Non-Governmental Organisations in China

Yiyi Lu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780415541831
• eBook ISBN: 9781134047352
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As Chinese society becomes more open, and hopes rise that control by the Communist Party may become more relaxed, a great deal is expected from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the formation of civil society. This book, based on extensive original research including detailed interview research in over 40 Chinese NGOs, discusses the current position of NGOs within China. It argues that although all NGOs – both those originating as a result of government initiatives, and those which are popularly-organised – are dependent on the state, all enjoy a very large degree of autonomy. This autonomy arises in part because of the limited capacity of central government to control NGOs, and in part because of the fragmented and non-monolithic nature of the state, which enables individual bureaucratic patrons to protect particular NGOs, especially officially-organised ones, from the full impact of state control. The book also discusses the skill base of NGOs, showing that this is somewhat limited, and argues that, contrary to current hopes that NGOs and thereby civil society may flourish, the lack of state control is already leading to an "uncivil society" where rules do not exist or are ignored, and where organisations which are supposed to work for the public interest are being used to serve illegitimate private interests instead.

1 Introduction

When I first embarked on this study, my plan was to conduct an assessment of the performance of social welfare NGOs (sometimes also called ‘third sector organizations’) that had emerged in China since the 1990s. This was to be compared with the performance of both public and private sector social welfare organizations. I hypothesized that NGOs were able to develop because they displayed some comparative advantages vis-à-vis organizations in the other two sectors. After starting the field work, however, I quickly realized that such a research project was unlikely to yield interesting results, as the following case helps to illustrate.

The case involves a family in a big coastal city with an autistic child. The child’s mother divorced her husband and abandoned the child. The father therefore had to care for the child on his own. He had a salary of 1400 yuan or so per month. At the time, the minimum living standard in the city was set at around 300 yuan per person per month,¹ which meant that this man did not qualify for financial assistance from the government. The man needed to work full time in order to earn sufficient salary to support himself and his son. As it was impossible to look after an autistic child all by himself while working full time, he tried to find a residential home for the child. There were very few residential homes for mentally disabled children in the city, whether publicly or privately owned. He learned about a private institution that was said to be good, but it charged over 1000 yuan a month–obviously beyond his means. With considerable effort, he finally obtained a place for his son in a private, non-profit institution that also charged fees for its services, but whose fees he could afford. However, its service was rather poor. After some time, the child’s condition worsened. During my field work I interviewed a friend of this man who had visited the child at the residential home. She was so shocked by the poor quality of care that she wanted to make complaints to the management. However, the man begged her not to do so. Even though it was far from ideal, obtaining a place in that home for his son had not been easy, as it had a long waiting list. And he had no other place to go. Given that ‘exit’ was not an option, the man thought that complaining would only make things worse for his son in the future.²

This case was not unique. Everywhere I visited, I gained the impression that low-quality service provided by NGOs had been the norm, while even fee-paying clients were in no position to demand better services owing to a lack of alternatives. It soon became clear to me that social welfare NGOs were still at such an early stage of development in China that the majority would not measure up to even a minimum standard of good performance.³ Later, I extended my field work to NGOs in other sectors, such as environment, education, human rights and health. In these fields, too, it seemed that the performance of Chinese NGOs had left much to be desired. Therefore, if I were to stick to my original research plan, I did not see how I could produce anything interesting or illuminating about Chinese NGOs in the end, other than delivering a scathing criticism of their performance.

On the other hand, the fact that many NGOs were performing so poorly raised a number of questions. Why is their performance so unsatisfactory? How can NGOs continue to receive donations and other forms of support on the basis of such poor performance? Why do they have so little accountability? Why is there no effective external supervision to ensure standards? These questions eventually made me change the direction of my research to examine how NGOs were created, how they carry out their activities, how they mobilize support, and how they manage their external relations—in short, how NGOs survive and operate in contemporary China.

The output of my revised research agenda, the present book, describes the way NGOs function in a country whose economy, state and society are all in transition. Despite numerous problems, there is no denying that Chinese NGOs have played many positive roles, such as pioneering new services, defending the rights of disadvantaged people, raising public awareness of critical issues, providing opportunities for people with similar concerns to network with each other, and mobilizing donations for charitable causes. In this book, however, I focus more on the problems of Chinese NGOs than on their achievements. I highlight behaviour that runs counter to what is supposed to be the proper behaviour of NGOs, such as forging patron—client ties with government officials, then using bureaucratic protection to evade supervision by the public and the media. I argue that much of the dysfunctional behaviour of Chinese NGOs can be explained by the way they function in contemporary China: Frequently, when NGOs are good at ‘getting things done’ and are successful in ensuring their own organizational survival, this simultaneously creates the condition for their dysfunctionality, namely their inadequate performance in helping the disadvantaged and serving the interests of their members.

