The 2016 Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival, always a terrific event, recently came to a close last month. As usual, the organizers found a way to include a session on the future of civil society and philanthropy in a very difficult year for civil society. To commemorate that event, I'm including here a transcript of a 2014 Bookworm Literary Festival round table on the future of civil society in China. For that round table I brought together three Chinese civil society leaders from different sectors. We had transcribed and edited the conversation that took place with the idea of putting it up on China Development Brief's English-language website, but the growing repression against civil society that year made us reconsider, and it never made it onto the website. It thus appears online here for the first time.
Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival 2014
FUTURE PERFECT Civil Society in China in 2020
Panelists:
Li Bo, Friends of Nature
Zhai Yan, Huizeren Volunteering Development Center
Wang Liwei, Charitarian
Moderator:
Shawn Shieh, China
Development Brief
March
15, 2014
Shawn: Thank
you for coming and welcome to this session on civil society which is part of
the 2014 Beijing Bookworm Literary Festival. I am Shawn Shieh and I am the
English language editor at China Development Brief, a bilingual NGO which reports
on the civil society sector in China.
For those of us who work in
the civil society sector, who make it our job and our profession, of course, we
think about these issues related to civil society all the time. We think about
how we can best achieve our mission. We think about how to best develop our
organization, our staff. We think about how to best collaborate with others in
order to have the greatest impact. And of course, we always think about how to
get more funding so we can keep our work going.
Today, I have gathered a
couple of people from the sector. Together Zhai Yan, Wang Liwei, Li Bo and I have
over thirty years of experience working in the sector both as individuals and
as leaders of NGOs or publications that cover charity and NGOs. I have to say
it was a challenge to put this panel together. When [the Bookworm’s] Peter Goff
said he wanted to do something like this I really wanted to assemble as diverse
a panel as possible, and one with Chinese voices, because after all we are
talking about Chinese civil society. But we had to keep it to only three
people, and I would have liked, ideally, to have ten. I also wanted to find
Chinese who could communicate in English and I wanted people who had clear
views about the civil society sector. I am glad to say that the people we have
here fit all of those criteria.
What I am going to do now is
ask each of them to give a brief introduction of themselves. After, I will tell
you something about the format of this panel, and then we can get started. How
about we start with Zhai Yan, then Wang Liwei, and Li Bo.
Zhai Yan: Thank you Shawn. Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. I am Zhai
Yan. You can call me Robin. I come from Huizeren Volunteer Development Center. I
founded this NGO eleven years ago. Our organization is a grassroots NGO focused
on capacity building. We organize school-based volunteers who come from
companies and some universities to do training and coaching for grassroots NGO
leaders. For the past eleven years we have been trying to promote civil society
growth in China. Thank you.
Wang Liwei: Good afternoon. I would like to sit to talk because then we will
be equal with each other. I am from Charitarian, which is a media group, but we
are also observers of NGO civil society. We write articles and organize events
but we also do some education projects.
Li Bo: Hello
my name is Li Bo and I am originally from Yunnan province. I moved to Beijing
about seven or eight years ago. I started my career in the NGO sector in 1994
with Oxfam in Southwest China. I also worked for the Stockholm Environment Institute’s
Asia office based in Bangkok. In 2009 I became the director of a local
environmental NGO called Friends of Nature. I am the board member of the organization
right now.
Shawn: Thank
you. I realize that there is a pretty diverse audience here. There are people
who are experts on the sector and there are people who are just taking an
interest in it. But one of the questions I would like to start with is one of
language. We use the term “civil society”, but civil society is not a Chinese
term, at least not that I know of. The first question I want to ask is what kind of words
do you use when you talk about civil society?
Zhai Yan: I will give you
an example for our organization. Our mission, our vision, is to promote a civil
society where everyone can be a volunteer. But one day a government official
came to our office and they asked to look at our mission. They asked me, “Why
do you use “civil society” in your mission. You cannot do that.” Then I asked,
“So what word can I use?” He just said, “harmonious society”. So I said, “Yes I
see, but I do not know why I cannot just use ‘civil society’? I am a citizen
and I do civil society work.” But he said, “Not in China. This is a political
word, which should not be used for social work. So for non-profit organizations
you cannot touch political work.” So until now, if I invite a government official
to our organization then I use “harmonious society” in our slogans. But
generally, I am still a supporter for our civil society, so yes I will still
use that word. And because we give so much training for government officials,
they just say if you come here, you have to use the government’s “harmonious
society” term, but if you do training for NGOs then ok, you can use “civil
society”.
Liwei: I think “civil
society” is used by different people and for different purposes. In Guangzhou,
for example, at Sun Yatsen University where they have a Civil Society Research
Center, and the government owns that university. So, I think the government
wants to do research on civil society. On the other hand, recently, you cannot
use the term “civil society in mainstream Chinese media, whereas before three
or four years ago you could. You can, however, find the term in mainstream
newspapers like Southern Weekend (南方周末) so it is complicated. But in our organization, Charitarian, we use “equal
society” (平等社会) because I think the basic value of civil society is equality. Every
person is the same. We have the same dream, the same value, the same purpose
and we also have the same right. It is not because you are rich or powerful
that you should have more power then an ordinary person on the street. I think
that if we can help improve civil society it will also help create equality. Migrant
workers should have the same rights as the officials and millionaires. Speaking about civil society in China right now
is very difficult because people do not have equal rights, so I think that if
we really focus on civil society we can start with the equality issue.
Li Bo: I am aware that
there is an academic debate about what civil society should be and how we
perceive it in different societies, but as a NGO practitioner I do not like to
get myself caught up in the definition. I am aware that under different leaders,
depending on whether there is a big congress coming up, or something sensitive
going on, often times they will become very strict with using these words. But
after that, nobody really questions it. What I care about most in terms of NGOs
is being able to register or being able to carry out what your mission.
Shawn: Thank you. I
agree that it is not so much about how you say it, but about what you do. For
China Development Brief, we also do not use civil society very often. We use
words like, “grass roots organizations”, or “NGOs” or “non-profit organizations”.
The
second, more personal question that I want to ask these panelists is, “What is
the meaning and the importance of civil society to you personally?”
Liwei: I think I already
answered the question. For me, civil society means equality, and equal opportunities.
I think that today in Chinese society, people know the gap is getting bigger
and bigger. The gap is also getting bigger for kids. For example, if you compare
a migrant worker’s child with a city child, the city child would know much more
than the migrant worker’s child. Why? It does not mean that the city kids are
smarter, or more intelligent than the rural kids. It just means that the city
kids have more opportunities. Their parents can pay for the kids to learn how
to play the piano or learn how to paint, but the rural or migrant worker’s kids
have much less opportunities. This is why I think the opportunity gaps are
becoming bigger and bigger.
Twenty-five years ago, I went to high school in a small town in Shenyang,
northeast of Liaoning province. My teacher always said, “Ok, you’re in a small
town, you have no chance of visiting Beijing, but one way you can go to Beijing
is by studying hard and then you can pass the examination for university where
you will be able to study in Beijing. You’ll be able to see Tiananmen Square,
get a good job, and marry a good wife. You cannot not find a good girlfriend if
you don’t study hard.” So at the time, I studied really hard, and then I came
to Beijing. Today, I think even rural kids who live in small towns also study
hard, however there are obstacles that prevent them from going to these Beijing
universities. First, they don’t have good materials. The city kids have really
good materials so they can learn. Second are the teachers. Rural areas do not
have good teachers. In cities, however, they can have good teachers because
they can afford to pay them. Lastly, the tuition for universities is expensive.
When I was in university, I only paid 10RMB for the fall year tuition and for
the dormitory. But today, you have to pay a lot of money. So even if the
migrant workers want to study hard, their opportunities are still slim. For rural
kids, the opportunity to go to Beijing to study, or to see Beijing, or marry a
city girl, is becoming more impossible. So I think opportunities and equality
is a big issue. If we talk about civil society we have to tell the government,
the companies, and the NGOs how we can provide opportunities for those who cannot
afford it.
Li Bo: I think the
significance of civil society lies in public participation and the ability to
monitor various environmental changes such as pollution and pollution control.
As all of us are now able to physically experience the air pollution is getting
very serious and the Chinese public tends to be convinced rather easily that
the government is willing to combat these air pollution problems. We can
certainly see that the government puts huge financial resources into various
clean-up strategies but we do not see if that money is being used intelligently
and effectively.
Over the last six or seven years since I started to work for
Friends of Nature, we have repeatedly submitted a number of information
disclosure requests to the government. I would say that more than 90 percent of
those requests were rejected with ridiculous reasons, ranging from the
information did not exist, to the requests were sent to the wrong government
agencies, or simply because it was a national security issue. With that kind of
rejection, even if you try to get a lawyer’s help to file an administrative
appeal to disclose the information, you would still typically get the response
that, according to their administrative appeal laws, your case is not valid either
because you were not physically in the area where the environmental problem
occurred, or because you are not a direct victim of that event. Some pollution
problems are very local but others are not local at all. For instance, you
cannot say that people who live in Beijing are not directly affected by dam
building or major river projects, but we quite often still get that kind of
rejection.
So the significance is that you, as an NGO, or you as a member of a civil
society, still do not have a way to hold those government accountable for public
finances or public projects. This is really bad for pollution control because
you never know how much money the government has spent or whether the projects
they invested in were effective or ineffective.
Zhai Yan: My
understanding of civil society really came from a trip to the US more than 10
years ago. That is when I really started looking into the history of civil
society, and up till now, 99 percent of Chinese still do not know what this
means. To my understanding, the meaning of civil society has two layers. One is
that of society as a whole. How is it constructed? Does it embody rule of law?
And is it fair? Only if that is constructed well then we can actually start
talking about things like democracy or public participation. For example, I
used to give psychological assistance to criminals who had committed heavy
crimes and at first I would think, these are bad people, and I have no way of
really understanding them. But then I found that actually, the vast majority of
them are very poor, received very little education and had very few
opportunities in life. When I asked them why they had killed someone it was
just because they had few choices in life. Another example is when I was
studying in Hong Kong doing social work and we played this game where one
person would be ignored and treated unfairly. When I was that person in this
game, I found that I responded very emotionally. So I realized that if you do
not have opportunities or equality, you cannot even start to talk about
harmony.
The other level is the micro level. How do we as individuals serve
voluntarily and participate in the construction of society? When I started this
organization 10 years ago, I was told by a lot of people; scholars,
politicians, everyone, that there are two things you cannot do under any
conditions. One is to talk about politics and the other is doing anything
related to religion. Just do what you have to do as an individual. In order to
even talk about civil society we need that freedom and respect for each
individual. We do not have that yet so I think that in China we cannot speak of
civil society right now. As a citizen we do not have any political rights. We
live in this world where we do not have the fundamental rights to live together
in equality. But we do have people who want to build a better society together
out of their own motivation and by working together in a legal environment. That
is what is very important to China right now.
Liwei: Like Zhai Yan
mentioned, I also agree that fairness is very important. In the United States,
you can have a president from a rich family such as the Bush family, but also
you can have a female president from the Clinton family, or a black president
like Obama. In China, however, it would be very hard for a Uyghur to be president.
Also, I think that civil society embodies independent freedom of thought. Right
now, I think that in China we have a lot of freedom. For example there is a lot
of karaoke and a lot of prostitutes in hotels. There is a lot of freedom in
actions. But what we lack in China is freedom of thought. We have no
independent thinking because our education system lets students follow and
repeat existing answers. That is what Charitarian and I are doing. We are helping
rural teachers have their own thoughts, and then what they will give the kids
is an independent answer. Maybe they are wrong, but it doesn’t matter. Here in
China, education is based on the idea that you must have the correct answer.
You cannot have the wrong answer. So that is what is constraining our mind. I
think we have to open and reform our mind, and then we can have action.
Zhai Yan: China has no
intellectuals, at least no independent intellectuals. There is also nothing
like an independent market or an independent spirit of entrepreneurs. Because
everything is still very much controlled by the government, it is very
important for members of civil society to start with ourselves and confidently
understand our own thinking. That is really what is at the core of civil
society.
Shawn: I think that
equality, participation, public monitoring, public accountability, fairness,
equal rights, and independent thinking are what all of you seem to use to
describe civil society. My next couple of questions are about the
future and looking toward the future of civil society. The Third Plenum
in just came out in November and I think many people in the NGO sector were
very happy about the Third Plenum because it stated that the reforms going on
with NGO registration and other things in places like Guangdong, Shanghai, and
Sichuan can go ahead. This made people say that the Third Plenum decision is a
green light for the NGO sector, or that spring has come. One scholar even said
that it is not just spring that has arrived, but summer! Would you agree with that? Are
you also optimistic about this year being ‘springtime’ for NGOs?
Zhai Yan: We could speak
of a sort of spring when we talk about social welfare and some basic care. The
government is already purchasing services from NGOs that have relations with
the government. When you talk about social service, sure, that is spring, but
at the same time there is the impression that anything independent or anything
grassroots is being brought into the government sphere and becoming controlled.
So in that sense, when you talk about this form of independent society, you
could even talk about winter. But we don’t really think winter has come. We
recently had a meeting in which we received internal information and it looks as
though things will not change. There will be no rapid turning point ahead in
the next few years.
Li Bo: Environment is
a field that, especially now, everyone is getting a sense of how bad it is.
