outside of China were playing an important part in informing and mobilizing the public to address environmental ills. They came to the conclusion that China could use a few good NGOs even though they only had a vague idea of what NGOs were. At the time, the only environmental NGO Liang could recall was Greenpeace because he had seen their protests on the television.

By 1993, when Liang was already in his 60s, he and the other co-founders came up with a charter for their NGO and went about finding a government sponsor so they could register with the Civil Affairs bureau. They went to the State Administration for Environmental Protection (SEPA) to ask them to serve as their sponsor, but were rebuffed. Unable to find a sponsor, Liang and the other co-founders gave up trying to register Friends of Nature as a NGO, and in 1994 affiliated with Liang’s employer, the Academy of Chinese Culture which is itself registered as a NGO. Friends of Nature retains this affiliate status to this very day.

Under Liang’s leadership, Friends of Nature’s achievements came first in environmental education. They worked with the public schools in delivering environmental education, carried out tree planting trips, organized bird watching groups, and established a mobile environmental education classroom. They also built up a membership base that now includes around 10,000 members nationwide. A number of the new generation of environmental activists counted themselves as members, or worked and trained there, before going on to establish their own NGOs.

Then in the mid-1990s, Friends of Nature embarked on a series of widely-publicized campaigns to save the snub-nosed monkey and Tibetan antelope, and to oppose illegal logging in southwestern China. Liang played a crucial role in these campaigns, using his position and connections as a member of the CPPCC, to bring these issues to the attention of the media and government leaders. These campaigns are credited with transforming the environmental movement in China, demonstrating to NGOs and activists that civil society could play a role in shaping policy. They also signaled a broadening of Friends of Nature’s mission to include influencing public policy through a multi-pronged strategy that involves working with government allies, the media and the public to pressure government authorities to enforce environmental laws. In the mid-2000s, Friends of Nature joined forces with several other environmental NGOs to form the China Rivers Network which used similar advocacy techniques to raise concerns about plans to build dams along the Nu River in Yunnan. In 2004, Premier Wen Jiabao ordered the dam project to be suspended until further review. Friends of Nature continues to be a part of the China Rivers network, and other environmental advocacy networks operating in China.

Liang has received many accolades for his work as a leader of Friends of Nature. In 2000, he was recognized by SEPA, the agency that refused to sponsor him, as an “environmental ambassador”, appointed an environmental consultant to the Beijing Olympic Committee, and given the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service. In 2004, he was named one of China’s 50 most influential public intellectuals by the Southern Weekend magazine. He should also be recognized for another achievement rare in the Chinese NGO world – shepherding his organization through a leadership transition. Many first generation NGO leaders tend to view their NGOs as their personal projects and devote little time to grooming a successor to take over. Liang was different and began to look for someone to replace him as executive director of Friends of Nature in the mid-2000s, thereby setting an important precedent for other NGOs.

Liang, and by extension Friends of Nature, have been called moderate forces within the environmental movement. If moderate means working with allies in the government and media to highlight environmental abuses, and being circumspect about when and what methods to use to criticize and pressure the government, then the term fits. At the same time, Liang has always been a vigorous defender of the need for an independent civil society in resolving China’s environmental problems. He believed grassroots NGOs played a critical role in informing the public, encouraging public participation, and supervising the work of the government and businesses.

More than 16 years later, China’s civil society has grown immeasurably since 1994 when Friends of Nature was one of a handful of NGOs. Now, there are thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of NGOs like Friends of Nature and they are becoming more assertive, networked and professional. Liang can rest easy knowing that he played no small role in their advancement.

Volunteering at Global Village's "Lehe Jiayuan" project in Daping

2010-10-17T09:20:00.000-07:00

October 18, 2010

My son and his friend are currently volunteering with the Global Village project, Lehe Jiayuan (Happy and Harmonious Home) rebuilding the village of Daping that was damaged by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. I provided some background on this project in some earlier posts. If you're interested in getting some idea of what volunteering in this project involves, and what NGOs like Global Village are doing to rebuild rural communities using an approach that emphasizes sustainable, low-carbon practices and traditional Chinese values, you can go to their blog and follow their latest adventures at http://blog.sina.com.cn/dapingvillage.

Can Bill Gates and Warren Buffet start a philanthropic revolution in China?

2010-10-01T09:36:00.001-07:00

October 1, 2010

On September 29, two days before National Day, the Bill and Warren show came to town to engage with some of China’s richest men and women about philanthropy. Their timing was good. As I’ve said in previous postings, the growth of private foundations is one of the brighter stars in the firmament of civil society in China, so it’s good to hear it getting attention from two of America’s biggest boosters of private philanthropy. News of this philanthropic gathering created quite a buzz in the Chinese media world, and it must have created quite a stir in the Chinese business world as well. But will it start a philanthropic revolution here in China?

Well as any student of revolutions knows, a revolution requires at least three things. It needs participation by elites, a weakened system, and participation by the masses.

We’ve already seen a significant number of entrepreneurs participate in private philanthropy since 2004, and this trend has been pushed forward by the establishment of the China Foundation Center and other similar initiatives, as well as the Bill and Warren show. There is still a ways to go, and the media reports of entrepreneurs who reportedly refused Bill and Warren’s invitation to attend certainly reflects a widespread assumption that many Chinese businesspeople are not yet ready to let go of their money. But progress in this area is probably the most promising.

The system however remains strong and does not favor the growth of private philanthropy at this point. There are new tax incentives that came out in 2008 giving tax benefits to enterprises that donate, and there are also tax benefits to individuals, but it’s unclear how much these tax incentives are actually used. Also, enterprises and individuals only get tax benefits if they donate to legally-registered NGOs. Thus, many grassroots NGOs that are registered as businesses do not benefit from this law. More importantly, according to the 2004 Foundation Law, private foundations cannot raise money publicly. Neither can other NGOs. Only public foundations, which are GONGOs, can do so. After the Wenchuan and Yushu earthquakes, we’ve seen the Chinese government maintain their near-monopoly on public donations, even going so far as to insist that some private foundations and NGOs transfer any of their donations to GONGOs or to the government. The system may change a little when and if the Charity Law, and other pieces of legislation relating to public donations, comes out, but I wouldn’t bet on any earth shattering changes.

Finally, participation by the masses has a long ways to go. The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake was certainly a watershed, but most of the public donations went to the government or GONGOs because of the above-mentioned systemic restrictions. When foundations and NGOs are prevented from fundraising publicly, and public donations go to the government, citizen participation and awareness suffers. Charity and philanthropy are seen more as a duty to the state than as a voluntary act. We see this after every disaster when people are pressured by their work units to cough up a donation. Still, one can see some movement in society. For example, the same day China’s richest came together to hear Bill and Warren speak, a group of about 90 “commoners” came together at a buffet dinner costing 38 yuan to show that philanthropy not only requires participation by the rich but also by the masses. Apparently, the response was much bigger than expected and organizers had to turn people away because of lack of space. But their point was well taken.

So I applaud Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffet for coming to Beijing and spreading awareness among China’s richest, but we should see this as only one prong of the revolution. Still it’s an important prong, and the only one these foreigners could possibly hope to influence, and it may eventually lead to changes in the system and in mass participation in and awareness of philanthropy.

Profile of Gao Guizi, coordinator of the 512 Voluntary Relief Center

2010-09-21T18:07:00.000-07:00

September 21, 2010

The 512 Voluntary Relief Center (wuyaoer minjian jiuyuan zhongxin) is one of two large NGO networks that emerged in Sichuan right after the Wenchuan earthquake on May 12, 2008. It was set up by several people with diverse background in NGO work in the office of a legally-registered NGO, the Chengdu Urban Rivers Association. Some of these people had worked together on a previous project in Sichuan involving a Hong Kong foundation that brought Hong Kong students to Sichuan to work on community projects. Unlike the other large NGO network started by Lu Fei (see my profile of him in an earlier post) and his friends, the 512 Center is still operating but last time I visited them in June of 2009, they were eking out an existence on a shoestring budget, and looking for someone to donate a SUV to replace the car they were using to drive into the earthquake-stricken areas. Gao is the coordinator of the 512 Center. We’ve met twice to discuss the NGO network that is part of the Center, and each time spent several hours sitting at a desk in the Center’s office talking, drinking tea, and eating tangerines. During our conversations, Gao would chain smoke. He’s an affable, grandfatherly-looking guy who liked to joke with the two women working in the office. Every so often, he’d also take a poke at me for being an “impatient American” but with a wink and a smile.

Gao was born in 1954 in one of the first group of students to attend university after the Cultural Revolution. He attended Yunnan University in 1978, the year after Yu Xiaogang, the celebrated founder of the Kunming-based environmental NGO, Green Watershed, and one of the members of the 512 Center’s network. After he graduated, he went to work for the provincial social science federation (shehui kexue lianhehui), a social organization (shetuan) for those specializing in the social sciences to exchange views and share information. In the early 2000s, the provincial government was engaged in streamlining its bureaucracies, and encouraged some of its officials to retire early. He was one of those officials, retiring at the age of 48 in 2002.

His interest in NGO work came from his participation in a Ford Foundation project while he was still at the social science federation. The project was an investigation into the problems with migrant children not having access to schools. He worked on a report that encouraged the government to improve the situation. After he retired, he went to work on another project funded by UNESCO and a French organization helping children in poor areas.

Since 2005, he’s also been trying to register an NGO that he calls Sichuan Shangmin Social Development Research Association. He describes it as an independent, nonprofit, research institute that would provide research on social problems to the government, public and other NGOs. Gao said he was encouraged by a government policy put out in 2004 promoting grassroots social science organizations. Apparently, the officials at the Civil Affairs office didn’t get that policy document because everytime he’s applied to register, he’s been rejected.

When asked why he went into NGO work, he said it was a combination of things. One is socialism. He grew up in the Maoist era, and he believes not all of the old education and propaganda was bad. “Socialism is better than capitalism,” he said. “Capitalism is about money, socialism is about people.” But he prefers to use the terms, “social development” or “sustainable development” in place of socialism.

Another reason he’s doing NGO work is that he’s retired, has time on his hands and economic security. He can now do what he wants to do, and what gives his life meaning. He’s also been influenced by his work with international organizations. He does not agree with everything they do, but he likes the idea of using participatory methods for promoting social development.

Gao might have one more influence that I did not ask him about – his wife who happens to be Guo Hong, a sociologist at the Sichuan Academy of Social Sciences who teaches classes on civil society, has been an advisor to the 512 Center, and an advocate for NGOs in China.

Profile of Ma Yinling, founder of (Yuexi county) Poverty and Development Research Center

2010-09-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

September 2, 2010

I was introduced to Ma Yinling by a common friend in Beijing. Ma was nice enough to arrange a cheap room for me at the guesthouse of her university, Southwest Nationalities University in Chengdu, where she teaches anthropology and does research on the Yi minority. Ma herself is a Yi.

The morning I arrived in Chengdu, Ma showed up at my guesthouse door armed with several books she had edited or written on the Yi. One of these was a Yi-English dictionary, probably the only one of its kind, edited by her and two American linguists. She is clearly passionate about what she does.

Ma’s NGO is called the (Yuexin county) Poverty and Development Research Center, and is registered as a social organization (shetuan) with the county Civil Affairs bureau. Her NGO, which she started around 2000, targets minorities in poor areas through education, health and economic development programs. One of her projects, funded by the UN, is to help the Yi understand PRC laws and policies relating to the Yi. She has another project funded by the World Bank Development Marketplace to educate Yi women findmarkets for their handicrafts, and thereby earn money to pay for their children’s schooling. This project involves working with the local Women’s Federation and county officials.

Like other NGO leaders I’ve met, Ma can be single-minded in her devotion, seeing her NGO as her own personal project. She told me that she after working in Yuexi county for several years, she decided to build a house there so she could share her experiences with others from the city. When she brought up the idea with her husband and son (both of them are also Yi), they opposed it, but she went ahead anyway and built the house without the help of her family. Most of the building materials and appliances had to be transported from Chengdu, a two day drive from Yuexi.

Ma sounded reluctant to build up her NGO. She has a small 3 person staff which works mostly on a volunteer basis. When I asked why she doesn’t pay her staff full-time, she gave several reasons. One is that she doesn’t want to raise their expectations too much in case her NGO should fail, and she has seen too many NGOs go under because they devoted too many resources to their staff. She also said that her funding tended to be project-based and didn’t pay for staff salaries.

Ma talked to me about what motivated her to spend so much of her time and effort on her NGO work. She spoke about Yuexi, a poor county located on the Sichuan/Yunnan border with a diverse population of Yi, Tibetan, and Han. Yuexi, she said, faced a number of problems. – high infant mortality, alcoholism, psychological problems, spousal abuse, medical problems like Hep B. At the time she was considering setting up her NGO, a logging ban had been in effect since 1998 and a new policy in force which stopped assigning university graduates jobs. These two policies had a negative effect on minority graduates, so many minority families encouraged their kids to work rather than go to the universities.

Ma wanted to address both of these problems. One of her early projects was to teach minorities how to fix and use the gas burners that replaced the wood ones as a result of the logging ban. She also wanted to educate women about the importance of going to college. She said she started with 10-12 women, and was moved when many more than 10 women showed up to learn Chinese.

Ma also spoke to me about having to educate the officials about her project. A number of the local officials initially showed interest in her project because they saw it as a source of revenue, so she had to tell them that the money was for the women in the county. She found she also had to educate the officials about gender equality, and the use of participatory methods to lessen the gap between farmers and officials. One of her goals is to change the attitude and view of local officials so that they can see the bigger picture, and the importance of working with her NGO and the larger community.

When I asked her what pushed her into this line of work, Ma talked about her own anthropology work on ethnic minorities. Another important influence for her was the Fourth World Women’s Conference held in Beijing in 1995 where she participated in a forum on minority women and first learned what gender equity and NGOs were. But most of all, what’s kept her going has been her work in Yuexi which opened her eyes to the many needs in the area and the desire of local women to participate in improving their lives.

Important trends among Chinese NGOs

2010-08-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

August 26, 2010

Despite some of the recent concerns about restrictions on NGOs in China, there are some important trends in China that civil society watchers should keep an eye on.

One trend that has been written about here, and elsewhere, is the rise of private foundations and their growing influence in China. A number of the more prominent private foundations like Narada and Youcheng have taken the lead in supporting grassroots NGOs, and encouraging the government and GONGOs to support grassroots NGOs.