Although research on NGOs in other countries and general theories of NGO development provide useful references for this study, it is essentially grounded in analyses of the characteristics of the Chinese state and society, and the patterns of their interaction in the reform era. The study, in turn, is intended to shed some light on the evolution of state–society relations in post-reform China.

Defining NGOs in China

Although the term ‘non-governmental organization’ is already widely used in China, the official term that currently conveys the notion of an NGO is ‘popular organization’ (minjian zuzhi). Popular organization contains three categories:

• social organization (shehui tuanti or shetuan)
• private non-enterprise unit (minban feiqiye danwei)
• foundation (jijinhui).

Social organizations are officially defined as ‘non-profit organizations which are formed voluntarily by Chinese citizens in order to realise the shared objectives of their members and which carry out activities according to their charters’ (State Council 1998a).⁴ Private non-enterprise units (PNEUs) are defined as ‘non-profit social service organizations which are set up by enterprises, service units,⁵ social organizations, other social forces, or individual citizens using non-state assets’ (State Council 1998b). The main difference between a social organization and a PNEU is that the former is a membership organization, whereas the latter is not.⁶

Foundations are defined as ‘non-profit legal entities that employ assets donated by actual persons, legal entities or other organizations for the purpose of engaging in public benefit activities.’ Like PNEUs, foundations are also non-member organizations.

Current government regulations stipulate that any social organization or PNEU must be approved and registered by Civil Affairs departments at the county level or above in order to exist lawfully, while foundations must be approved at the provincial or central government level. However, there are a few exceptions.

First, the registration requirement does not apply to eight large national social organizations which are often referred to more specifically as ‘people’s organizations’ (renmin tuanti) or ‘mass organizations’ (qunzhong tuanti). These organizations, which include the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the All-China Women’s Federation and the Communist Youth League, are in fact not very different from state agencies. They were created by the state and perform administrative functions on its behalf. They are treated as a special category of social organization, and are not under Civil Affairs’ supervision.

Second, current regulations also make exempt from the registration requirement ‘organizations formed within administrative agencies, social organizations, enterprises, or service units which are approved by these organizations and which only carry out activities internally’ (State Council 1998a). An example of such organizations is university student unions, which do not need to be approved and registered by Civil Affairs departments as long as they have been approved by their universities. Many so-called ‘internal social organizations within work units’ (danwei neibu tuanti), however, do not really confine their activities to the premises of their mother organizations. For example, a very active student environmental group at Beijing Forestry University has jointly organized many public events with other environmental organizations, student associations in other universities, and the media, such as conferences and fora, environmental awareness-raising campaigns, tree-planting trips and wild animal protection activities (Hu 2001). In other words, apart from their legal status, many internal social organizations are not very different from independently registered popular organizations, so they need to be studied alongside the latter in any full-scale investigation of Chinese NGOs.⁷

Third, some grassroots organizations that have emerged in recent years have not been required to register with Civil Affairs departments so far. They include ‘property owners’ committees’ (yezhu weiyuanhui), which are formed by owners of apartments in the same housing compound, and urban community-based organizations, such as leisure activity groups formed by residents in the same neighbourhood (typical examples are singing and dance groups formed by retired people).

Apart from organizations that are required to register and those that are exempt from this requirement, there is also a type of organization known as ‘second-level social organizations’ (erji shetuan) or ‘branches’ (fenzhi jigou) of registered organizations. Before 1998, as subsidiaries of registered organizations, they did not need to be approved and registered by Civil Affairs departments. As a result, some organizations that could not meet the prerequisites for registration had managed to gain quasi-legal status by persuading registered organizations to let them ‘hang under’ (guakao) as their second-level organization. In exchange, they would pay an annual ‘management fee’ (guanlifei) to their host organization. Some registered organizations have survived mainly on the management fees they receive from their second-level organizations.⁸ Like internal organizations, second-level organizations cannot enjoy ‘legal person’ (faren) status—they are not considered fully independent legal entities. While not being legal persons might cause some inconvenience⁹ to second-level organizations, those that enjoyed good relations with their host organizations often had more freedom and autonomy than registered organizations as, unlike registered organizations, they were not under the direct supervision of Civil Affairs and other concerned government departments. In effect, second-level organizations constituted a loophole in the government’s NGO-management system. The new government regulations promulgated in 1998 plugged this hole by requiring second-level organizations to be registered by Civil Affairs. However, the registration requirements are less stringent than those applied to first-tier organizations.

