Are there any real ngos in china

By , the number of foreign NGOs that had registered a representative office numbered a mere 29 out of the hundreds of foreign NGOs with offices in China. In early , as part of a series of local policy experiments intended to improve the regulations of NGOs, the Ministry of Civil Affairs launched a pilot program to register foreign NGOs in Yunnan.

By December , around foreign NGOs had registered under this regulation and by , Ministry of Civil Affairs leaders were touting the Yunnan regulations as a model for national policy. This was also the year Xi Jinping came to power, and with his ascension came an abrupt change in how NGOs would be regulated. Already in the spring and summer of , a major crackdown on activists, lawyers, bloggers, and journalists was taking place to head off potential threats to social stability.

In early , reports that foreign and Chinese NGOs working in Tibetan areas were being closed down began to surface. In April , the National Security Commission held its first meeting and a month afterwards ordered a national survey of foreign NGOs operating in China.

During the period, a major anti-corruption drive launched by President Xi gathered momentum, as did the repression of NGOs, human rights and labor activists, and lawyers. That announcement caught many observers by surprise. Previously, the Ministry of Civil Affairs had taken the lead on drafting regulations for foreign NGOs, using the Yunnan regulations as a model.

In the case of the Foreign NGO Law, a draft of a national law was being proposed, not just a draft of a ministerial regulation like the one in Yunnan. More importantly, the announcement of the draft law was being made by a Vice-Minister of Public Security, who stated that the registration and management authority for foreign NGOs would now be vested in the Ministry of Public Security, not the Ministry of Civil Affairs. He noted that the regulation of foreign NGOs had been raised as an urgent issue at the Third Plenum in October and the Fourth Plenum in October , and that the Ministry of Public Security had been working with the Ministry of Civil Affairs and other departments as early as April on researching and drafting the law.

The mention of April is significant because it coincides with the first meeting of the National Security Commission and suggests that the decision to make the Ministry of Public Security responsible for regulating foreign NGOs was made at that meeting.

That draft was quite draconian. It gave foreign NGOs only two ways to operate legally in China. One was for the NGO to register a representative office, which required getting approval from a PSU working in the same field as the NGO, and then applying for registration with provincial Public Security departments.

Applying for a permit would also require jumping through a series of hoops, namely getting approval from a PSU, collaborating with a Chinese partner, and then applying for a permit from the relevant Public Security department. The draft law stated that foreign NGOs working outside these two channels would be operating illegally. There are a number of signs that point to a clear national security focus behind the drafting of this law. One was the transfer of registration and management authority from the Ministry of Civil Affairs to the Ministry of Public Security.

A third can be found in the language of the law, which has a stronger security emphasis than the Yunnan regulations. Are there any real NGOs in China? Nick Young. View related content by region and theme. Article featured in the March issue of Alliance magazine.

New partnerships for child nutrition John Heller. Interview — Won Soon Park Alliance magazine. Some examples of the polyphonic variety of associations. Categorising associations in China is rarely exempt from moral judgement. Yet the State is not always a homogenous block of policies and practices. The reform, along with significant administrative decentralisation and the various tensions evoked above, contributed to shaping a polyphony of organizations who work either together, separately, or in competition… I have made the choice in this section to present the main types of organizations in the field of social action, working for example in education, care, help for the aged… To be clear, I nevertheless distinguish between organizations whose origins — but not necessarily their functioning — are marked by a strong link to the State, and those born without State intervention.

The organizations which the State is directly responsible for, historically as well as financially, are the eight mass organizations 7 Mass organizations served as relays between the State and the Chinese population, principally for propaganda purposes.

They are now considered as social organizations. The second type of structure includes the organizations that are legally registered as associations or foundations, but whose creation was not the result of State initiative. Each of these organizations is sponsored by a supervisory organization, a ministry or a GONGO, following the principle of dual registration 8 Qiusha Ma, Non-Governmental Organizations…, op.

The former, founded by the actor Jet Li, was the first to register as a foundation. Initially linked to the Chinese Red Cross, it quickly distanced itself from the latter, particularly in the wake of the Guo Meimei scandal 9 Guo Meimei, a Weibo star Chinese Facebook , passed herself off as a Red Cross official and posted photographs of herself with designer clothes and handbags. This lifestyle given her supposed position, shocked public opinion. The Chinese Red Cross subsequently tried to explain that Guo Meimei had never worked for the organization, but the damage was done.

Unregistered organizations make up a third category. The choice not to register may be made freely lack of interest in registering as an association , or under duress inability to find sponsorship. Finally, a fourth type of organization is made up of social companies, linked to a relatively new phenomenon in China. Midway between for-and non-profit, these organizations represent a middle ground between the market and civil society.

Borne of negotiations between actors from different domains, they constitute an original answer to tensions in the sector. Their future remains still fuzzy for the moment because despite their success, they do not have a very secure legal status.

Despite these tensions for the registration of organizations, the authoritarianism of the state reveals, according to the situations, opportunities to defend certain rights. The idea of a natural evolution of such regimes towards a more democratic way of functioning has therefore been undermined.

That is why it is becoming increasingly important to analyse these regimes in order to grasp the different spaces for mobilisation and the grey areas between authoritarianism and democracy. Social organizations embody these spaces for individual participation in the political life of the country. The author uses this notion to explain the persistence of local, unregistered, illegal non-governmental organizations, and their continued growth.

How do these organizations survive in an authoritarian context? Why, in spite of their presence, is the State not influenced, and does not try to open up?