Another trend that has been not been as visible or discussed is the rise of social networks. I hesitate to use the term, NGO networks, because these networks are generally quite informal, varied and fluid in their composition. NGOs and NGO leaders are an important component, but these networks also include individual activists and individuals from GONGOs, mass organizations and even the government. In the aftermath of the Wenchuan earthquake, we saw many networks form in response to the relief effort. We also see networks forming in the environmental, HIV/AIDS and foundation sector.

A third trend is the outsourcing of government services to NGOs in the area of community development, migrant education, poverty alleviation, and industry and commerce. This trend is important not just because it provides new sources of revenue for NGOs, but also because it may evolve into a more institutionalized channel by which NGOs can participate in the provision of public goods, and in shaping public policy.

Talking to some NGOs in Sichuan

2010-08-15T08:08:00.001-07:00

August 13, 2010

I’ve been talking to some international NGO people here in Sichuan and the impression I come away with is one of frustration and caution. Frustration at the Chinese government’s inability to make life easier for international NGOs, either with regard to registration or carrying out public activities. Caution about visiting Tibetan NGOs in western Sichuan and Qinghai.

Talking with these INGOs, I realize why the Chinese government would be so concerned and conflicted about INGOs. On one hand, they see these INGOs as a source of funds and a conduit to the larger international community. On the other, they know that these INGOs represent very different agendas, and are concerned about their role in fomenting social conflict. There are INGOs that want to help China solve problems such as poverty and disease, but there are also those with an agenda that the Chinese government views with suspicion. These include NGOs that want to help workers, farmers and those infected with HIV/AIDS enforce their legal rights, NGOs like the NED that had a hand in the “color revolutions” in the former Soviet republics, and NGOs funded by Tibetan exile groups.

What the Chinese government faces in the international NGO community is, in short, a microcosm of the pluralist interest group community that we are used to in democratic societies. Only the Chinese have to deal with them in their own backyard. I’m not condoning the Chinese government’s behavior, but if I was an authoritarian government concerned foremost about stability and staying in power, I might be doing what the Chinese are doing to international NGOs now – letting many of them operate here, but making life difficult for them. In that way, the Chinese hope to have their cake and eat it too.

Visiting the Global Village project in Daping village

2010-08-08T06:23:00.000-07:00

August 7, 2010

It’s not easy for a NGO in China to have a vision and translate that vision into a reality, but something like that is happening in the village of Daping, Sichuan.

After taking two buses and a small “breadloaf” van (mianbao che) that we didn’t think would make it up the steep mountain road, we are here in Daping village on top of a mountain in the administrative area of Pengzhou city about 2 hours drive northwest of Chengdu. Daping is the site of an ambitious project appropriately named “Home of Happiness and Harmony” (Lehe Jiayuan) conceived by Liao Xiaoyi, founder of the Beijing-based environmental NGO, Global Village. Daping’s houses were badly damaged by the May 12, 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, and when Liao first came to the village in July of 2008, she saw in it a chance to not just rebuild the infrastructure, but also to restructure the economic and social life of the village.

With funding from the Chinese Red Cross Foundation, and Jet Li’s One Foundation, the building began in earnest in September of 2008. When I was here in June of 2009, many of the houses, and the medical clinic, were going up. Now, most of the farmers’ houses, the medical clinic, and the academy are finished. They have been built with timber from the mountain’s plentiful reserves of cypress and cedar. Together these structures at the top of Daping mountain make a statement about Liao’s vision.

Global Village is also working on reviving the village’s economy by exploring new sources of revenue such as marketing handicrafts and tourism. Lehe Jiayuan is already hosting various NGO training groups who come up for several days at a time, and is hoping to attract other groups who come to learn to about this unique project and participate in various cultural activities that are in the planning. It is also trying to restructure village governance and social life by introducing an environmental association (shengtai xiehui) which will give villagers a voice in the redevelopment of their village. Decisions about Lehe Yuan’s development are to be made jointly between GV, the village committee, and the environmental association.

Global Village has also brought in the YouChange Foundation, a well-known private foundation in Beijing, which now has a station in Daping and is responsible for managing the volunteers who help out on the ongoing projects. The reason for coming here a second time was to bring my son, Simon, who will be volunteering in Daping with his friend later this fall. They’ll be working with Wang Pan, the YouChange station director here at Lehe Jiayuan.

Lehe Jiayuan is an ambitious project and it remains to be seen whether it will succeed and serve as a model for other villages, as Liao hopes. Transportation to the village needs to be improved to allow groups to visit. There is also a mine operating in the neighboring mountain, and the occasional explosions are a reminder that not all is harmonious in Daping.

Still, one can’t sense that Liao has created something special here, a sense of community. The place is full of energetic and good-natured staff, volunteers and villagers. At night, when people congregate to play games, dance and talk, you feel that Lehe Jiayuan lives up to its name.

Visiting NGOs along the faultline: Sichuan to Qinghai

2010-08-04T20:07:00.000-07:00

August 5, 2010

It seems my life these days only revolves around NGOs, but hey there are worse things to be addicted to! Next week, I'll be bringing my son to look at a project in Sichuan started by the well-known Beijing-based environmental NGO, Global Village, with funding from the Chinese Red Cross and Jet Li's One Foundation. The project involves not just rebuilding Daping's houses, many of which were destroyed in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, but also revitalizing the social and economic life of the village and using the village as a platform for promoting tourism and traditional Chinese culture. I visited this project last year when doing research for a paper I wrote about the Wenchuan earthquake's impact on grassroots NGOs.

My son will be working with the YouChange (known in Chinese as Youcheng) foundation which is collaborating with Global Village on this project. YouChange, along with Nandu (Naruda), is one of a number of private foundations that has sought to create a new philanthropy model that emphasizes volunteerism, individual initiative, and support for grassroots NGOs. It also has other projects located in poorer areas in western China, as well as a project on the outskirts of Beijing.

After visiting Daping, we plan to head out west to the Tibetan areas in Sichuan, stopping in Kangding, and then making our way via the Sichuan-Tibet highway to Yushu, Qinghai where there was an earthquake earlier this year. I've never traveled in these parts before, and have heard it is both rugged and beautiful. I'm looking forward to it, and hopefully visiting some Tibetan NGO projects along the way.

I guess you could call this our "earthquake and NGO" trip because we're going from the site of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to the site of the 2010 Yushu earthquake, and seeing what kind of work NGOs are doing in these areas. As I've blogged about in other posts, the role of NGOs in disaster relief has been growing in China and deserves more attention and support.

I'll try to post news about our trip on this blog, so stay tuned!

Grassroots activism and public-private partnerships in the Hudson Valley

2010-08-01T21:19:00.000-07:00

August 2, 2010

Grassroots activism and nonprofits in the Hudson Valley

Last month I went back to see family and friends in the Hudson Valley region of New York. While there I had the chance to see and walk across the Walkway Across the Hudson. The Walkway is the longest pedestrian bridge in the world with a span of over 1.28 miles over the Hudson River connecting the cities of Poughkeepsie on the east and Highland on the west.

The Walkway (http://www.walkway.org) is also the name of the nonprofit that is responsible for revitalizing the bridge and transforming it into a pedestrian skyway with gorgeous views of the Hudson River.

The bridge is more than 100 years old, and was shut down after a fire in 1974. In 1992, a handyman named Bill Sepe formed the Walkway nonprofit, but his ideas of using volunteer labor and funding to revitalize the bridge was voted down by the board. Under the new leadership of Fred Shaeffer, a local attorney, the Walkway began working with private foundations and the state of New York to make the Walkway a reality. The Walkway has been designated a State Historical Park, and the nonprofit is headed by a friend of ours, Elizabeth Hart.

I went across the Walkway three times while I was there, and was impressed at what it has done in terms of energizing the area’s business, civic and recreational scene. Every time I went, there were many people out walking with infants in strollers, with dogs, roller skating, and biking over the bridge. A New York Times article noted that there have already been more than double the estimated 250,000 visitors per year since the Walkway opened last October. At each end, there were several businesses/vendors selling drinks and food, renting bikes, in addition to Walkway volunteers selling T-shirts, cups, and hats to raise money to maintain the bridge. There are also plans underway to connect the Walkway to other bike trails in the region.

The Walkway is a great example of the kind of impact that grassroots activism can have. The initial vision and impetus comes from a single person who starts a nonprofit which then partners with private and public agencies to make their vision a reality.

On the bridge, there is a sign thanking the many supporters of the Walkway. They include a number of private foundations in addition to the state of New York. Let’s hope that we begin to see this level of collaboration in China.

Discussing the future of China’s NGOs

2010-07-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

July 23, 2010

My second day back in Beijing, I’m riding my bike out to the China Development Brief (CDB) office which is nestled in a courtyard amid the hutongs northeast of Jingshan Park. Here's a picture of me in front of the CDB courtyard door.

There’s a meeting that morning among some NGOs to propose ideas for how they can integrate climate change into their poverty alleviation programs. The meeting is organized by Oxfam Hong Kong which is working closely with the State Council’s Poverty Alleviation Office on various projects around China, and attended by some well known NGOs such as Friends of Nature, Global Environment Institute, Green Earth, Action Aid, and China Dialogue.

I asked the Oxfam people about the incident with the Ministry of Education's notice warning universities not to let their student volunteers work with Oxfam. One Oxfam person said that project was stopped, but otherwise said Oxfam hasn't been affected and is still going strong with their many projects in China.

After the meeting and lunch, I chatted with Fu Tao, who has been the Chinese editor of the CDB since it’s inception, and knows the Chinese NGO sector well. We started talking about the recent measures that make it difficult for foreign donations to get to Chinese NGOs. Fu Tao felt that this was a clever measure by the government to make life difficult for NGOs, particularly those registered as businesses by cutting their pipeline to foreign funds.

When he asked me for my take on the situation. I told him I thought these measures could be seen as part of an effort by different government departments to better regulate and control a growing NGO sector, and not necessarily a coordinated attempt to repress the entire sector. Fu didn’t seem convinced. He said there were cases where the crackdowns on NGOs did represent a coordinated effort, even if they appeared to be driven by one department. He noted the case of Gongmeng which tax authorities investigated and closed down for failure to pay taxes on funds from foreign donors. I agreed that Gongmeng was an example of the government’s coordinated response because several different government departments showed up at the same time to close Gongmeng down, but said not every case is like that.

The more we talked, the more Fu Tao seemed to be of two minds about the future of NGOs in China. He was concerned about the recent measures, including new regulations on foreign NGOs in Yunnan, but then admitted that the NGO sector was expanding in other ways. He noted that some grassroots NGOs that were previously registered as businesses, such as Facilitator (xie zuoze) and Shining Stone (canyu shi), were able to get registered as NGOs with Civil Affairs. He believes this is because the government is willing to encourage NGOs that provide services but don’t engage in more sensitive advocacy work as Gongmeng and Yirenping had. He also noted the rise of private foundations, and thought this was a significant trend in China because some of these foundations (Nandu, Youcheng, Vantone) were following a new philanthropy model supporting grassroots NGOs, rather than the old philanthropy of supporting government and GONGOs. What you are seeing are private entrepreneurs with a different set of values and priorities.

Before we parted ways, I asked him if he was pessimistic about the future of the NGO sector. I thought he was going to say yes, but then said he really wasn’t sure.

Defining NGOs in China 1.0

2010-06-28T11:52:00.000-07:00

June 29, 2010

I'm on vacation in the U.S. and will be posting to this blog, but more infrequently than normal until I return to Beijing in mid July.

Here's a post I've been meaning to post for some time now about the problematic issue of defining NGOs in China.

This blog is about Chinese NGOs, but that begs an important question: what is an NGO in the Chinese context? This is a difficult question to answer because NGOs have had such a short history in China and have emerged in an inhospitable landscape dominated by the state. As a result, the forms NGOs have taken at this early stage often do not resemble the NGOs we are familiar with.

When we think of NGOs, well-known nonprofits and foundations come to mind -- Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Common Cause, Oxfam, United Way, Ford Foundation. These are organizations that fit a generally accepted definition of NGOs (also known as nonprofits, civil society organizations (CSOs), or voluntary associations) as having certain properties: they are private (e.g. institutionally separate from government), nonprofit, self-governing and voluntary . The above named NGOs are also formal organizations legally registered as nonprofits, with a staff, office, charter and board of directors, though scholars like Salamon and Sokolowski include not only formal organizations but also informal organizations and groups as long as they meet on a regular basis.

Why is it so difficult to apply this definition to China? One source of confusion has to do with the Chinese practice of calling organizations set up by the government (what we call government-organized NGOs or GONGOs) NGOs. In China, the term NGO is used very loosely in official parlance to refer to a wide range of organizations including those set up by the party-state. To give an example, corporatist-type “mass organizations” (qunzhong zuzhi) which were established by the Communist Party after 1949 to “represent” specific constituencies such as youth, women, and workers, sometimes present themselves as NGOs. These include the well-known Communist Youth League, All-China Women’s Federation and All-China Federation of Trade Unions. Then in the 1980s, as China opened up to the outside world, other organizations were established by government agencies to cooperate with overseas organizations on environmental protection, population control, trade promotion and other issues. These GONGOs often present themselves as NGOs to overseas organizations that were interested in working with Chinese NGOs, even though they are funded and staffed by the government, their leaders are appointed by a government agency and have an administrative rank. Wang Ming, a leading NGO scholar at Tsinghua University, calls these top-down NGOs . Many Chinese scholars see GONGOs as the first wave of NGOs in China, even though GONGOs do not meet many of the commonly accepted criteria for NGOs. They are clearly not private, voluntary or self-governing. Yet many are registered with Civil Affairs departments as “social organizations’, a term the Chinese government uses interchangeably with NGOs.

So what about real NGOs in China, what Wang Ming calls bottom-up NGOs? These NGOs do meet the criteria of being private, voluntary, self-governing and nonprofit, but it’s not always easy to spot them because so few are like the well-known nonprofits and foundations we are familiar with in the U.S. and other developed countries. Some are legally registered with Civil Affairs as “social organizations”, and have an office, staff, charter, etc., but many more are registered as businesses, or unregistered, but in reality they operate as NGOs. Many of these business or unregistered NGOs have an office, staff, governing board, etc, but some are loosely organized volunteer or community groups, while others may be just a one person, or virtual online operation running out of someone’s home.

