Nongovernmental and Nonprofit Organizations
and the Evolution of Chinese Civil Society

An Oral Testimony at Issue Roundtable "To Serve the People: NGOs and the
Development of Civil Society in China"
The Congressional-Executive Commission on China

(Qiusha Ma, Assistant Professor, East Asian Studies, Oberlin College, Research Associate,
the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations, Case Western Reserve University)

1. General Summary:



What are Chinese NGOs? Is it possible that, under China’s one-party state, nongovernmental organizations can sustain and play important economic, social, and political functions? My answer is Yes. The last two decades have witnessed the dramatic increase of Chinese NGOs in number, size and influence. Barely extant before, these new organizations carry out many social, economic, and cultural tasks previously controlled or neglected by the government, from establishing centers for abused women and abandoned children, to organizing community recycling programs. These institutions are by far the most powerful instruments through which Chinese people participate in public affairs, develop personal interests, and make their voices heard; they indicate a more active and engaged citizenry than ever before. The development of NGOs in the past twenty-odd years is a key step in the evolution of a civil society in China.

Given China’s current political condition and her historical background, its development of NGOs is very unbalanced and still in the preliminary stage. This is reflected in the uneven growth of NGOs in different regions and subjects. Though NGOs and civil associations are very active in economic development, poverty alleviation in poor regions, and community building, others in politics, religion and advocacy play an insignificant role in the overall rise of NGOs. Their involvement in policy-making is also very limited.

Under China’s current political system, without the government’s approval and encouragement, the upsurge of nongovernmental organizations would be impossible. Since the opening of China in 1978, the government’s policy toward NGOs has generally been positive. Understanding the political consequences of NGOs, the government is still convinced that NGOs, with the support of the general public, private sector, and international nonprofit sector, can provide much needed social and professional services, as well as intermediary mechanisms for economic and social transformations. By legalizing and promoting NGOs, especially those related to the economic and social development, the government has played a crucial and positive role in NGO growth in China.

However, during these years, the official attitude towards NGOs has been inconsistent and self-contradicting, volleying between encouragement and restraint. A requirement of the government’s promotion of NGOs is its belief that the state has ultimate, especially political, control over NGOs. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the government’s concern about the political risk of promoting NGOs has been intensified during different periods and as related to different issues, and the government has not hesitated to suppress these organizations or their activities if it believes they form a threat to national interests and security. All NGOs have to follow political principles in order to legally exist. In this sense, all NGOs, no matter how grassroots or self-reliant, do not enjoy complete autonomy. Yet, we must recognize the significant gap between the rhetoric of the party-state’s intention and what actually can be enforced by the government. In reality, the NGOs in China enjoy much greater autonomy than may appear on paper.

In the following sections, this article will discuss China’s official NGO classification, definition and terminology, based on Chinese official documentation, the author’s interviews of Chinese officials, NGO leaders and scholars, as well as English and Chinese NGO literature.

2. The Official Classification of Chinese NGOs



What are the Chinese NGOs according to China’s legal documents and official policy? Many western as well as Chinese studies of nongovernmental organizations in China have taken the term "social organization" to be equivalent to the western term "NGO" or "NPO" without recognizing that Chinese “social organizations” constitute only part of the full range of the country’s NGOs. This is largely because until most recently the Chinese government itself used “social organization” as a unified term for organizations that are NGOs in the Western sense and refused giving legal status as NGOs to a vast number of private not for profit service providers such as non-state-run schools, hospitals or other professional institutions. In a recent study of Chinese NGO law, the authors still state: “NGOs are usually defined as ‘social organizations’”[1] (Xin and Zhang, 1999, 91).

Not until 1998, were a great proportion of private nonprofit organizations in China excluded from the official classification of non-governmentally run organizations. The latest Chinese government regulatory documents, issued in 1998, provide by far the most comprehensive system in PRC history, covering a highly diverse nongovernmental sector; they are the key documents establishing the Chinese definition of NGOs.[2] According to the new official classifications, NGOs include two general categories: social organizations (SOs, shehui tuanti, or shetuan), and nongovernmental and noncommercial enterprises (NGNCEs, minban feiqiye danwei.) (See Chart 1.) [3] Under these two general categories, Chinese NGOs are officially divided into different types according to either their organizational forms or professional missions. The SOs are academic, professional or trade associations, federations and foundations, while the NGNCEs are divided into ten general types: education, health care, cultural, science/ technology, sports, social welfare, intermediary services, employment service, legal service and others.[4]