Given that organizations that do not register with Civil Affairs are outlawed, in theory NGOs that can operate openly in China would include registered social organizations, approved internal social organizations, registered second-level social organizations, registered PNEUs, and perhaps mass organizations as well,¹⁰ but certainly not business enterprises or unregistered organizations. In reality, however, any comprehensive study of Chinese NGOs must also include some organizations in the latter two categories, for the following reasons.

First, current regulations require every NGO to find a ‘professional management unit’ (yewu zhuguan danwei) to act as its sponsoring agency. Only after obtaining the approval of its sponsor can an NGO apply for registration with Civil Affairs departments. The sponsor must be a state organ above the county level, or an organization authorized by such an organ. It must also be ‘relevant’ to the activities proposed by the NGO—it must have responsibilities in the same field in which the NGO operates. For example, a football fans’ club must be professionally managed by the Sports Commission, not the Health Bureau. On the other hand, state organs are under no obligation to accept applications for sponsorship from NGOs in their field. The Sports Commission can refuse to sponsor any football fans’ club that wishes to register. Current regulations also disallow NGOs with similar remits coexisting in the same geographical area. For example, if there is already an association of disabled people in Beijing, then no new association of this kind will be allowed to register in the city. As a result of these strict rules, many grassroots NGOs have been unable to register, either because they fail to find a government agency willing to act as their professional management unit, or because other NGOs with similar missions have already been registered in the sites where the intend to base their operations. In order to exist legally, some NGOs have registered instead as businesses with Industry and Commerce Bureaux, even though they engage in public-benefit activities and are non-profit-making. In fact, some of the best-known NGOs in China, which are celebrated as ‘genuine NGOs’ as opposed to ‘government-organized NGOs’ (GONGOs), and which have been the favourites of international donor agencies, fall into this category, and are therefore not under the jurisdiction of Civil Affairs.

Second, there are unregistered and hence illegal organizations that nevertheless carry out activities openly, and that have been left alone by the government instead of being banned according to the regulations. This situation obviously has a lot to do with the currently limited government capacity to enforce its NGO regulations. This issue is discussed further in later chapters.

To sum up, at present NGOs in China can have a diversity of legal status, ranging from registered popular organization, internal organization or second-level organization, to business enterprise or completely unregistered organization. This shows that, although the government has been trying for some years to put the sector in good order, it has only had limited success so far.

NGO terminology in China

The specific Chinese terms for different types of NGO have been introduced above. This section concerns the generic terms currently in use. Although the official Chinese term for NGO is ‘popular organization’, the expressions ‘NGO’ and ‘non-profit organization’ are also frequently used. Technically, the three terms have different connotations and nuances, but they are often used interchangeably.

In their discussions on domestic NGOs, Chinese researchers and NGO practitioners often divide them into two broad categories: ‘officially organized’ (guanban) NGOs and ‘popular’ (minban) NGOs. The former are initiated by the government and receive government subsidies. Their staff are often on the government payroll, and their leadership positions are often held by incumbent or retired government officials. By contrast, popular NGOs are initiated by private citizens and receive no government subsidies. Their staff are not government employees, and they do not have officials occupying their top management positions.¹¹ Officially organized NGOs are also frequently called ‘top-down’ (zi shang er xia) NGOs, whereas popular NGOs are referred to as ‘bottom-up’ (zi xia er shang) NGOs.¹²

Methodology

I conducted field work for this book in a number of sites in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Sichuan and Anhui. Intensive field work was carried out over four periods: October 1999-September 2000, October-November 2001, October-November 2002 and May-June 2005. Additional interviews with NGOs were also carried out...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Research on Chinese NGOs: comparing different analytical frameworks
• 3 The Autonomy of Chinese NGOs
• 4 Chinese NGOs and the State: a dependent relationship
• 5 The Skills of Chinese NGOs
• 6 The Limitations of Chinese NGOs
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography