NGOs in China: Room for more freedom or are the rules set in stone?

David Wolf says, in response to a note in Washington Post about China’s announcement of regulations that would make it more difficult for NGOs to get funds from overseas:

It would be easy to read into these regulations any range of motives, but I think what is happening goes deeper than some short term policy change, and is rooted in a deeper discomfort among policymakers with NGOs. I would argue that a growing part of the challenge NGOs of any stripe or origin face in China is that there is no ideological framework that would make a place for those organizations within the Chinese system.

At the core of modern China’s social contract is that the government, the Party, and the Army, either directly or via the work unit, are supposed to provide all of the social needs of the people. This is not purely a “communist” thing: paternalistic governments have been a part of China since before Master Kong wrote his Analects, and the government serving in loco parentis has become a core assumption of many of Asia’s political systems.

Theoretically, then, there should be no need for NGOs: it is the job of the government, Party, and Army to provide.

At best, once again in theory, an NGO with a social mission operating in China is a de-facto indictment of the government and Party, an implicit admission that the government is not fulfilling its moral role. At worst, the NGO is the seed of a rival center of domestic political power, or (like many pre-liberation missionary groups) a subversive element or tool of a foreign government. There is no conceptual framework in the Chinese polity for a private institution to take a social role, and even the social role of work units has been reduced over the past thirty years to little more than a basic benefits package. And without a clear, articulated (or at least understood) place for NGOs in Chinese society, each organization represents latent disruption inimical to a Harmonious Society.

Leaders of China, We Are Not The Enemy

In order for NGOs to take their full role in Chinese society, NGOs themselves are going to have to first make a case that civil organizations have a necessary and proper role in Chinese society, one that fits within Confucian ideology and that implicitly legitimizes rather than indicts the government that accepts them. This means making an ideological case – not just a practical one – that carves out a legitimate niche for NGOs as serving a role that government or enterprise are not only unable to fill, but that they should never have been expected to fill in the first place.

The best scenario to make this happen would be for NGOs to team with respected party ideologues at the Party School to make the case by drawing from the foundational documents of the People’s Republic. The NGOs would then work with those ideologues to help create a legal (read “constitutional”) role for NGOs in society, rather than muck about with trying to get a single law passed that could be negated by policy.

Of course, I’m not betting this is going to happen anytime soon.

Fighting Inactivism

First, for many people who staff and support international NGOs, doing or saying anything to legitimize the Chinese government would be a non-starter. That is sad, but understandable. It would gall not a small number of them to have to argue for their role in a society where the need is ostensibly plain to see, in a polity many of them see as morally bankrupt, or worse.

I am not sure that I agree with the assessment that NGOs need to make a case for their legitimacy by digging through the PRC’s constitution, but the caveat is that I am under-informed on the issue.  I’m of the opinion that the case has already been made and the the Chinese government is in full agreement with how important NGOs are.

The compromise the government made with NGOS is that they can only exist in Government Organized Non-Governmental Organization (GONGO) form.   Being a GONGO is not all that ominous (relative to other realities of operating an organization in China) – it basically entails an organization to have a government representative or two listed as a board member.  This is much the same for hospitals, schools, and any other organization that provides the public with any sort of social benefits. Any other organization taking on the social responsibilities typically handled by NGOs is either operating on the black, or through a shell company.

The announced regulations would just work to further strengthen the GONGOs, and weaken the NGO-like organizations operating illegally.

I personally believe that NGOs in China have had an increasingly easier time over recent years to set up operations and the government has been clear about expectations.  Indeed, according to Harvard University’s Hauser Center for Non Profit Organizations, the trend in 2009 seemed to point towards greater freedoms and better funding for GONGOS.

If there has been a change between 2009 and today that forced the government to instill greater regulations, I suspect that it could simply be the case that a greater number of GONGOs along with faltering job prospects in the private sector have spawned many copycat, illegally operating NGOs.  It’s these, potentially Nigerian Prince type organizations that the government would be interested in regulating.

Of course, I’m not going to discount the idea that putting greater restrictions on NGOs is also a great way to regulate perfectly well meaning people, who the government happens to be wary of.

Thank you to j.bach for making the above pic available to the world.