Since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the government has, in 1950, 1988-1989, and 1998, issued three rounds of documents regarding the classification, registration and regulation of organizations outside of the government system. The first two rounds classified all types of associations and institutions that are nongovernmental into a single category: social organizations. In the early 1950s, the government – following the Soviet Union model – nationalized all private schools, hospitals, charitable organizations and other service providers. From then on until the dawn of the reforms in 1978, no private nonprofit service providers existed in China. Therefore, before the reforms, social organizations were basically membership associations. Then, starting in the mid-1980s, the government founded a number of “nongovernmental” foundations and charitable organizations to generate international and Chinese private money for certain public causes. As there was no existing category for this type of organizations, they were, and still are up today, officially classified as social organizations, even though they are not membership entities.

The term NGNCE was created by the government in 1998 to provide legal status and unify the official management of rapidly growing private nonprofit service institutions. After the opening reforms of 1978, there was a pluralization of cultural, social, and economic interests, which created large-scale needs that the government was no longer able to deliver. It has since become clear that state-owned schools, nursing homes, healthcare and social welfare providers, as well as research institutes no longer suffice. With the state’s permission and encouragement, all kinds of non-state-owned or private social and professional institutions emerged to fill the gap.

Chart 1: China’s Official Classification of NGOs



Under China’s current dual registration system, all private organizations have to have a supervising government body in order to register with the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA). Chinese NGOs call these bodies “mothers-in-law.” Both social organizations and NGNCEs are required to register with MOCA and its local branches. According to the 2001 official statistics, 136,841 social organizations of all levels registered nationwide. Although officials at MOCA estimate that there are about 700,000 NGNCEs in China, in 2000, only 20,000 were registered with MOCA.[5] As many private providers and institutions have difficulty finding appropriate bodies to serve as their mothers-in-law, they have to either register as for-profit enterprises under the bureau of industry and trade, or as non-corporate organizations. It was due to this inadequate classification system that the government created the NGNCE category in 1998. This classification is similar to the category of “public service” in the United States. (See Chart 2.)





Chart 2: Anatomy of the Nonprofit Sector^[6]



3. Defining NGOs and Civil Society in China



The term “NGO” is widely used to refer to various types of organizations outside of state systems, including advocacy organizations, nonprofit service-providing institutions, religious groups and social welfare organizations. Lester Salamon and Helmut K. Anheier, two leading authorities on international NGOs, list the key features of NGOs as follows: they are formal, private, non-profit-distributing, self-governing, and voluntary.[7] This set of characteristics includes the most important and generally recognized features that distinguish the private nonprofit sector from the governmental and the for-profit private sectors. Within different cultures and political systems, the meaning of the term “NGO” varies. In Western Europe, for example, an NGO often refers to a nonprofit advocacy or service organization that is active internationally. In East European countries and republics of the former Soviet Union, NGO tends to designate all charitable and nonprofit organizations.[8]

What are the nongovernment and nonprofit organizations in China today, and how does the Chinese government define them? This question is the very first step towards our understanding of Chinese NGOs, and two major aspects need to be clarified. As the next section will further explain, according to the 1998 official regulatory documents of the NGOs, the Chinese government classifies all institutions into two general categories: social organizations and nongovernmental and noncommercial enterprises (NGNCE). In “The regulations of registrations of social organizations”(1998), the government offered a definition of social organizations. “Social organizations,” it states, “are nonprofit organizations that are voluntarily founded by Chinese citizens for their common will and operated according to their charters.”[9] Another official document in the same year announced that, “nongovernmental and noncommercial enterprises are social entities engaging in nonprofit social service activities, and they are founded by for-profit or nonprofit enterprises, social organizations, other social forces or individual citizens, using non state-owned property or funds.”[10]

Comparing the Western and Chinese NGO definitions, the most obvious distinction is that the Chinese official definition of NGOs does not mention self-governance, a key criteria of Western nongovernmental organizations. Still, we should give the Chinese government credit in their effort to catch up with the international standard in their governance of NGOs. First of all, for a long time, the government did not know what the definition of social organizations should be. Thus, instead of giving a clear definition, the 1989 official regulation only listed all types of associations and institutions that the government recognized as “social organizations”.[11] The 1998 documents, for the first time, provided not only a clear description of the meaning of “social organizations”, but also created a new legal status – NGNCEs – for private service providers. Secondly, even though the Chinese official definition of NGOs did not include self-governance, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA), since the 1990s, has been pushing the “three selves of polity”: financially self-sufficient, self-governing, and self-recruiting (sanzi zhengce).[12] Yet, one must recognize the gap between “talking the talking” and “walking the walking”. As mentioned earlier, how much autonomy Chinese NGOs enjoy is still the most controversial issue.

In the time span of several hundred years, many philosophers and thinkers have left their marks on civil society, and the debates continues today over the definition, meaning and function of civil society. The conceptual evolution of civil society in the West has left a great profusion of interpretations and models. This concept today is used, in a simplified form, to indicate people’s expression of their opinions and interests, usually via civic associations, and the mechanisms that enable them to participate or influence policy-making. In their study of Chinese civil society, Gordon White, Jude Howell, and Shang Xiaoyang define civil society in general as

An intermediate associational realm situated between the state on the one side and the basic building blocks of society on the other (individuals, families, and firms), populated by social organizations which are separate, and enjoy some degree of autonomy from, the state and are formed voluntarily by members of society to protect or extend their interests or values. … The political conception, which derives mostly from the Anglo-American liberal tradition of political theory, equates ‘civil society’ with ‘political society’ in the sense of a particular set of institutionalized relationships between state and society based on the principles of citizenship, civil rights, representation, and the rule of law.[13]

Contrastingly, Deng Zhenglai and Jing Yuejin, two leading Chinese scholars of civil society, describe a Chinese civil society as “a private sphere where members of society engage in economic and social activities voluntarily and autonomously, according to the rule of contract. It is also a nongovernmental public sphere where people participate political and governing activities.”[14] The concept of civil society in the West has a long history of representing democracy and the confrontation or even antagonism between the state and society. However, it is widely agreed among Chinese scholars who participated in debates during the 1990s on building a Chinese civil society that the relationship between the state and (civil) society in China should be constructively and mutually interactive.

4. Chinese Equivalents of Nongovernmental Organization

   Table: Chinese Terminology of NGOs

   English Term	Chinese Term	Examples of Organizations
   Social Organizations	Shehui tuanti	A general term for member-serving associations and foundations
   People's Organizations*(19 at the national level)	Renmin tuanti	“The eight big organizations”, such as: All China Federation of Trade Unions, Chinese People’s Friendship Association, All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese>
   Mass organizations*	Qunzhong zuzhi	All-China Federation of Trade Unions, Chinese Communist Youth League, All-China Women's Federation
   Folk Organizations	Minjian zuzhi	All-China General Chamber of Industry and Commerce, China international Chambers of Commerce
   Nongovernmental Organization (NGOs)	Fei zhengfu zuzhi	Usually referred to as foreign NGOs, but some Chinese NGOs adopt this term
   Nonprofit Organization (NPOs)	Fei yingli zuzhi	New term for Chinese SOs and NGNCEs

   
   
   

   Shehui tuanti or shetuan (social organization) is the most commonly adopted term for organizations outside the state. In classical Chinese, “she”, “hui”, and “tuan” all mean associations or groups. The term “social organization” predated the establishment of the PRC, and some scholars believe that the earliest forms of Chinese social organizations can be traced back to the Spring-Autumn period (770-476 B.C.). However, the term refers primarily to modern forms of private associations that first appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Since 1949, the PRC government has continued to use this term, and three of its regulatory documents on this subject (1950, 1989 and 1998) all use the term shehui tuanti for entities that outside the state system.

   Whereas “social organization” is adopted by the government as a general term for organizations outside of the state, the remaining four terms are also used officially, but more specifically. Renmin tuanti (people’s organizations) appeared in the 1954 and 1982 Constitutions and other government documents. Though Qunzhong zuzhi (mass organizations) has never been used in any legal or official regulatory documents, it has been used officially on many occasions. Only a small number of prominent organizations have ever been classified as either “people’s organizations” or “mass organizations.” The so-called “eight big organizations” (ba da tuanti) are all people’s organizations, and some of them are also mass organizations.[15] The two terms are not exclusive, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses them according to its political agenda. The All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) and the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) are mass organizations in structure, but they are also referred to as people’s organizations to indicate their prestigious status. These two types of organizations, although are also categorized as social organizations, do not register with MOCA, nor are they under MOCA’s supervision.[16]

   The questions here are: what are the meanings of these two terms? Why are they still in use today? Why do we need to know about those two types of organizations? Chiefly because they help us understand the way the Chinese government employs social organizations as tools of political struggles. The people’s organizations and mass organizations have significant political implications and historical backgrounds, although no official documents have ever defined them. One must turn to China’s contemporary history and the CCP’s political vocabulary. The term “people’s organization” was created by the Nationalist Party (Guomindang) in the 1920s and is still used in Taiwan today. After 1949, the PRC government accepted the term, but employed it, especially in the early period of the PRC, to refer to organizations that participated in the First Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in September 1949, a month before the establishment of the PRC.[17] In fact, the CCP organized quite a few organizations around that time to unify various political forces joining the revolutionary cause. They have been China’s most influential organizations ever since, and are the backbone of the United Front represented by the CPPCC.