In short, the difficulty with defining NGOs in China is that appearances are deceiving, as many things are in this country. On the surface, GONGOs or top-down NGOs look more like the NGOs we know so well. They are legally-registered organizations with an office, staff, branch offices in the provinces, public visibility, respectability and influence. Yet they are not NGOs according to the criteria above. Now take the bottom-up NGOs. On the surface, they do not look like the NGOs we know. They tend not to be legally registered, to be small operations that avoid the public eye, and yet they meet the definition of NGOs. They are in many ways similar to private enterprises and businesses in China during the 1980s that operated in a grey area of illicitness between the legal and illegal.

This blog is dedicated to the real NGOs in China, those that are established voluntarily by citizens with a sense of purpose, self-governing, nonprofit and not part of the state apparatus. At the same time, I don’t believe in drawing a hard and fast line between GONGOs and NGOs. Some GONGOs have become more independent in recent years and may evolve into something resembling NGOs in the future, and thus need to be included in the story of NGOs in China for reasons that I’ll write about in a future post.

Why the chill in the air for NGOs?

2010-05-12T19:56:00.000-07:00

May 10, 2010

I’ve generally been an optimist about the future of NGOs in China, but recent events have gotten me thinking otherwise. In the last few months, we’ve witnessed the Oxfam Hong Kong incident, the SAFE regulations on foreign donations, the closing down of NGOCN’s website, the Beijing University Women’s Legal Aid Center’s losing its Beijing University affiliation, and just today, the news that China’s leading AIDS activist, Wan Yanhai, has left China for the U.S. because he was being harassed by multiple government departments. So what does this all mean?

First of all, let’s get some perspective on these events. Last year (2009), Xu Zhiyong’s legal aid NGO, Gongmeng, was closed down on tax evasion charges, and Yirenping, an anti-discrimination legal aid NGO founded by Lu Jun was raided. The Olympic year saw the Sichuan earthquake, a coming out event for Chinese NGOs which played a visible role in the earthquake relief. The year prior (2007) saw the closure of an Lu Jun’s support group for Hep B carriers, a magazine called Minjian that published stories of NGO development projects, and most notably Nick Young’s China Development Brief.

In addition, the last few years has seen significant growth in grassroots NGOs, persistent rumors of revisions to the NGO registration and management regulations, a new Charity Law, and easing of the registration and management procedures for private foundations.

In short, what we have here is a mixed bag. Some bad news, and some good news. How do we make sense of all this? A few possible explanations come to mind.

One explanation is that the government is of different minds about NGOs and is trying to figure out how to best manage (codeword for control) them. The Chinese government is a very diverse, not always unified collection of agencies and individuals. The Civil Affairs department is only one of the agencies charged with supervising NGOs. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of NGOs in China that are not registered with Civil Affairs and thus not under their supervision. Because many NGOs are registered as businesses, the Commercial and Industrial department also plays a role, as do tax authorities, and now apparently so does the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE). And last but not least, there are the security people. It’s not clear to what extent there is a coordinated campaign among all these agencies to regulate NGOs. Civil Affairs seems to be the most supportive. They are encouraging various experiments around the country to make NGO registration easier, and they support a change in the NGO regulations that would make it easier for NGOs to register with Civil Affairs. But other agencies seem to just be interested in controlling NGOs, and not figuring out a way to regulate them in ways that would improve the effectiveness and transparency of NGO work.

If this explanation is right, then we’ll see authorities continue to adopt an ad hoc approach to regulating/controlling NGOs, and continued swings in the government’s attitude to NGOs. We’ll also see further delays in the much-anticipated NGO legislation as debates and deadlock over the value of NGOs continue in policymaking circles.

Another explanation is that government leaders have arrived at a consensus about how to deal with NGOs, and that consensus is not to liberalize the environment or find a smarter way to regulate them, but to continue restricting their development. This means tightening an already restrictive regulatory environment, and cracking down on “illegal” NGOs that are engaged in advocacy and sensitive issues such as migrant worker rights, and are particularly open to foreign influences. What seems to be new here is the way in which the government is cracking down on NGOs. They are doing so not by closing down NGOs as they did with China Development Brief, but by harassing them for improper finances, or fire codes, or not properly registering their website. But they are not doing this across the board, but only targeting selected NGOs. A form of “salami tactics” or “death by a thousand cuts”.

If this explanation is correct, then recent events represent the start of a chilling trend. It means we won’t see revised NGO regulations come out, or if they do come out, they will reaffirm the status quo or be even more restrictive.

Still another explanation is a combination of the previous two explanations. That is, authorities have arrived at a consensus but that consensus represents a compromise whereby certain sectors are encouraged, but NGOs with more foreign connections or engaged in more sensitive work are targeted for harassment.

If this explanation is right, then we should see the revised NGO regulations, and other related legislation, coming out soon. Those revisions will probably represent a gradual change, e.g. liberalization, and their content will give us a better idea of what sectors are being encouraged.

Which of these explanations is closer to the mark of course requires an understanding of what is going on in high-level decision making circles. Unfortunately, that arena is a black box that we can only speculate about.

At this point, I favor the first explanation because I don’t see a consistent line or approach toward NGOs which suggests there is still debate and deadlock over just how to regulate this growing sector. But I may change my view as I get more information. Stay tuned!

NGOs participation in disaster relief in China

2010-04-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

April 28, 2010

I do plan to get back to discussing the previous cases of restrictions on NGOs in China, but wanted to highlight the role of NGOs in responding to natural disasters in China given the drought problem in Yunnan and the recent earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai. I wrote in a previous blog about the Sichuan earthquake of 2008 being a watershed event in energizing the NGO community here. We haven't seen a similar grassroots response in the drought and the Yushu earthquake. But NGOs are playing a role in both, whether we see it or not, and it's worth tracking their efforts in both disasters. Disasters and other crises seem to expand the space for NGOs by creating an urgent need for assistance in a short period of time that the government itself is unable to fully satisfy. But not all disasters are equal. The Sichuan earthquake was located near urban areas where a number of NGOs were concentrated. The same cannot be said of the Yushu earthquake, which is in a more remote area. Still, some of the websites I have listed on this blog, such as China Philanthropy, have articles about the Yushu earthquake relief. And below is an article by Yu Fangqiang, coordinator of an NGO and a thoughtful commmentator on the Chinese NGO scene. Thanks to Asia Catalyst for translating this article and making it available on their blog.

Where are the NGOs in China's Natural Disasters?
April 27, 2010 1:23 PM | No Comments

By Yu Fangqiang

The other night, a little after midnight, I was about to turn off my computer and go to sleep when I noticed, with surprise, an article in China Development Brief's Community Times: "Droughts in the Southwest Test Emergency Response: Where are the NGOs?"

China has recently been hit by a number of natural disasters, including the epic drought in the southwest and an earthquake in Qinghai. After reading this article, I had a few thoughts I had to share.

Certainly, NGOs were very visible and powerful during the Wenchuan earthquake. While the public could not see the challenges China's NGOs face, they could definitely see the impact they can have. But droughts raise another set of challenges. What exactly should NGOs contribute in these circumstances?

First of all, we need to bear in mind that not all NGOs have the technical ability to respond to a disaster like the current drought. Second, of those NGOs that have the capacity to respond, not all can dedicate their limited time and energies to the drought. And third, even those NGOs that have the ability and the capacity can't measure up to the ability and capacity of the state. NGOs do not exist to replace the state, but to widen the competitive environment for public interest work. Within this environment, NGOs can monitor official organizations and government departments in order to improve their effectiveness, and urge them to work more efficiently. If NGOs were better at everything than the government, we wouldn't need the government.

In the response to the southwestern drought, we do indeed see the government playing a positive role. However, has this response been efficient and effective? What we see are an increase in state funding while the drought continues. The state's response has largely channeled mandatory donations to the same old officials, institutions and cronies as in the past. In a particularly outrageous instance, school teachers have compelled students to donate at least 2 yuan (about 30 cents) each to drought relief efforts - an immoral and illegal action.

Getting back to the NGOs, however: most NGOs are grassroots organizations in a state of malnutrition. To start with, most cannot register in the Bureau of Civil Affairs. After struggling for several years, they began to register in the Industrial and Commercial Bureau, which compelled them to pay taxes. After a few years of continuing with program work while paying taxes, the Bureau of Civil Affairs and Trade and Industry Bureau began to launch investigations into the discrepancy between the commercial names these groups used to register, and the names they used to do their NGO work. Those NGOs that survived this process now have to deal with the new foreign exchange regulations. In addition, we had the shutdown of migrant workers' schools in Beijing, in advance of China's Two Sessions, the shutdown of the Chongqing Sensen orphanage on March 15, and the restrictions on civil charity activities during the Shanghai World Expo.

Some groups have attempted to resist the restrictions on NGOs, as in the case of the tax resistance campaign which some two dozen organizations signed onto earlier this year. As of late April, I do not know what the results were of this effort; even if they are successful, this will be a long, hard fight. And of course, the case of Oxfam's treatment as a class enemy by the Ministry of Education, which recently warned colleges not to participate in Oxfam programs. Oxfam has carefully managed its government relations, and must have felt like a woman whose lover refuses to marry her after making love to her for twenty years. Oxfam is one of the few NGOs with the capacity to respond to the drought crisis - but unfortunately, they're otherwise occupied now.

We cannot accuse NGOs of failing to help respond to the drought when their difficulties are caused by the state. NGOs have no funds to donate, no institutional capacity to respond to crises, and struggle with all kinds of internal and external challenges. But nonetheless, I recently saw a report online which said that "more than twenty NGOs called for water conservation in the north". Does this make us feel better? It is simply not true that NGOs are unconcerned about the drought. The truth is that their movements are hampered.

Yu Fangqiang is chief coordinator of the Chinese civil rights organization, Yirenping. This article is translated and adapted from the Chinese original at http://www.chinadevelopmentbrief.org.cn/ngo_talkview.php?id=1245.

Shutting down of NGOCN's website

2010-04-20T19:19:00.000-07:00

April 21, 2010

Sometime in early April of this year, the website for NGOCN was shut down. I profiled one of the founders of NGOCN, Lu Fei, in an earlier blog. NGOCN was established in 2005-2006 in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, and serves as an information platform for NGOs. It also started to offer capacity building training to NGOs, mainly those located in southwestern China (Yunnan, Sichuan, Guizhou). It appears that only the website has been affected up to now. NGOCN still operates, maintains a blog, and sends out newsletters on a regular basis, msot recently about NGO participation in the Yushu earthquake in Qinghai.

There seem to be several reasons for the closing down of NGOCN’s website. One has to do with a national trend to reregister websites and blogs in China. If this is the main reason, then the closing of NGOCN’s website will most likely be temporary and we can expect it to resume in the near future. Another reason that has been mentioned is that NGOCN was involved in rallying NGOs to participate in drought-relief activities in Yunnan. If this is the real reason, then NGOCN may have a bigger problem on their hands.

I called the director of NGOCN to ask her about the situation, but she didn’t want to talk about it over the phone, suggesting that the reasons for the shutdown were sensitive, but she did say that the shutdown was temporary and she seemed quite confident that their website would be back up soon.

Peking University Women's Legal Aid Center loses its affiliation

2010-04-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

April 14, 2010

On March 25, Beijing University announced that it would rescind its relationship with 4 organizations: Beijing Finance and Economic News Research Center (caijing xinwen yanjiu zhongxin); Beijing University Public Law Research Center (gongfa yanjiu zhongxin); Beijing University Constitutionalism Research Center (xianzheng yanjiu zhongxin); and Beijing University Law School Women's Legal Research and Services Center (funu falu yanjiu yu fuwu zhongxin).

The first 3 organizations did not get much attention because they were pretty much empty shells, but the mention of Women's Legal Research and Services Center attracted a lot of attention because it is one of the best-known legal aid NGOs in China. Established by Guo Jianmei and others in 1995, the Center has done a great deal in advancing women's rights in China, and has been visited by Hilary Clinton, Madeline Albright and other dignitaries.

Some people at first thought the Center had been shut down, but all the notice did was disassociate Beijing University from the Center. The Center had been affiliated with the Beijing University's Law School which meant that it did not have to register, but was “attached” (guakao) to the Law School. In reality, the Center was an independent NGO that had its office outside of Beijing University, but it used the Law School’s bank account and had to get approval for its finances from the Law School. A number of NGOs in China have this arrangement which brings with it a number of advantages. They don’t have to go through the difficult process of registering with Civil Affairs as an NGO, yet they derive a measure of legal status and protection from being affiliated with a government-backed organization. The disadvantage is that the NGO is not entirely a free agent, and its affiliation can be canceled at any moment, as the Center found out.

Below is a statement issued by Guo Jianmei, the founder of the Center, about their disassociation from Beijing University:

2 April 2010

Statement by Guo Jianmei and Her Team

Farewell, Beida!

On 25 March, the Division of Social Sciences, Peking University, published a Notice of Cancellation of Organisations on the University’s official website. The Center for Women's Law & Legal Services was one of the four on the list. The days that followed were filled with calls of concern and support from the media, NGOs, partners, the relevant authorities, friends and persons whom we have helped. We are touched, and we are grateful!

To an entity that has been single-minded in purpose and enterprise for the last 15 years, expulsion from the Peking University family is a major and unexpected setback which affects more than just the entity itself. For the Center for Women's Law & Legal Services of Peking University is a symbol of deep significance. To the country, it is an industrious pair of hands that helps build social harmony. To the weak and the vulnerable, it is a ray of light that offers warmth and hope. To NGOs and our partners, it is a fellow comrade on the frontlines, enforcing the rule of law and advancing good for the civil society. To the people at large, it is a deliverer of social conscience and the spirit of law. And to every member of the Center, it is our common home.

As such, to those who have cared and still continue to care, I would like to say a few last words about this name that has become history:

I. In 15 years, we have lighted up more lives than the sun has.

Since the Center’s inception in 1995, our aim was to provide legal aid, protect women’s rights, and promote gender equality. Equity and justice were not only the Center’s tenets, but the belief and ideal espoused by every member. As the first public interest organisation in China that specialises in providing legal aid for women, we were one of the earliest private legal aid practice. While demand for legal aid among the vulnerable was high, State legal resources were scarce. The Center thus became an expedient complement that plugged gaps in the government’s legal aid services. It has since, helped more than 100,000 women victims obtain recourse to justice.

In 2004, to meet the increasingly diverse needs in women’s rights protection, the Center began providing public interest litigation services, and was soon to become an important force in public interest legal practice. Absent a public interest litigation framework, the Center set itself to legal and policy improvement and reform by working on typical cases, incorporating the protection of the individual rights of women into the overall rights of citizens, to ensure impact. The cases involved important and difficult issues as gender discrimination in the workplace, labour rights of women, sexual harassment in the workplace, violence against women, rights of female migrant workers, and rural women land rights. And by employing different approaches in legislative advocacy, the Center has expanded its beneficiary population.

Our efforts have rendered power to the law and to legal aid. A victim once told us, “the Center is like a lamp, glowing of equity and justice, exuding warmth in the cold, and shedding light on the darkness ahead. She spoke not only for the many weak and poor women, she spoke also for the meaning of our enterprise.

The Center has become a sphere of influence that motivated many later-comers. Consciously, it took on the responsibility of providing legal aid, conducting public interest litigation, organising public interest legal advocacy, and training public interest lawyers. In 2002, a legal aid collaboration group was established, so as to enable more organisations and institutions to participate in the delivery of legal aid. In 2007, the Center founded the Public Interest Lawyers’ Network for Women’s Rights, and in 2009, the name was changed to China Public Interest Lawyers’ Network. The Network currently comprises more than 300 brilliant lawyers from more than twenty provinces and cities, providing legal aid for thousands of poor and vulnerable people. I still remember the Network’s launch ceremony on 15 March 2009 at the Centennial Lecture Hall at Peking University, where leaders from authorities as the Ministry of Justice’s Department of Legal Aid, Center for Legal Assistance, All-China Lawyers’ Association and the Beijing Lawyers’ Association turned up to show their support. The speech given by Professor Zhu Suli, Dean of Peking University Law Department remains vivid in my mind.

In September 2009, Ms Guo Jianmei, public interest lawyer and head of the Center founded Qian Qian Law Firm. Specialising in public interest law and public interest legal activities, and comprising professional public interest lawyers, Qian Qian has expanded its scope to benefit a broader spectrum of vulnerable persons such as the disabled, migrant workers and the aged.

15 years of innovative approaches and effective outputs have not only profited the poor and vulnerable women; the Center has also grown to become an influential and credible NGO. It has earned praises and won awards. In February 2006, in their congratulatory note to the Center’s tenth anniversary, Professor Min Weifang, the Party Secretary of Peking University, and Professor Xu Zhihong, President of Peking University, said, “the Center for Women's Law & Legal Services of Peking University has observed Peking University’s glorious tradition of patriotism, progress, democracy and scientific approach. By seeking relentlessly, developing aggressively, and improving constantly, it has achieved commendable results, contributed to the progress and advancement of women’s rights protection and legal aid delivery, and served its role in fostering harmony. Its work has won interest, support and tribute of the society and its peers, recognition and respect from women at large, and glory for Peking University!”

As Premier Wen Jiabao said, “Equity and justice glow brighter than the sun.” Indeed, equity and justice are of supreme value and significance to every individual, every country, and every nation. The Center shall be a faithful and determined perpetuator of this worthy cause.

II. Hurdles deter us not, but spur us on.

Cancellation by Peking University was not our first setback. The Center was nearly closed down during its initial days, only to be followed by one challenge after another. Funding was a major problem, as those days, funding channels were few and funding systems unregulated. Fund shortage stymied NGO development, and was the major obstacle to the Center’s growth.

Talent is another problem, especially when the Center, as a professional organisation, was in need of well-qualified legal professionals. Attracting and retaining talent in a society of low public interest awareness and driven by utilitarianism was a huge difficulty. So were balancing ideals and the reality, dedication and compensation, and spiritual fulfilment and material satisfaction.

Our work is also hampered by a deficient legal environment, flawed enforcement systems, administrative interference, local protectionist policies, industry protectionism, even corruptive practices within the judicial system. Persistent overwork leading to physical and mental stress of the Center’s members is also a permanent problem.

Cancellation is also not the gravest difficulty we have faced. We were even threatened with physical harm. When angry villagers in that remote village let go of their tightly clasped sticks, convinced by our steady and determined gaze, we knew we could never be beaten. Because justice is what we pursue, and justice will always triumph.

Difficulty is only an excuse of the weak and the feeble. To go-getters with conviction, difficulty is impetus to move mountains. Difficulty is but snowfall before spring comes. And snow melts. Thereafter, a spring breeze will blow away, bringing forth myriad blossoms and an enchanting fragrance.

III. Farewell, Beida! But our pursuance of equity and justice shall endure, and our belief in the rule of law shall prevail.

We have several members on our team who are Peking University graduates. They were inculcated with knowledge and intellectual depth, and nurtured with democratic sensibilities and humanistic values––the motivation for their choice of a public interest career. Cancellation was saddening to Guo Jianmei. This is not the Beida that she once knew. Guo’s resolute embarkation on a public interest career was guided by her Beida predecessors and the Beida spirit. She hopes that many will understand her sense of desolation and feeling of betrayal.

But desolation is one thing, Guo Jianmei and her team are as eager and as passionate as ever. They are convinced that legal aid and public interest work is what the people need, and what a harmonious society must have. These needs are revealed by the Center’s work during the last 15 years, spoken by the sacks of millet and sweet potatoes, and the hundreds of thank-you banners from those poor and vulnerable clients, and proven by the numerous awards that the Center has won.

The Center may have become a chapter in history, Qian Qian is for now and the future.

The Center has devoted itself to serving women’s rights, giving legal aid, and growing as an NGO. The least it has done is to have sent this message: Private legal aid organisations must and will play an indispensable role in China. Given the national circumstances, charting new frontiers, will require dedicated and valiant fighters, and they should be recognised and encouraged.

The future will be bright, and we will stick to our goal and continue on. The road may be treacherous, and the view along the way may not be always pleasant. But the meaning of life is about keeping our feet on the ground, undeterred, and making our way toward our ideals.

We have no complaint, we have no regret.

We thank every entity and every friend who cares for and who supports us. We have you, who will walk with us.

Formally Center for Women's Law & Legal Services of Peking University

Notice on administration of donated foreign funds

2010-04-09T03:18:00.000-07:00

April 9, 2010

Last month, a notice by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange was issued calling for tighter controls over foreign exchange donated to Chinese institutions. This notice was not aimed specifically at NGOs/nonprofits, but probably disproportionately affects them because many Chinese NGOs rely heavily on overseas donations. The translation below was provided by Yirenping, a Chinese legal aid NGO.

The Chinese version of this Notice appears on the official website of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange
http://www.safe.gov.cn/model_safe/laws/law_detail.jsp?ID=80303000000000000,24&id=4

Promulgation date: 12-25-2009
Effective date: 03-01-2010
Department: State Administration of Foreign Exchange
Subject: Foreign Exchange

Notice of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange on Issues concerning the Administration of Foreign Exchange Donated to or by Domestic Institutions

(No. 63 [2009] of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange)

In order to improve the administration of donated foreign exchange and facilitate the donated foreign exchange receipts and payments, according to the Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Foreign Exchange Administration and other relevant provisions, we hereby notify you of the issues concerning the administration of foreign exchange donated to or by domestic institutions as follows:

1. The term “donation” as mentioned in this Notice refers to the gratuitous endowment and aid of legal foreign exchange funds between domestic institutions and overseas institutions or overseas individuals.

2. The receipts and payments of foreign exchange donated to or by domestic institutions shall comply with the laws and regulations and other relevant administrative provisions of China and shall not go against social morality or damage public interests and the legitimate rights and interests of other citizens.

3. The receipts and payments of foreign exchange of domestic institutions shall be transacted through a donated foreign exchange account, which shall be set up at the designated foreign exchange banks (“Banks”) and incorporated into the foreign exchange account management system by the Banks.

Except as herein provided, the opening, use, altering and closure of the donated foreign exchange account shall be dealt with in accordance with the regulations on foreign exchange accounts under current account. The scope of receipts include donated foreign exchange from overseas and foreign exchange funds for the purpose of overseas donation(purchased or allocated from foreign exchange accounts under current account in the same name). The scope of payments include payments stipulated in the donation agreement and other donation payments.

The scope of receipts and payments of donated foreign exchange accounts of the representative offices within China of overseas non-governmental organizations include donated foreign exchange appropriated from their headquarter as well as the legitimate expenses of those organizations.

Where the donations occur between domestic enterprises and overseas for-profit institutions or overseas individuals, the opening, use, altering and closure of domestic enterprises’s donated foreign exchange accounts shall be dealt with in accordance with the regulations on foreign exchange accounts under current account.

4. Domestic institutions shall present correlative documents as stipulated in this Notice for the examination and approval of the Banks to proceed the receipts and payments of foreign exchange donations.

5. Where the donations occur between domestic enterprises and overseas non-profit organizations, the domestic enterprises shall present the following documents so as to proceed in the Banks:

1) an Application(in which the domestic enterprises shall truthfully promise that the donation is not against national prohibitive regulation, that the transaction has, in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, been examined and filed in record, that the overseas institution is a non-profit institution, that the domestic enterprise shall strictly follow the agreement in making use of the donation and bear the legal responsibility thus caused. For the format of the Application, see Attachment I);
2) a copy of its business license;
3) a notarized donation agreement with the purpose of donation prescribed;
4) a certificate of registration of the overseas non-profit organization (with its Chinese translation attached);
5) Where the above materials fail to sufficiently establish the authenticity of the transaction, other materials required;

The donation between domestic enterprises and overseas for-profit institutions or individuals shall be dealt with in accordance with the regulations on cross-border investment and external credit or debt.

6. Where the donation is made to or by state organs at or above the county level and certain organizations that, according to relevant regulation provisions, do not have to register or are exempt from registration, they shall present the Application to proceed foreign exchange receipts and payments at the Banks. (For the list of such organizations, see Attachment II.)

7. The representative office established by the overseas non-governmental organization within China shall present the Application and the donation agreement between its headquarter and the Chinese Beneficiary so as to handle the entry of the donated foreign exchange.

8. Other domestic institutions not listed in Article 5, 6 or 7 of this Notice shall present the following documents so as to proceed the receipts and payments of donated foreign exchange:

(1) An Application(in which the domestic institution shall truthfully promise that the donation is not against national prohibitive regulation, that the transaction has, in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, been examined and filed in record, that the domestic institution shall strictly follow the agreement in making use of the donation and bear the legal responsibility thus caused.)
(2) a copy of the certificate of registration issued by relevant administrative departments
(3) A donation agreement with the purpose of donation prescribed

Where religious groups on the national level accept a donation of foreign exchange equivalent to or above 1 million yuan RMB, they shall also present the approval of accepting the donation issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Where local religious groups and sites for religious activities such as temples, monasteries, mosques and churches accept a donation of foreign exchange equivalent to or above 1 million yuan RMB, they shall also present the approval of accepting the donation issued by its Provincial People’s Government.

9. Where domestic institutions make a donation to overseas, they shall, in addition to the correlative documents stipulated in this Notice, submit as in accordance with relevant regulation provisions the Tax Certificate for Foreign Payments under Trade in Services, Benefits, Current Transfer and Some Capital Items.

10. In processing the receipts and payments of donated foreign exchange for domestic institutions, the Banks shall examine the documents submitted according to relevant regulation provisions and report to local SAFE departments suspicious and unusual cases in a timely manner.

The Banks shall indicate on its examination and approval the date and amount of the transaction with its official chop for business. All correlative documents shall be kept for five years for future reference.

11. The SAFE departments shall in accordance with relevant laws and regulations supervise and administer the receipts and payments of donated foreign exchange . They shall further enhance off-site supervision of the donations.

12. Violations of this Notice and correlative foreign exchange administrative regulations shall be punished in accordance with Regulation of the People’s Republic of China on Foreign Exchange Administration and other relevant regulations.

13. This Notice shall enter into force as of March 1, 2010. In case of any contradiction with previous regulations, this Notice shall prevail.

On receiving this Notice, all branches of the SAFE shall transmit it promptly to the sub-branches, city commercial banks, rural commercial banks and foreign-funded banks under their jurisdiction. All Chinese-funded Banks shall promptly forward the Notice to their branches. Any problem encountered during the implementation shall be fed back to the SAFE in a timely manner.

Attachment I Application for Receipts and Payments of Foreign Exchange Donation by Domestic Enterprises

Attachment II List of Certain Organizations Exempt from Registration According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs

December 25, 2009

Attachment I.

Application for Receipts and Payments of Foreign Exchange Donation by Domestic Enterprises

Bank ：
The Enterprise hereby applies to receive/pay donated foreign exchange in the amount of , mainly for the purpose of .
The Enterprise solemnly promises, that the receipt/payment of the donated foreign exchange is not against relevant national prohibitive regulations, that the transaction has, in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, been examined and filed in record, that the overseas institution is a non-profit institution. The Enterprise shall strictly follow the donation agreement in making use of the donation and bear the legal responsibility thus caused.

Contact Person: Contact Phone Number:

The Enterprise: (With its Official Chop/Seal)

Date: Year Month Day

Attachment II

List of Certain Organizations Exempt from Registration According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs

1. Organization that took part in the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference:

All-China Federation of Trade Unions、China Communist Youth League、All-China Women Federation、China Association for Science and Technology、 All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese、All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots。All-China Youth Federation、All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce。

2. Organizations that are exempt from registration according to the State Council:

China Federation of Literary and Art Circles、China Writers Association、All-China Journalists' Association、Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries、Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs、China Council for the Promotion of International Trade、China Disabled Persons’ Federation、China Soong Ching Ling Foundation、China Law Society、Red Cross Society of China、China Society for the Study of Ideological and Political Work among Workers and Staff、Western Returned Scholars Association、Huangpu Military Academy Fellow-Student Association、National Association of Vocational Education of China。

3. Eleven Artists’ Associations under China Federation of Literary and Art Circle: Chinese Theatre Association、China Film Association、Chinese Musicians Association、China Artists Association、Chinese Ballad Singers Association、China Dancers Association、Chinese Folk Literature and Art Society、China Photographers Association、China Calligraphers Association、China Acrobats Association、China Television Artists Association。

4. All Provincial, Autonomous Regional, and Municipal-level Federations of Literary and Art Circle and Writers Associations

The Oxfam HK case

2010-04-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

April 9, 2010

Oxfam HK has been known for its work with grassroots NGOs, especially those involved in the more sensitive work of migrant workers and "rights protection." The Notice was apparently for internal consumption but appeared on the website of the Nationalities University (Minzu daxue) for a short time where it attracted the attention of international human rights and media organizations. A source close to Oxfam HK said that this case has caused some problems for Oxfam in terms of how they should present themselves to both the Chinese government, and its international audience and donors in Hong Kong and abroad. According to this source, Oxfam HK has not handled the issue well, though it does not appear to have endangered Oxfam HK's overall operations in China.