   In contemporary CCP political vocabulary, the word “people” is the opposite of the word “enemy” or “CCP’s enemy”, and its meaning changes from one political period to another, depending on the specific targets of the revolution. For instance, during the anti-Japanese War (1937-45), the landlord class was included in the category of “people,” while during the land reform movement (late-1940s to early-1950s), they shifted to “enemy.” Shortly before the establishment of the PRC, Mao Zedong published an important article, “The Dictatorship of the People’s Democracy” (1949). “Who are the ‘people’?” Mao asked. “At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasant class, the petty bourgeoisie, and national bourgeoisie. Under the leadership of the working class and the Communist Party, these classes united together to form their own state and elect their own government [so as to] carry out a dictatorship over the lackeys of imperialism – the landlord class, the bureaucratic capitalist class, and the Kuomintang [Guomindang] reactionaries.” Mao continued, “The democratic system is to be carried out within the ranks of the people, giving them freedom of speech, assembly, and association.” Consequently, the Chinese (and all organizations as well) are divided into: leading classes, the United Front (classes that are the CCP’s allies), and the enemy.

   The CCP wanted to enlist “people’s organizations” in the fight against the Guomindang, and support from non-CCP organizations helped convince the nation that the CCP truly represented the people. As a reward and to ensure future support, the CCP offered many political privileges to the organizations, including exemption from registering with the government.[18] Since this term carries substantial political weight, very few organizations have obtained this title later on. When organizations do use this title, their missions are usually related to the United Front. For instance, during the early-1950s, the former chambers of commerce and other merchant and entrepreneurial associations were joined in the All-China Federation of Industry & Commerce (ACFIC). The ACFIC is a “people’s organization”; its purpose, as stated in its charter, is to strengthen the United Front.

   The term “mass organizations” also carries significant political implications. The word “qunzhong” means “groups of individuals” or “the majority.” But in the CCP’s political vocabulary, the word conveys several specific meanings. First, it is used to distinguish people as either non-party members (qunzhong) or CCP members (dangyuan) and thus directly affects people’s political status and their daily lives. Whether one is a dangyuan or a qunzhong has significant consequences in matters such as academic or job opportunities, and in how one is treated politically as well as socially. Second, in the CCP’s ideology, the masses and the Party are two essential elements in a “union of contradiction”. The CCP recognizes the masses as the foundation of its rule, the object of its service, and defines its own actions as the “cause of the masses”, “mass movement”, or “mass struggle”. At the same time, the Party requires the masses to follow its lead as the head of the revolutionary cause.

   Accordingly, the political meaning of “mass organization” is twofold. On the one hand, it indicates the position of mass organizations in the CCP’s political system. The CCP defines itself as “the vanguard of the working class” and “the core force of the mass movement,” with mass organizations on the periphery around the Party. Since the Party represents the people’s interests, these organizations should follow the Party’s leadership. It does not allow mass organizations to challenge its authority. The political struggle between the ACFTU’s leaders and the CCP during the 1950s over the independence of trade unions set a clear example for other mass organizations on the periphery around the Party. By 1949, Chinese industrial workers had experienced thirty years of autonomous union actions, so Chinese workers in major cities understood the meaning of solidarity and unionization. Many unions were non-Communist organizations. This tradition was the first casualty of the CCP’s policy towards the mass organizations after 1949.[19] Union leaders who made assertions about the workers’ unique interests and the unions’ independence were criticized as “anti-party” and “anti-people”, and many were punished severely by the Party.[20]

   On the other hand, the CCP relies on mass organizations to reach out to different groups of people; this was true during the revolutionary period and is still the case today. These organizations provide a bridge between the CCP and the people. Before 1949, many mass organizations were grass-roots organizations fighting directly for their members’ interests. After 1949, the CCP became the ruling party, and workers unions, women’s federations and youth leagues became governmental organizations entirely dependent on and closely controlled by the government. The interests of their members have been ignored, or, in the CCP’s phraseology, individuals obey the state and Party’s interests, and their duties switched to that of propagating Communist ideology, assisting the Party, and recruiting CCP supporters. The government has entrusted them with important administrative functions and has accorded them the privileged status of government agencies.

   In short, the term “people’s organization” implies a mission for the United Front, and the term “mass organization” indicates a close but subordinate relationship with the Party. From a historical perspective, these classifications reveal the CCP’s notion of non-party organizations and its changing agenda in different periods. Although the conditions of nongovernmental organizations have altered tremendously since the 1980s, the official policy towards these two types of organizations remains almost unchanged. In order to downsize, in recent years the government has pushed previously government-funded organizations to become self-sufficient. However, the people’s and mass organizations are too important to the CCP’s political power to grant them independence. Instead, the government continues to furnish them with financial and personnel support.[21] This situation has created a major dilemma for the government in its effort to apply a uniform regulatory and managerial policy to all social organizations. This is also an important reason for the reluctance to formulate a clear social organization law (shetuan fa).[22]

   Two other terms for nongovernmental organizations, minjian zuzhi and feizhengfu zuzhi, too, have their own origins and political connotations. In Chinese, minjian means “ As a rather old Chinese term, minjian zuzhi is an antonym of “governmental organization” (guanban or zhengfu zuzhi) and highlights the very nature of self-organizing. In the early 1950s, nine religious organzations (minjian zongjiao tuanti) and their branches nationwide were identified as “anti-revolutionary secret societies” and officially banned. As a conspicuous political event, the dismissal of the minjian zuzhi sounded a clear signal, and eventually “minjian zuzhi” vanished in China. From then until the 1980s, this term was only used to refer to foreign nongovernmental organizations that functioned as very important channels between China and the outside world. Not until the 1990s was the term minjian zuzhi revived. In 1999, the governmental agency in charge of all national NGOs under MOCA was renamed Minjian Zuzhi Guanliju (literally translated as, the Managing Bureau of Popular Organizations, though its official name is the Bureau of the Management of NGOs).[23]

   The term fei zhengfu zuzhi is not authentic to the Chinese language but is a transliteration from English “nongovernmental organizations.” When China hosted the 1995 Fourth World Women’s Conference (WWC) in Beijing, the Nongovernmental Forum made this term well known to the Chinese. To prepare Chinese women’s organizations to understand the meaning and practice of fei zhengfu zuzhi, the All-China Women’s Federations launched a campaign to train women leaders at all levels. Over 8,000 workshops and seminars nationwide trained 1,910,000 women leaders and activists, most of whom learned the term fei zhengfu zuzhi for the first time.[24] Since then, "fei zhengfu zuzhi" , and later, “fei yingli zuzhi” (nonprofit organizations) have become formal terms in the Chinese political vocabulary.

   Foreign NGOs are commonly called fei zhengfu zuzhi; Chinese social organizations, however, are reluctant to call themselves fei zhengfu zuzhi. In Chinese, the word “fei” means “not,” but also “wrong” or even “anti.” For example, during the May Fourth Movement (1919), the Chinese name for the “Great Federation of Anti-Religion Movement” used fei for “anti.” The same held for the “Federation of Anti-Christianity.”[25] Instead of choosing fei zhengfu to indicate their nature, many new Chinese NGOs prefer to use NPOs (nonprofit organizations.)

5. Conclusion



In summary, since the late 1980s, the government has undertaken substantial measures to improve the legal and political environment for the growth of NGOs and to strengthen governmental control over them at the same time. The promulgation of a series of regulatory documents since 1998 indeed has provided a much clearer and unified status to most organizations outside of the state system. However, these efforts are not without obstacles and costs. While new organizations are seeking more autonomy, many well-established social organizations are reluctant to change. People’s organizations and mass organizations stand to lose political power, privilege, and security with a fundamental change in the status quo. At present, the government is rethinking the roles and statuses of these two types of organizations, which number two hundred nationwide.[26] However, these political bodies are too important to the CCP’s power to let them become independent.

The confusion and inconsistency in the classification of social organizations is reflected in the uncertainty of the government’s policy towards NGOs as a whole. This reveals problems more profound than the clarification of categories or social organizations terminology. The government faces a great challenge in letting organizations become autonomous in financial and managerial matters and takes the political risk of losing control entirely. Without a comprehensive and long-term policy, how can the government define the term “social organization,” change the status quo of the people’s organizations and mass organizations, or offer Chinese social organizations the rights that international NGOs enjoy? The future roles of the Chinese organizations remain in doubt.