Below is the translation of the Notice, thanks to the efforts of China Digital Times.

"To the education working groups of all Party committees of provinces, autonomous regions, and provincial-level municipalities; all Departments of Education; the Education Department of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Military Corps; and all Party committees affiliated with higher education facilities:

According to information obtained by relevant agencies, since 2005, the Hong Kong-based China office of Oxfam International has consistently collaborated with domestic “rights protection” (weiquan) organizations to launch training programs for “university student volunteers.” Recently, these organizations have decided to employ “Internet mass publicity” methods, directly sending recruitment information to advising centers at domestic colleges and universities. This information encourages teachers to recommend people. Oxfam then screens out “suitable candidates” and arranges internships for them at partner “rights protection” organizations in major cities. The internships will last from March to June 2010.

Hong Kong-based Oxfam is one of the NGOs dedicated to infiltrating our interior regions, and its leaders are the backbone of opposition factions. In view of the special nature of our education system, particularly colleges and universities, we must sever and remove any contact with the organization, and not have any form of cooperation with it. Education bureaus and colleges and universities in all regions must unite in thinking and be on heightened guard. Recognize the ill intentions of Oxfam in recruiting “university student volunteers”, and diligently execute surveillance measures.

Presently, be advised of the following related demands:

1) Increase inspection and control of Oxfam’s recruitment of “university student volunteers” at our colleges and universities. We must especially intensify, in a targeted manner, management of college and university career advising centers and campus employment information pages. College and university television broadcasts, school publications, notice boards and walls, and campus Internet networks are not allowed to publish any information related to these training programs.

2) Require that all college and university career advising centers and all college departments not be allowed in any manner to recommend people for these training programs. If you discover teachers or students have participated in such programs, you must immediately adopt appropriate dissuasive measures and successfully execute educational advising actions.

3) In the normal examination and approval process of student community activities, resolutely prevent Oxfam and its cooperating organizations from using financial support or other forms of support to publicize on campuses. Intensify the organizational management of employment and internships for graduated students. Diligently execute employment-advising services, move forward in expanding the strength of employment assistance for particular groups of graduated students, and prevent graduated students from moving towards these “internships” at “rights protection” organizations.

While each region and higher education institution develops these measures, all must show a clear political stand, maintain a vigilant attitude. Furthermore, all must tighten up internally while keeping a relaxed outward appearance, pay attention to systems and methods, and prevent people with ulterior motives from seizing an opportunity to cause trouble. Upon encountering serious situations, all must report in a timely fashion to the local party committee, government, and education bureau."

Feb. 4, 2010, Party Committee of the Ministry of Education

Is it getting a bit chilly for NGOs in China?

2010-04-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

April 8, 2010

Over the last month, a number of events have transpired that suggest an effort by Chinese authorities to better regulate (some might say "control" or "restrict") the NGO sector. In the next few posts, I'll be posting some of the offending notices/regulations and trying to make sense of what this all means for both Chinese and foreign NGOs in China.

Just to summarize these events, the earliest was a Notice issued by the Ministry of Education's Party Committee calling on Chinese universities to prevent the international NGO, Oxfam Hong Kong, from recruiting student volunteers for its projects around China. This was followed by a Notice from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) that required domestic institutions (not just NGOs or nonprofits, but also enterprises, though government organizations, mass organizations and a number of GONGOs appear to be exempted) to provide documentation verifying the nonprofit nature of any foreign donations they received. Then, there was Beijing University's disassociation with the Beijing University Women's Law Studies and Legal Aid Center which will no longer be able to attach itself to BeiDa's Law School, and will have to find a new home. Finally, and most recently, the NGOCN website was closed down with very little explanation.

In the next few posts, I'll provide more information about each of these events, and speculate on whether we're seeing a chill descend on NGOs in China.

Challenges for Grassroots NGOs in China

2010-03-11T02:43:00.000-08:00

March 12, 2010

Following on the last post on grassroots NGOs, here's another post (in Chinese and English) from Yu Fangqiang, who works for Yirenping Center for Anti-Discrimination Law, a Chinese NGO that was in the news last year when its office in Beijing was raided by Chinese authorities, and its publications confiscated. I met Fangqiang and interviewed him a few months prior to that raid when I was in Yunnan interviewing a HIV/AIDS NGO. Fangqiang was working with that NGO to develop a program to provide legal assistance to people who were being discriminated against because they were HIV positive. Not surprisingly for someone who works on the front lines, Fangqiang's observations about the challenges facing grassroots NGOs in China are right on the mark. He also has some interesting criticisms about the way in which international NGOs and foundations deal with grassroots NGOs, giving them funding for projects but ignoring their core funding needs to pay for staff, office equipment, and other expenses that an NGO needs to survive.

This article was taken from an online colloquium on Yazhou Diaocha (Asia Investigation), http://yazhoudiaocha.com/commentary/225.php

2nd Online Colloquium: Challenges for Grassroots NGOs
2009年05月17日 05:01 | 评论(0)

于方强 : 草根组织的挑战
Fangqiang Yu : Challenges for Grassroots NGOs in China

(Scroll down for English text)

在中国大陆组建一个非官方背景的NGO，是相当困难的一件事。这种困难来自：政府政策束缚、官方背景NGO的资源垄断、社会诚信缺失、草根NGO自身能力不足、资金支持方的要求脱离现实。

政府政策束缚

中国大陆《宪法》规定：中华人民共和国公民有言论、出版、集会、结社、游行、示威的自由。但要在大陆结社（组建一个NGO），就必须按照《社会团体登记管理条例》的要求去登记，否则不承认其法律地位。没有合法的地位，公开接受社会捐赠，追究起来是犯罪行为。该法例规定，成立一个组织，除了要有固定的住所、专职工作人员和3万元以上的注册资金外，还必须要有业务主管单位的批准文件。而"业务主管单位"，则是指各级政府部门。这也被称为中国特色的"双重管理制度"----即非政府组织由民政部门和另一行政部门共同管理。而在现实中，很少有行政部门愿意成为"业务主管单位"，因为这会惹来很多"麻烦"。近期，有消息透露，《社会团体登记管理条例》正在修订，不符合注册条件的组织可以采用"备案"的形式获得合法的身份。但根据全国近二十个省市的新规定来看，"备案"令人失望的预期增强。

官方背景NGO的资源垄断

因为大陆严格的非政府组织管理方式，导致一些带有官方背景的NGO才有能力注册。比如一些听起来是NGO的残疾人联合会、妇女联合会、工人委员会等，都是官方背景的NGO，这些组织在中国被称为"GONGO"。甚至现在，还有一些官方NGO的工作人员薪酬由政府拨付。这些"GONGO"曾在很长一段时间内垄断了公益资源，包括资金、人才、社会信任度等。以去年发生的"512汶川大地震"为例，全国的捐款仅能通过中国红十字会、中华慈善总会发放到灾区。其他的机构公布捐赠账号和公开募集捐款，都有违法犯罪的风险。清华大学NGO研究所的一份研究报告也证实了这一点。

社会诚信缺失

从1978年改革开放后，中国大陆在政治、经济上经历了巨大的社会变革。原本的"熟人社会"由于急剧的城市化演变而支离破碎，传统社会价值观也因"金钱至上"的私利主义迅速瓦解。在这种情况下，一个不具有合法地位的草根NGO，需要面临苛刻、甚至无理的质疑和更长时间的社会考验。社会普遍不相信来自民间的个人可以毫无功利目的去做一件对社会有利的事。在由于社会诚信的缺失，商业支持也变得更为功利----他们更愿意将资金投入到令政府满意的领域或者机构。

草根NGO自身能力不足

很多投身NGO的人，都是在试图实现自己的理想。而对于财务、机构管理、对外交流方面则能力较弱。当前大陆很多NGO领袖，不仅没有"公民社会"的概念、不能亲身示范做一个"公民"，还多半是社会的失败者----他们被旧有体制所淘汰，才被迫接触到一个全新的NGO领域，能力视野都有很大的局限。这就会出现财务不透明、人才流失、使命感丧失等"治理危机"，一旦因此而遭受社会质疑时，往往难于招架。

资金支持方的要求脱离现实

现在，中国大陆已经存有很多草根NGO。除了极个别民政注册外，他们或者未注册，或者工商注册。支持这些草根NGO成长的基金会也越来越多，比如：全球基金、亚洲基金会、福特基金会、盖茨基金会等。这些机构对中国草根NGO的成长做出了巨大贡献，但其带来的不良影响也非常深远。他们无视中国大陆草根NGO的现实，而仅仅把草根NGO当成完成项目的工作，往往只支持活动费用，不支持人员工资、行政费用、设备购买、办公室租金。很多草根NGO为了生存而不得不做假账，出现严重的财务问题，资金支持方对这种现象不寻求更好的解决方法反而大加指责，进一步恶化了中国大陆草根NGO的生存环境。这些资金支持方需要明白一个关键道理：在一些特定领域，如IDU人群、MSM人群、HIV感染者、流动人口，草根NGO与社群有着异常紧密的联系，官方或官方NGO没有草根NGO，根本无法完成项目目标。

作者简介：于方强，北京益仁平中心反歧视法律援助事务负责人，关注大陆公民社会发展，涉足领域包括AIDS、HBV、劳工、助学、罕见病等。

Challenges for Grassroots Organizations in China

In mainland China it is extremely hard to start-up a non-governmental organization (NGO) without a background in government. The difficulties are due to restrictive government policies, monopolization of resources by NGOs with government background, a lack of trust throughout the overall society, the lack of capabilities among the grassroots' organizations, and unrealistic expectations from funders.

Restrictive Government Policies

The Constitution of the People's Republic of China requires that all its citizens have the rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom to peaceably assemble, organize, demonstrate and petition. However, in order to organize in mainland China (i.e., to establish an NGO), one has to register the organization according to the Social Organizations Registration and Administration Act. If the organization does not do this it is not protected under the law. It is criminal for such an organization to publicly accept outside donations without a legal status. In addition, to establish such an NGO, they must have a regular business location, full-time staff, a registration capital of more than thirty thousand yuan and official documents with a stamp of approval from the governmental agencies, which have been designated as "supervising offices."

The fact that one non-governmental organization will be co-administered by a civil affairs governmental office and another public administration office represents the unique "Chinese way" of double administration. However, in reality what happens is that few public administration offices actually are interested in bearing the "troubles" of being a "supervising office." Recently the Social Organizations Registration and Administration Act has been amended. It now states that organizations that are disqualified from registering may still get legal status under a separate filing system. However provisions of the amended Act, enacted in nearly twenty provinces and cities across the country, are expected to still be discouraging.

Monopoly of Resources by NGOs with Government Background

Because of the rigorous administration of NGOs, only those with government background are able to register. Some NGOs - such as Disabled Persons' Federation, Women's Federation, National Labor Union, etc. - all have governmental background. These organizations are called "GONGO" in China. Some of the staff of these NGOs are even on the government payroll. These "GONGOs" have long monopolized the philanthropic resources of China, including their funding, human resources, social trust, etc. Take for example last year's Wenchuan Earthquake. Donations from all over the country were only distributed to the stricken region via the Red Cross Society of China or China Charity Federation. Other organizations that publish bank account numbers to solicit and accept donations run the risk of being charged by the court, according to a research report done by the Center of NGOs, at Tsinghua University.

A Lack of Trust Throughout Society

Since the Reform and Opening Policy of 1978, Mainland China has seen tremendous social changes both politically and economically. The past "society of acquaintances" completely fell apart due to the rapid urbanization process. In addition, its traditional social values were devoured by the "money first" principle driven by self interests. In this context a grassroots NGO with no legal status faces harsh and even irrational doubts and a long road to societal acceptance. In general, the public does not believe that one person, with no government affiliation, would do something beneficial for society without a self-interested motive. Also because of this lack of trust, enterprise sponsorships prefer funding causes or organizations that the government has endorsed.

The Lack of Capabilities Among Grassroots Organizations

Admittedly, many people involved with NGOs are idealists who want to realize their dreams for society. They might not be all that great in dealing with finances, administration and external communication. However, many NGO managers in mainland China are people who were 'failures' in society - they are abandoned by the old system and are forced to this whole new world of NGOs, with enormous limitations in both their capability and their visions. "Administration crises" can easily arise in their organizations because of non-transparent financial records, loss of talent, and an eroding sense of mission. Once these difficulties become public, they are almost always unable to be resolved.

Unrealistic Expectations from Funders

Today, there are already many grassroots NGOs in mainland China. Most of them are unregistered, others are registered as business organizations. Fewer are registered at a civil affairs office. There are increasingly more foundations that support these NGOs, such as the Global Fund, The Asia Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Gates Foundation. Even though these agencies have made tremendous contributions to the growth of NGOs in mainland China, their negative impact can be just as profound. They tend to see these NGOs as tools to accomplish their local projects, so they only fund their own specific activities and ignore the broader reality, which is that these NGOs also need to pay bills, salaries, administration costs, office supplies, rent, etc. Consequently, grassroots NGOs sometimes resort to manipulating their books in order to survive and this leads to very serious financial problems. When this happens, funders tend not to seek better solutions, but instead they severely criticize the NGOs, which creates an even more difficult situation.

One important thing these funders need to know:

In specific areas, these NGOs have critical close connections with vulnerable groups such as Injecting Drug Users (the IDU population), Men who have sex with men (the MSM population), people infected with HIV, and the migrant population. The government or governmental NGOs simply cannot accomplish their projects without the assistance from grassroots NGOs.

About the author:

Fangqiang Yu, Managing Partner of Beijing Yirenping Center for Anti-Discrimination Law. He focuses on the social development of citizens living in mainland China, and specialized in AIDS-, HBV-, labor-, education assistance-, rare disease-related fields.

Shaping the Future of Grassroots NGOs

2010-03-07T05:47:00.000-08:00

The following was taken from Asia Catalyst, a blog set up by Meg Davis about human rights and NGOs in Asia.

March 4, 2010 3:54 PM | No Comments
By Christina Lem

At times of change, start-up organizations should ask themselves what they want to become. If you want to remain independent, what is your future plan? Do you eventually want to be absorbed into a larger organization? Will you shut down once the need you're serving is met? NGOs should know how to shape their own future before others make the decision for them.

A few years ago, I visited over 50 non-profit organizations throughout Southern and East Africa on behalf of a foundation. The majority were grassroots groups created by dynamic founders who were determined to provide direct services or advocacy aid to those in terrible circumstances. Often these organizations had tiny staff and relied on community volunteers. They had just enough skills to create a budget and to document metrics that measured outcomes. Some didn't, and were considered to be failing by the international NGOs that were giving them technical advice. Almost all were dedicated to the work, but overwhelmed by weak management skills, low capacity, emotional burnout, limited financial resources, donor fatigue, and lack of infrastructure and trust in government.

This was despite the fact that in 2007 Sub-Saharan Africa received USD 38.7 billion in international aid. Much of the money trickled down to these grassroots organizations via government or large NGOs serving as their intermediaries, where bottlenecks and drip feeds were common. Grassroots NGOs often complained of not receiving the technical skills they needed to become self-sufficient, while their technical advisors, who were either government or large NGOs, frequently felt NGOs were not organized enough to implement what they were being taught. It was a constant, frustrating tug-of-war.

Grassroots NGOs face similar challenges in Asia. In some Asian countries, NGOs also face a difficult legal non-profit registration system. In China, for instance, non-profits without governmental approval must register as business organizations, without tax exemption and non-profit legal protection. Yet these restrictions have not slowed the growth of China's non-profit sector. According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the number of those registered as government-operated non-governmental organizations (GONGOs) jumped from 6,000 nonprofit organizations in the late 1990s to 386,916 in 2007. Most grassroots organizations work without any registration.

For groups like these, private funding is critical for sustainability. But money is only part of the equation. Sooner or later almost all private funders will ask their grantees questions about their plans for long-term sustainability and organizational growth, especially international funders. Most grassroots directors are activists, not business managers. But these two realms may not be as different as they might seem.

In the US, only 30% of start-up businesses still exist after 10 years. According to Scott Shane's "The Illusions of Entrepreneurship," sole proprietorships--such as single-starter non-profits--have the highest rates of failure. One likely reason is that they frequently begin operations without plans for growth. Important questions such as increasing intellectual and resource capacity, succession, and the future growth of the company are often considered too late.

Grassroots NGOs often have to react to too many needs and have little time or energy to think about the long term. But the best approach to gradually increasing capacity? Strategically planning for such growth, in phases. This will require strong management skills and a diverse network of supporters. NGOs should ask themselves:

· Is our organization making a substantial impact? How can we prove this?

· Do we want this organization to grow? In what ways? Do we have the intellectual and management capacity to make this happen?

· How can we involve others--advisors, board members, funders, employees--who might have new and needed skills?

· What will happen if the founder leaves? Is there someone who can effectively take his/her place?

· Since we can't do everything on our own, should we merge with another grassroots organization or larger nonprofit, and share hard-to-find resources?

This kind of long-term organizational planning should be seen as fundamental to the organization's work. Convening, organizing and networking to share resources would further strengthen grassroots organizations as a whole. Knowing the answers to these questions requires an honest evaluation of how the organization functions and can effectively grow - which can be essential to attracting new donors and retaining the ones you have already.

Christina Lem is a consultant to international foundations and non-profit organizations, ranging from start-up groups to large, established entities.

Xu Yongguang's talk at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of China

2010-03-07T05:41:00.000-08:00

Below is my translation of Mr. Xu Yongguang's remarks (along with the original Chinese text) at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of China on February 24, 2010.

非公募基金会：改变中国民间公益生态
徐永光

Nonpublic Fundraising (private) Foundations: Changing China’s Nongovernmental, Public Welfare Environment
Xu Yongguang

春节期间，我做了一个梦，梦见财政部和国家税务总局修改了关于非营利组织免税问题的两个政策性文件。这两个文件收紧了国家对非营利组织的税收优惠政策。为此，在2009年12月，24家基金会负责人致函财政部和国家税务总局，要求与财政部长谢旭人和国家税务总局局长肖捷直接对话，并请求国务院对两个文件的合法性进行审查。

During the Spring Festival, I had a dream to modify the two policy documents of the Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Taxation regarding non-profit organization tax exemption. These two documents restrict the state's preferential taxation policies toward nonprofits (NPOs). To this end, in December 2009, 24 Foundations wrote to the Ministry of Finance and State Administration of Taxation, asking for a direct dialogue with Mr. Xie, the Minister of Finance and State Administration of Taxation director, Mr Xiao Jie, and to request the State Council to carry out a review on the two documents.

这个事件，一方面反映了中国非营利组织发展的政策环境还不尽人意，一方面也反映在非营利组织认为自己的权益受到损害时，哪怕这种损害是来自政府部门，也懂得依据法律程序，来维护自己的权力。

This event, on the one hand shows that China's policy environment for NPOs is unsatisfactory. But it also shows that NPOs know how to protect their own rights in accordance with legal procedures when their rights are being infringed, even by government departments.

去年10月，我率中国非公募基金会赴美访问团，在哈佛大学的一次会议上说：“中国经济体制改革30年来，经济迅猛发展，已经成为世界第三大经济体，令世界感到意外。我相信，未来30年，中国的基金会的发展也会让世界感到意外，有可能是美国老大，中国老二”。中国的同行都以为然。

Last year in October, I led a delegation of China's non-public offering foundations to the United States to a meeting at Harvard University, where I said: "China's economic reforms 30 years ago, rapid economic development has become the world's third largest economy, and surprised the world . I believe that over the next 30 years, China's development of its foundations will surprise the world, and even become second only to the U.S. Chinese foundations all believe this.

2004年中国《基金会管理条例》的出台，使中国非公募基金会得以破茧而出。到2009年短短5年间，非公募从无到有，已经注册成立846家，数量直逼已经发展了30年的公募基金会会（991家）。更令人兴奋的是，因为私人财富的迅速增长，中国的巨型私人基金会已经出现。去年，有两位福建籍企业家相继亮相：上半年，福耀玻璃董事长曹德旺宣布要捐出价值40亿人民币的福耀玻璃股票成立以他父亲名字命名的“河仁基金会”，因此引发了捐股能否成立基金会的争论，促使财政部在当年发出了《关于企业公益性捐赠股权有关财务问题的通知》，明确捐股可以捐赠给基金会。下半年，福建富豪陈发树给刚刚成立的新华都基金会捐股票83亿，使这家基金会一夜之间成为中国资产规模最大的基金会。
非公募基金会作为中国“民间慈善崛起的新生代”（人民日报语），对于改变中国民间公益的生态环境具有重要意义。

China’s "Foundation Management Regulations" passed in 2004 was a breakthrough for China's non-public fundraising foundations. By 2009, just five years later, the number of non-public fundraising foundations have gone from 0 to 846, and nearly matched the number of public fundraising foundations that have developed over the last 30-years (991). Even more exciting is that because of the rapid growth of private wealth, large private foundations have emerged in China. Last year, two Fujian entrepreneurs emerged: in the first half of 2009, Fuyao Chairman Cao Dewang announced he would donate 4 billion yuan in Fuyao shares in his father's name to set up the "Heren Foundation," which led to a controversy over whether you could use company shares to establish a foundation. This prompted the Ministry of Finance to issue this year a "Notice on Financial Issues regarding Equity-linked Corporate Charitable Donations", to clarify that shares could be donated to foundations. In the second half of 2009, Fujian Regal Chen Fa Shu donated 8.3 billion yuan in stock to the newly established Xinhuadu Foundation, making that foundation’s assets the largest in China. Non-public fundraising foundations represent the "rise of a new generation of non-governmental charitable initiatives in China" (People's Daily), and is of great significance to changing the environment for China's nongovernmental public welfare sector.

一、非公募基金会突破了民间组织登记难的制度瓶颈
长期以来，根据民间组织双重管理体制的规定，我国的基金会和慈善组织都带有很强“官办”色彩，只有政府或者其授权的部门才有设立慈善组织的可能。非公募基金会的设立，民政部门既可以做业务管理部门，又是登记注册部门，为企业和企业家回报社会、实现企业社会责任和参与公共事务提供了渠道。换句话说，过去，个人、企业参与公益，只有捐钱的权力，现在有权自己办公益组织了。

我国非公募基金会的发展正处于起飞的初期阶段，可以预期在接下来的10到20年期间还将是设立非公募基金会发展的高潮期。这与世界上各国基金会的发展规律基本吻合。

1. Non-public fundraising foundations have broken through the systemic bottleneck for civil society organization registration.

For a long time, due to the provisions of the dual management system for non-governmental organizations, China's foundations and philanthropic organizations have had a strong government background. Only the government or its authorized departments had the possibility of setting up charitable organizations. For non-public fundraising foundations, the Ministry of Civil Affairs can serve as both the professional supervising agency and the registration agency, in order for enterprises and entrepreneurs to give back to society, and realize corporate social responsibility and provide a channel for participation in public affairs. In other words, in the past, individuals and enterprises only had the power to donate money to participate in public service, now they can establish their own public welfare organizations.

The development of China's non-public fundraising foundations is in the early stages of take-off, and we can expect the next 10 to 20-year period to be the high tide. This will be in line with development of foundations in other countries.

二、非公募基金会突破了民间慈善资源配置不合理的瓶颈
我国的公募基金会已经有20多年的发展历史。这些基金会的资金筹集、善款使用和日常管理等方方面面，难以脱离政府的控制和影响，民间捐赠的使用往往是从民间流向政府，弥补政府公共财政投入的不足。这既与政府职能转变的改革大势不符，也抑制了民间慈善力量的生长发育。中国非营利组织的增加值和就业人数，在服务业中所占比例大约都只占0.3%，与世界平均水平相差甚远，民间公益服务机构获取资源难是一个重要原因。这是中国民间组织继登记注册难之后的第二个制度瓶颈。

2. Non-public fundraising foundations have broken through the irrational bottleneck blocking the allocation of resources for nongovernmental charitable foundations.

Public fundraising foundations have a history of more than 20 years in China. The public foundation's fund-raising, donations, daily management, etc., are not easily separated from government control. And the use of private donations often gets diverted from the people to the government, in order to make up shortfalls in the government’s budget. This trend does not conform with the reform of government functions, and inhibits the growth and development of non-governmental charitable efforts. Chinese non-profit organizations represent only about 0.3% of the service industry in terms of value-added and employment. This is a far cry from the world average. Non-governmental public welfare organizations’ difficulty in getting access to resources is an important reason. But the most important reason has to do with the difficulty of registering non-governmental organizations.

非公募基金会可以自主地确定自己的公益项目和资助方向，慈善资源可以流向政府系统之外的民间公益服务领域，成为民间公益服务机构（俗称草根组织）的重要资源提供者，再造公益产业链，这将从根本上改善民间公益发展的生态环境。
在2008年汶川地震发生后，非公募基金会反映迅速，成为草根组织迅速投入抗震救灾和灾后重建的重要资金提供者。如我所在的南都基金会，就资助了60多家草根组织的灾后重建项目。

Non-public fundraising foundations have the autonomy to determine the direction of their public welfare projects and funding. Charitable resources can flow towards public service areas outside of the government system, and turn into an important resource provider for non-governmental public welfare organizations (commonly known as grass-roots organizations). This will fundamentally improve the environment for the development of non-governmental public welfare.

After the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, non-public fundraising foundations rapid response became a major provider of funds for grassroots organizations’ rapid involvement in the earthquake relief and reconstruction. For example, Nandu Foundation which I work for, has funded more than 60 grass-roots organizations engaged in post-disaster reconstruction projects.

三、非公募基金会突破了民间组织独立性和治理难的制度瓶颈
非公募基金会出现之前，从政府部门脱胎出来的公募基金会因其与政府之间存在千丝万缕的联系，难以保持其自身的独立性。非公募基金会与政府之间没有财产上的纠葛，也无人事上的交错，具有独立于政府的人格，为确保其独立性并实现以理事会为决策核心的有效治理提供了制度保证。

3. Non-public fundraising foundations have broken the systemic bottleneck restricting the independence and governance of civil society organizations.

Before the advent of non-public fundraising foundations, public fundraising foundations that emerged out of government departments, had a hard time asserting their own independence because of the inextricable link that exists the government and these foundations. Nonpublic fundraising foundations do not share property or personnel with the government and thus are more independent of government.

四、非公募基金会突破了民间组织人才严重匮乏的瓶颈
以往中国非营利组织从业者主要是两部分人，一是原来的政府工作人员或退休干部，二是追求社会理想的知识分子，缺少有经营管理能力的专业人才。非公募基金会使大量熟谙现代公司治理和市场管理专业的人士投身公益领域，同时，非公募基金会可以以接近于市场的薪酬待遇吸引年轻专业人才，对改善非营利部门的人才结构产生了重大影响。
非公募基金会的成长对于中国公民社会的培育和发展具有举足轻重的影响。在大发展中要避免大混乱，这是业内同仁的共识。为此，2009年中国非公募基金会发展论坛发布了《非公募基金会自律宣言》。今年1月，30多家非公募基金会和公募基金会联合发起创建中国基金会中心，让基金会自律从信息透明开始，通过提高基金会的透明度、公信力，通过提升基金会行业的自律、自治、自我规范和自我服务的能力，来引领中国整个民间公益行业的健康发展。

4. Nonpublic fundraising foundations are breaking through the bottleneck of lack of capable practitioners in civil society organizations.

In the past, practitioners in China’s non-profit organizations were mainly of two kinds. One was former government staff or retired cadres. The second was intellectuals in the the pursuit of social ideals. What was lacking was professionals with management capacity. Nonpublic fundraising foundations have brought into the public arena a large number of such professionals who are well versed in modern corporate governance and market regulation. At the same time, non-public fundraising foundations can offer salaries that come closer to compensation packages that attract young professionals, and can have a major impact on improving the personnel structure of the non-profit sector.

The growth of nonpublic fundraising foundations has had a significant impact in fostering China’s civil society. In the large-scale development to avoid chaos, this is the consensus of colleagues in the industry. To this end, in 2009, China's non-public fundraising foundations Development Forum issued the "Declaration of self-discipline for non-public fundraising foundation." In January of this year, more than 30 non-public fundraising foundations and public fundraising foundations joined together to found the China Foundation Center, to encourage foundations to start disciplining themselves through information transparency, thereby improving the transparency and credibility of foundations, and improving the discipline, governance, standardization and service of foundations, so that we can look forward to the healthy development of China’s nongovernmental public welfare sector.

The 2008 Sichuan earthquake and China's NGOs

2010-02-24T23:03:00.001-08:00

February 25, 2010

Yesterday, I spoke at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) about the impact of the 2008 Sichuan (or Wenchuan) earthquake on China’s NGOs, along with Xu Yongguang, the director and cofounder of the Nandu (Narada) Foundation and a prominent leader in Chinese NGO circles.

The earthquake was widely seen as stimulating an outpouring of volunteerism and public donations, the likes of which has never been seen in the history of the PRC. But what was less well understood was the way in which the earthquake energized the Chinese NGO community which responded almost immediately and from all corners of the country to the disaster.

We are now much better informed thanks to several Chinese academic studies of the NGO response, and reports by NGOs such as China Development Brief (the Chinese version), and Huizeren, which have published their own valuable accounts of how NGOs performed in the earthquake relief and reconstruction. One of the most comprehensive accounts is a survey of the NGOs that participated in the earthquake relief. The survey involved researchers from Beijing Normal University and Tsinghua University’s well-known NGO Research Center, and has been published in Chinese under the title, Wenchuan dizhen: gongmin xingdong baogao – jinji jiuyuanzhongde NGO (The Wenchuan earthquake: a report of citizen action – NGOs involved in emergency relief). Deng Guosheng, a professor at the Tsinghua University NGO Center, has also written a book titled Xiangying Wenchuan: zhongguo jiuzai jizhi fenxi (Responding to Wenchuan: an analysis of China’s disaster relief mechanisms) which contains several chapters on the NGO response.

My presentation at the FCCC was based on a paper that I coauthored in English with Professor Deng who has been a tireless advocate for China’s NGOs. In that paper, we argue that the earthquake energized the NGO community in important ways. NGOs from different parts of the country, and different sectors, responded immediately, forming partnerships with mass organizations and local governments, as well as networks with other NGOs and GONGOs. The network part is important because it shows that NGOs are now capable of organizing and coordinating horizontally, across different sectors, quite rapidly and doing so independently of the government. What we are seeing here is the outlines of a civil society.

But a functioning civil society requires more than a committed, energized group of NGOs. It also requires a supportive legal, social and economic environment, and the NGO response to the earthquake showed that China has a long ways to go in creating such an environment. Legally, the biggest issue is registration. It is difficult for NGOs to get registered, and impossible for NGO networks. As a result, the NGO networks operating in the earthquake region were essentially illegal, which made it difficult for them to work with local governments and get financial support. One of the two biggest networks eventually closed up shop a month after the earthquake. The other, the 512 Voluntary Relief Services Center (512 minjian jiuyuan fuwu zhongxin) is still operating on a shoestring budget because they can’t get funding as an “illegal organization”. Socially, NGOs still have viewed suspiciously by society and local governments, although NGO participation in the earthquake went a long ways to improving their social image.

Economically, the earthquake showed how much public fundraising favors the government. Donations from the public in 2008 hit an all-time high of 100 billion yuan, of which 76 billion was for the earthquake relief. Due to restrictive fundraising laws, however, most NGOs and private foundations cannot raise money publicly. As a result, very little of the public donations for the earthquake relief went to NGOs or private foundations. Almost all of it went to government departments under the Civil Affairs ministry, or to government-run foundations (GONGOs) like the Chinese Red Cross and the China Charity Foundation. Ultimately, because these foundations are government controlled, the public is not informed about how their donations are being spent. This issue touched off a debate among academics and NGOs about the need to draft new regulations governing public donations.

Still, there are some positive trends in the economic picture for NGOs. One is that after the earthquake, for the first time in the PRC’s history, GONGOs have started disbursing funds to grassroots NGOs. The most publicized case was the Chinese Red Cross setting aside 20 million in 2008 mostly for NGO projects in the earthquake area. One of the beneficiaries of this Red Cross money was Global Village, a Beijing-based environmental NGO that is rebuilding a village near the city of Pengzhou that was damaged by the earthquake. I visited that project in June and Global Village appeared to be well on their way to finishing much of the housing for the farmers in the village.

The other is the rise of private foundations since the Foundation regulations were passed in 2004. These private foundations are not allowed to raise funds publicly, but they can raise funds through private channels. Many of these private foundations are being established by private entrepreneurs and corporations, and their emergence is significant because they represent the conjoining of China’s entrepreneurial class with the public welfare sector.

One of the people at the forefront of both of these trends is Xu Yongguang, who I profiled in an earlier post. Xu used to head the China Youth Development Foundation where he was the brainchild for the Project Hope schools, and since 2005 has been heading the Nandu Foundation. NGO leaders have told me that Xu is one of the people responsible for the Red Cross’ change of heart in funding NGO projects. Xu is also a leader in the world of private foundations. Together with a number of other private foundations, he plans to establish a China Foundation Center which seeks to provide a set of standards for, and information about, China’s foundations, and thereby promote the growth, transparency and credibility of China’s private foundations.

I’ll be posting Xu’s remarks about the importance of private foundations for the nonprofit, NGO community in China in a later post.

Profile: Xu Yongguang, founder of Nandu (Narada) Foundation

2010-01-24T07:37:00.000-08:00

January 23, 2010

A few days ago, I interviewed Xu Yongguang, founder of the private foundation, Narada or Nandu in Chinese. Mr. Xu was at the top of the list of people I’ve wanted to interview, and I’ve asked him to speak with me about the impact of the Sichuan earthquake on China’s NGOs when I give a talk on that topic at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club later in February.

Xu is arguably the best-connected social entrepreneurs in China, controls millions of yuan in funds through his position in Nandu, and has made it a top priority to support grassroots NGOs in China. Xu’s impact started to be seen after the Sichuan earthquake when most of the public’s donations poured into coffers of government-run foundations (GONGOs) like the China Charity Foundation and the Chinese Red Cross. Since the earthquake, not only has Nandu funded many grassroots NGOs, but Xu has pushed these government-run foundations such as the Chinese Red Cross, the Poverty Alleviation Foundation to start giving money to grassroots NGOs for the first time in the history of the PRC. This flow of funding from domestic foundations has begun to change the funding structure of grassroots NGOs which used to rely almost solely on international funding. Since 2008, some NGOs are beginning to see their reliance on international funding drop to around half, instead of the usual 80-90 percent.

Xu is a fascinating character because he was a high official in the 1980s, no less than the director of the Organization Department of the Communist Youth League. Then in 1988, he made his break away from government service when he founded the China Youth Development Foundation, a government-run foundation famous for its Project Hope schools that have been built in poor areas throughout China. Xu is the brainchild of Project Hope, and is proud of his achievement. He told me in the interview something that I had read in the media, and that was none of the Project Hope schools in Sichuan had collapsed in the earthquake. When he said that, I asked him if it was really true. He answered with an emphatic yes.

According to Xu, during the 17 years he was overseeing Project Hope, they raised funds totaling more than 3 billion yuan, assisted 2.89 million children in poor areas, and built 12,559 Hope primary schools. As the driving force behind Project Hope, Xu can take much of the credit for building what is perhaps China's most influential brand of social welfare.

Project Hope also caused Xu a great deal of distress because in 1994, a Hong Kong publication claimed that Xu was embezzling money from Project Hope funds. Xu took the publication to court for libel and eventually won a court settlement in 2000. But the publicity surrounding the embezzlement claims eventually took its toll, and in 2005, Xu left the China Youth Development Foundation to start the Nandu Foundation with an injection of 300 million yuan by the Shanghai Nandu Group.

Xu Yongguang and Nandu are important not just because of what they are doing, but because of an important trend they represent. Nandu is one of a number of private foundations that were started after the 2004 Regulations on Foundations was issued. The Youcheng Foundation and Vantone Foundation are two others. These private foundations represent an important force in China’s civil society because for the first time in the PRC’s history, wealthy private entrepreneurs are engaging in social and environmental issues by starting their own foundations and funding nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations.

NGOs in Vietnam

2010-01-24T07:34:00.000-08:00

January 23, 2010

I apologize for not posting in a while. I was travelling in Vietnam and Bali, and have to say I came away with a good impression of nonprofit/nongovernmental organizations in Vietnam. There, they seem to be out in the public eye, more open about their nonprofit enterprises. I ate at a number of restaurants established by organizations that help streetchildren and train them for jobs in the hospitality business, namely KOTO in Hanoi which has fabulous food, and another called STREETS in town of Hoi An in central Vietnam. I was also happy to see that Lonely Planet Vietnam has a section on these nonprofit enterprises and contains recommendations on which ones to patronize. As far as I know, Lonely Planet China has little mention of nonprofits, but hopefully, that’ll change.

Profile of Chen Yongsong, founder of EcoNetwork

2009-12-15T22:54:00.001-08:00

Profile: Chen Yongsong

Chen Yongsong is the founder of EcoNetwork (Yunnan shengtaiwang), an environmental NGO headquartered in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province. In January of 2009, I arranged with Chen to meet him at his Green Home for Youth (qingshaonian luse jiayuan) located in a village in the Lashihai district of Lijiang. Lashihai is a large lake located about 8 km to the west of the old city of Lijiang. It is also home to a community watershed project started by Yu Xiaogang, the well-known founder of the environmental NGO Green Watershed. Our car took us through the new city, then up a winding mountain road which leveled off after a few hundred feet. To our right, we could see the clear, blue green lake nestled in plain surrounded by mountains.

Chen met us on the road near his school. He’s a middle-aged, small man with graying hair and a bookish look. He took us down a dirt path through red metal gates decorated with couplets on the side given to him by farmers in the village. The couplets said something about when the government provides security, and the people are at peace, then there is happiness throughout the land. Next to the door was a white plaque with the name of the school in black characters (see picture on right). He led us into the school, which was a traditional two story building inside a courtyard. He gave us a tour of the school which consisted of an office on the first floor with a few computers and a meeting table, and environmental exhibits of their biogas project, pictures of different kinds of renewable energy, pictures and models of bird species indigenous to Yunnan and the Lashihai area, and books about environmental protection for the students – one of which was written by him.

After the tour, we went back down to the meeting room and had tea. He poured us some tea which he called Pu’er forest tea that was given to him by a farmer in Xishuanbanna. Chen and I talked sitting out in the courtyard (see picture to left) in the warm sun under a bright blue sky. Here is his story.

Chen was born in August 7, 1960 and attended Yunnan Normal University where he was an English major and took classes in English literature and American history. After he graduated in 1985, he was assigned to a job in the Yunnan provincial government foreign affairs office.

In 1988, he quit his government job and jumped into the sea (xiahai). He originally wanted to study abroad in the U.S. but then got married and had to stay put. He took various jobs, going into real estate, helping start a factory, teaching. He had no idea of or interest in environmental protection at the time.

Then in Jan. 2000, he came across an informal network of people, most of them working for international NGOs who came together to discuss environmental issues. This network was looking for a coordinator who spoke English and could take minutes of the meetings and eventually set up an organization. Then in 2001, the Yunnan provincial government got nervous about foreigners and Chinese meeting to talk about environmental issues, and decided to break up the network. The foreigners left, but Chen decided to keep the network going. At that time, in 2001, the Yunnan provincial government and the British international development agency had a joint project planned for the 2001-2005 period to promote sustainable development. This project had a large budget. Chen decided to write up a proposal to use NGOs to disseminate the idea of sustainable development among the broader public. The British embassy liked the idea and gave him money for his project. Thus EcoNetwork was born.

EcoNetwork’s main office is based in Kunming, but Chen decided to select 4 project sites, each in different areas and addressing a problem unique to that area. In Lijiang, it was cultural preservation of the Naxi, who are ethnic minorities living around Lashihai; in another area of Yunnan, they have a project protecting the black-necked crane, and so forth.

When I asked him why he decided to join the network, when he had no interest in or experience in environmental protection, his first response was that he had tried so many other jobs and failed at them, or wasn’t interested in them, so he started looking around for something else. He first joined the network to practice his English. He had to write up the minutes of the network’s meetings, and began to realize that they were all about environmental issues. He also saw that there were few Chinese participating, most were foreigners, and felt that maybe there was a possible career here.

The lack of Chinese interest in these types of discussions also made him realize the importance of public participation if environmental protection was going to be a reality. Environmental protection wasn’t going to be solved solely by the government. But participation required a mechanism. He began to think about the importance of NGOs and volunteerism as a mechanism for getting people involved, and giving them a sense of social responsibility.

In 2001, he applied to the U.S. Embassy’s International Visitors Program to visit the U.S. and visit NGOs and find out more about volunteerism. He flew into the U.S. on Sept. 12, the day after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. His plane was rerouted from NYC to Buffalo, and he remembers having to go through extensive searches in the airport.

After he returned from the U.S., Chen began to set up opportunities for university students to volunteer in educating others about the environment. The Green Home for Youth is such a project that provides training to both Chinese and international student volunteers. Chen wants to not just protect the environment but also to change society through volunteerism. He gives an example of university students planting trees, and helping teachers in the village. These teachers don’t get much money and are burdened by other duties, so he asks university student volunteers to come and help teachers in different ways – providing activities to stimulate the children, observing classes and making suggestions to teachers.

Chen’s NGO is like many NGOs scattered across China. It is small, not well known, and isolated, yet seeks to promote awareness of two values that receive too little attention in China: sustainable development and public participation.

Three NGOs in Nanjing

2009-11-30T05:12:00.000-08:00

November 23, 2009

In a recent trip to Nanjing, I visited three NGOs. They couldn’t have been any different and highlight the organizational diversity of NGOs in China. The first was an environmental NGO called Green Stone, and located in a small two room apartment in an alley off a street lined with stores selling metal and rubber piping, and other industrial equipment. It would be the last place I’d think to look for an environmental NGO.

This NGO got started with a few student volunteers who in 2007 decided to establish an NGO that they registered as a business. It has two full-time staff, and most of their funding came from international foundations based in China.

We then went to a rundown hotel where we listened to the organizer of an environmental volunteer group that is unregistered. This person also happened to be a local government official who had retired recently and was devoting full time to his volunteer group. He told us some stories about the conflict over development projects in Nanjing between government leaders and NGOs and citizens who oppose unrestricted development. Most of these development projects were centered in the Purple Mountain area, famous as the site of the Sun Yatsen Masoleum, where this group focuses its activities.

One story is about the building of an observation tower on Purple Mountain. After their volunteer group contacted the media, and two lawyers filed a lawsuit, the Nanjing mayor eventually had the tower dismantled.

Another case involving the protection of forests in the Purple Mountain area occurred in 2002. The volunteer group contacted Liang Congjie, founder of the Beijing environmental NGO Friends of Nature, who used his position as a CPPCC member to write a letter to the Nanjing government. In the end, some trees were cut, but others were preserved. Liang Congjie noted this action as the first time Nanjing citizens had stood up to protect their city’s resources.

Another case in 2004 came up when the city government announced the building of a 5 star hotel in Purple Mountain. The volunteer group sent letters to the Nanjing city officials raising questions about this project, but didn’t get any response. They then contacted some media outlets, but were told by Nanjing officials to stop involving the media. The project went through but with some modifications to lessen the environmental impact.

In another project, the Nanjing government invited a U.S. design firm to come and design a bar area. Once again, they contacted the media which caused Nanjing officials a big headache but forced them to meet with their group.

The situation of NGOs and volunteer groups in Nanjing is fairly good now, but because their group has opposed development projects, they’ve gotten a lot of pressure from the government. As a result, his group now focuses on less sensitive issues such as protecting a certain species of butterfly.

He notes that there are still many restrictions on NGO registration, and he hasn’t seen much change in the local government’s attitude in the last few years. His group is unregistered because he can’t find a supervising unit. He uses the bank account of a local government agency when he needs to deposit funds, but when he asked this agency if it would sponsor his group for registration, they said no. The general attitude of local leaders in Nanjing toward groups like his, he says, is still one of suspicion rather than support. He says there was a forum held by the city environmental protection bureau and environmental NGOs in Nanjing a few years ago, but after the forum was over, Nanjing leaders wrote a letter criticizing the meeting.

His stories were a reminder that while NGOs do have some allies among influential activists, certain government departments like the environmental protection bureau, and various media outlets, they still lack legitimacy and clout in China.

In the afternoon, we saw a very different kind of NGO when we went to visit the Amity Foundation which is located in quiet compound next to Nanjing University. Amity is located in the former residence of the president of Jinling University. They had just finished moving into a state of the art building next door which had 3 floors of offices with cubicles full of new computers, desks and shelves. At the top floor was a library. In the basement where we congregated, there was a state of the art conference room.

Amity was founded in 1985 by Chinese Christians and runs a wide range of social and environmental programs throughout China. It has a budget of close to 100 million yuan, larger than any other NGO I’ve come across in China. While it can be considered a NGO, it’s registration status suggests it has good connections with the government. It is the only independent NGO that I known of that is registered as a public fundraising foundation. This means it has the authority to raise funds publicly. The other public fundraising foundations I know of are all GONGOs. Amity is registered with the provincial Civil Affairs department, and its supervising unit is the provincial Overseas Chinese Friendship Association.

During my visit, I was told two interesting pieces of information. One is that Amity has just started a capacity building program to promote the development of grassroots NGOs. The other is that the Sichuan earthquake energized not only conventional NGOs, but also faith-based NGOs such as Buddhists charities. One Amity staff told me she had met with a number of Buddhist organizations who told her about temples in Sichuan that had started their own charities after the earthquake. On the development of Buddhist charities, take a look at Andre Laliberte’s chapter on the topic in our edited volume, State and Society Responses to Social Welfare Needs (Routledge, 2009).

On what Obama can do for NGOs on his visit to China

2009-11-14T05:34:00.000-08:00

November 14, 2009

On the eve of Obama’s first trip to Beijing, there has been talk about whether he should raise the human rights issue. Here’s my take on this. Obama should address human rights in China by recognizing the progress made by Chinese NGOs. After all, he knows what it’s like to be a Chinese NGO.

In an article he wrote in 1988 titled “Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City”, Barack Obama recounts an episode in which a public school aide says she can’t understand why he, a college graduate, would go into community organizing. Obama asks her why. Her response: " 'Cause the pay is low, the hours is long, and don't nobody appreciate you."

She could have been describing what it was like working for a Chinese NGO which face not only problems with raising funds, but also lack of legitimacy and respect from the government, business community and society at large.

As a former community organizer, Obama has a natural connection to Chinese NGOs, and he should play on it when addressing the human rights issue in his upcoming trip to China. Thus, rather than criticize China’s human rights record, which he will probably not do publicly, he could meet with grassroots NGO leaders and recognize their efforts. Moreover, in his meetings with Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, he could take the time to commend them for encouraging NGOs and other social organizations to play a bigger role in addressing many of China’s environmental and social problems.

Normally, China’s NGOs work quietly on the margins, educating people on China’s tremendous environmental problems, helping migrant workers recover back wages, integrating mentally challenged youth into the community, and counseling women in abusive relationships. But NGOs and volunteer groups played a very public role in the relief and reconstruction effort following the massive Sichuan earthquake in 2008. You might say 2008 was the coming-out year for Chinese NGOs and volunteers who showed many in Chinese society were willing to lend a hand to address China’s many social and environmental problems. Obama could mention these efforts to Hu and Wen as a way to bring the value of NGOs to Hu and Wen’s attention.

Obama’s mention of China’s NGOs would of course be symbolic. But his actions and words, no matter how small, would mean the world to them. His support would give NGOs a measure of recognition at the highest levels of the Chinese government, and encourage NGOs to move forward, despite political and legal obstacles, and lack of support and recognition from the government, businesses, and society at large.

As a former community organizer, Obama knows NGOs need all the encouragement they can get.

There is also evidence that praising China for progress they’ve made, is more productive than harping on their shortcomings. In 1996, Carter wrote a letter to Jiang Zemin about his delegation’s favorable assessment of the ongoing village election experiment. Soon after, Jiang began to pay more attention to village elections and lending them his support. Obama could do the same for China’s NGOs.

Profile: Lu Fei, founder of NGOCN

2009-11-01T07:31:00.001-08:00

November 1, 2009

In this blog, I hope to put a human face on the emerging NGO scene by profiling some of the NGO founders and activists I’ve met and interviewed for my research on NGOs.

I’d like to start out with a profile of a young man I met in Kunming. His name is Lu Fei. He’s not one of the better known activists out there, but he’s an interesting character and has done a great deal for civil society organizations and social causes for someone so young. He’s really an atypical Chinese youth, but also at the forefront of a growing interest among many Chinese youths in volunteerism and social issues.

I met Lu Fei at my hotel room near Yunnan University. I had called him because he was mentioned as one of the founders of NGOCN Development and Exchange Network (NGOCN Fazhan Jiaoliu Wang), otherwise known by its website address, ngocn.org. NGOCN is one of the most popular and widely used communication platforms serving NGOs in China. Like its Beijing counterpart, China Development Brief, NGOCN posts articles, job listings, news about conferences and funding opportunities, and a regular newsletter on the NGO/nonprofit sector.

I was surprised by Lu Fei’s youth. He looked like your typical college computer science student, spiky hair, not much of a fashion or social sense, and a dreamy look in his eyes. But when he started talking, you began to realize he was more a doer than a dreamer.

Lu Fei started NGOCN with a friend, Ben Li, in January of 2005 when they were both working in the Kunming office of Oxfam Hong Kong. They felt international NGOs had a dominant presence in Yunnan, and wanted to create a platform to promote the growth of domestic NGOs in China. In the first year, they relief on volunteers to run the office. In 2006, he left Oxfam and went to work full time for NGOCN with funding from Oxfam.

Lu was only in his mid 20s when he started NGOCN but he surprised me when he told me NGOCN was the fourth organization he’d started. He started his first venture after he graduated from high school and spent the summer travelling in the west of China and seeing the obstacles to education in poor areas. He decided to set up a fund using the internet to raise money for disadvantaged children in western China.

Lu spent one year in college in Beijing, majoring first in computer science, then in public administration, but then dropped out and went travelling in Tibet. There he saw many children who lacked books, so he and a friend started a website to contact publishers, friends and others to contribute books to schools in Tibet. He would track the books to make sure they got to the children.

In 2004, he returned home to Guangdong and started an organization with some friends devoted to poverty relief. He had some differences of opinion though with the board of directors and left soon after.

Lu tells me his parents haven’t approved of the direction he’s taken his life. When I asked him what his parents do, he said they work for the Civil Affairs bureau in Guangdong, the government agency that regulates NGOs.

Days after that interview, I went to Chengdu to interview NGOs there about their response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. There I found that Lu was responsible for organizing what turned out to be largest NGO network in response to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. On the day of the earthquake, he contacted a number of NGOs who got together and formed the Sichuan NGO Earthquake Relief Coordinating Office (Sichuan minjian jiuzai lianhe bangongshi). This was a virtual network of NGOs formed to secure and deliver supplies from around the country to the earthquake areas. Within a few days, it grew to include more than 100 organizations, and distributed more than

Lu never mentioned his role in this network to me, and it has never been mentioned in the many articles I’ve read about the participation of NGOs in the earthquake relief. But I count it as another important achievement in Lu’s short career as an NGO activist.

Yu Keping on China's "government-led civil society"

2009-10-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

October 24, 2009

In yesterday’s China Daily, there is an article in the Opinion page about Yu Keping’s views on political reform in China. Yu is well known for his book, Democracy is a Good Thing, where he argues that democracy is the best system available, but that democracy in China will come about differently than in the West. The article spends most of its time though on Yu’s views on civil society and NGOs in particular.

Yu is bullish on China’s civil society and sees NGOs playing an important role in helping the government to maintain social stability by cooperating with the government in addressing social problems. In this regard, he sees NGOs playing a different role in China than they do in the West because they are being guided by parameters set by the government. He calls China’s civil society an example of government-led civil society.

Yu’s views are similar to those voiced by some NGOs I have interviewed. These NGOs stress the importance of working together with the government. They see cooperation with the government, in particular basic-level governments at the district, street-committee and township levels, as the best way to expand their service provision, and thus their influence. Yet this view also raises the question of how to treat NGOs who do not want to cooperate with the government, who want to work on behalf of their own members rather than on behalf of the public interest? Some NGOs tend to look down on such “selfish” NGOs, but as Robert Putnam argues nonpolitical associations such as sports clubs can play an important role in promoting civic engagement and social trust, which Putnam sees as important preconditions for democratic consolidation. In stating that most Chinese NGOs are willing to cooperate with the government for the public interest, while “some act in self-interest or even harbor hidden agenda”, Yu seems to be implying that “selfish” NGOs do not have a place in China’s civil society.

Yu’s notion of “government-led civil society” also caught my eye because it sounds similar to Michael Frolic’s concept of “state-led civil society” which he advanced in his 1997 book, Civil Society in China. Yu here seems to mean something different that Frolic who was talking about “social organizations and quasi-administrative units created by the state”. In other words, what we sometimes call government-organized NGOs (GONGOs). Yu, on the other hand, is referring to NGOs that aren’t necessarily created by the state, but cooperating with it. A civil society whose goals are one with the state.

I have some problems with both these terms. First of all, Frolic’s notion of a state-led civil society is outdated. While there are many so-called NGOs that have been created by the state, what Wang Ming of Tsinghua University calls “top-down” NGOs, there are also a rapidly growing number of “bottom-up” NGOs that are created independent of the state. Second, Yu’s “government-led” is a misnomer and denies agency to the NGOs that want to cooperate with the government. More and more, NGO cooperation with the state is taking place not because the government is telling NGOs to do so. It is doing so because of strategic planning by NGOs, many of them of the “bottom-up” variety, who see cooperation as beneficial for their own long-term interests.

I prefer the term “negotiated civil society” to “government-led civil society” because it views government-NGO cooperation as a two-way street, and acknowledges agency on both sides. Of course, the government is the more powerful player here, but it does not “lead” the NGO. Rather cooperation is the result of negotiations between the two sides.

Inaugural post

2009-10-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

October 1, 2009

This is the first posting on my new blog, NGOs in China. I chose to post it on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the PRC for reasons that I think will become clear as the blog evolves. I hope you find the blog useful. If not, let me know why.

I’ve been thinking about starting this blog since last year when I was editing a book on Chinese NGOs with Jonathan Schwartz, a colleague of mine who teaches at SUNY New Paltz. Editing that book with Jonathan opened my eyes to the richness and diversity of grassroots NGOs in China. I have to confess that I came to the NGO scene only recently, after forays into local governance, and corruption in China. But I thought I understood China’s political landscape pretty well, until I started editing this book, and then it became apparent how little I did know about the NGO scene and how quickly it’s developed over the last few years. My thanks to the other contributors to that volume who helped me better understand the Chinese NGO sector: Tim Hildebrandt, Catherine Keyser, Joan Kaufman, Andre Laliberte, Marsha Smith, Jennifer Turner, and Hong Zhang.

In editing the book, I found that grassroots NGOs have been sprouting up all around the country, despite the authoritarian political system, an unclear and unwelcoming regulatory environment, and a state-dominated, profit-obsessed society that is only beginning to understand what NGOs, nonprofits and philanthropic foundations are. These NGOs or proto-NGOs take all sorts of forms that often bear little resemblance to NGOs and nonprofits in industrial democracies. But they are engaged in addressing a wide range of social problems, using visions, ideas and approaches that are refreshingly different from the government’s to carry out social, legal, political and ideological change from the bottom up.

I became so fascinated by NGOs that I decided to start another book project, this time one focused on the NGO activists themselves, their background, what influenced them to go into NGO work, and their strategies and ideas for expanding their influence, and carrying out social and political change in an authoritarian system.

In January of 2009, I took a trip to Yunnan and Sichuan to interview NGOs there, including NGOs that had responded to the earthquake that hit western Sichuan in May of 2008. My interviews with NGO leaders there, hearing about their projects, their ideas, their ambitions and their failures, convinced me that I needed to do more to tell the story of grassroots NGOs to an English-speaking audience. Since then, I have been back to Sichuan in June of 2009 to follow up on what NGOs were doing in the earthquake reconstruction, and interviewing NGO founders here in Beijing.

So the main reason for starting this blog is to record and thereby recognize some of the diversity and scope of the NGO community here, and communicate it to an English-speaking audience. I realize that is a tall order, and can’t promise much. The NGO community in China is too large for one person to do justice to in a blog. It will be a record of my own discussions with, and readings of, NGO activists, academics, and others who inhabit and contribute to the development of the nonprofit, nongovernmental, charitable sector here in China. Whenever possible, I will be asking people to write a guest column for this blog.

I have no ambitions of filling the large void left by China Development Brief (CDB), an NGO started by Nick Young. CDB did a great job of informing both Chinese and English speakers about Chinese NGOs and civil society, as well as many other aspects of social development. Unfortunately, it was closed down (although the Chinese counterpart still works out of the same office space) and Nick was ordered to leave the country in August of that year. The closing down of CDB meant the loss of an important source of English-language information about the China NGO scene, and got me thinking of ways to revive CDB in another form, or failing that, starting a blog that would keep English-language readers informed about NGO developments in China. As I found out, trying to revive CDB proved too sensitive, and so a blog became the next best option.