From working in this field for many years, I tend to think that an improvement
in the environment will be extremely slow and the determination demonstrated by
the government to improve has not been very effective. One of the reasons is
that they do not allow environmental NGOs to stand up to challenge polluters or
decision makers at many different levels. No matter how beautifully the 18th
Party Congress puts it, or in the last National People’s Congress that has just
been concluded, I am not holding my breath.
In the last couple of years, there
are two different things that occurred, which made me realize why I should not
hold my breath. One is from about two years ago when the Civil Law was being
revised and an article was added to allow NGOs to file public interest lawsuits.
The clause, or the article, however, became caught up in all sorts of debates
over the definition of NGO and who is actually qualified to file a lawsuit. More
interestingly, since last year, the Environmental Law have also been going through
similar troubling discussions. In fact, I think the third draft has still yet to
be improved. The most important reason is that NGOs felt angry about the fact
that NGOs, by and large, are not qualified as a plaintiff in this amendment. Funny
enough, in the second draft and third draft, they limited the qualified NGOs to
one: the China Environment Federation [a government-run NGO]. So, for a country
like China, a law is written only for one organization, which is ridiculous and
I think there is still a long way to go. [Editor’s
Note: The Environmental Law was eventually revised to open room for other NGOs
to file lawsuits.] Probably one thing that I agree with is that we
shouldn’t lose hope. I also believe things will get better but I think the cost
of this process will be high and it will be long.
Liwei: In China there
are two worlds. One world is full of Chinese officials. It is the government media’s
China, or the rich Chinese people’s China. So if you look into these circles
everything looks good. But then there is the other China, which is the Weibo China,
or the Wechat China. It is the China full of restaurant people, taxi drivers,
and NGOs. So what is spring, and to whom? There are a lot of complicated aspects,
especially in the area of NGOs. Some areas will have springtime, such as
education, health care, or poverty relief. Maybe the concept of volunteering is
also becoming more popular. But for human rights and politics, I think that it
is winter, and for the environment, it is in between. We cannot simply fight
the situation because it is very complicated. We have to choose which NGO or
which area we are in. Then we can see if you are in winter, summer, or spring,
and it is only after that, that you will be able to know what kind of clothes
you need in order to prepare for your season.
Shawn: Now I want to
ask a question that is related to the last question. This is 2014, but the growth of
civil society is a slow process. Is this because, the government does not trust
independent NGOs? Is this a very basic lack of trust in NGOs? Or, is this
because the government believes that NGOs, especially grassroots NGOs, do not
have the capacity or are not professional enough. This is related to
one of my questions about the change in the NGO sector. Now that we are seeing
the NGO sector become more professional and more people are coming into the NGO
sector from areas such as business, government or media, will this make the NGO
sector more professional? Will it make the sector stronger? And finally, will
it make it easier for the government to trust NGOs to do this kind of work that
Libo was talking about, which is NGOs being able to file public interest
lawsuits. Is the issue with the public interest lawsuit due to the fact that the
government only believes the All-China Environment Federation? Does the
government think that they are the only ones who have the professional capacity
to carry out this kind of lawsuit? Or is it because they just don’t trust you
guys?
Liwei: We believe that
NGOs and civil society are very important. But I think that for the government,
it is not that important. If you read the 18th Party Congress
documents for China, the top priorities include economic development, political
stability, the development of Chinese culture, which means maybe building some
more Confucius schools outside of China, social development, and finally the
environment. From this, we can see the five priorities. The first is the economy
because the government believes that since the U.S. and Europe are strong and
rich, they can criticize China, so China must be rich as well. Then, they will
be able to criticize the U.S. and the UK for their human rights policies. The
second priority, political development, does not mean there will be democracy
or multiple parties. It means that we have to keep a one-party control. The
third priority is culture. We always learn from Confucius books. I saw Confucius’
books in this bookshop. The fourth revolves around social development, which
includes not only NGOs and foundations, but also religion. The government does
not put these kinds of issues on their top agenda. They also have no time, resources
or smart people to look at it carefully. They only choose one environmental
association to deal with this because it is simpler. They do not want to spend
time thinking or use up their brain energy on these social issues, so they just
say that NGO work is irrelevant, but they still exist and make too much noise. The
government believes that if they give them a piece of bread, they will shut up.
That is why the government gives them work that they do not see as a top
priority. They give the NGOs a piece of bread, not a whole loaf of bread, not
even a half of a loaf.
I think that there are still trust issues because in
order to build up trust you have to understand and know this area or this
industry. You must be an expert. But in the government, there are not many
experts on this subject. In order to cover these issues, you must be an expert
on civil society, but you must also receive trust from the government. There
are very few people who can actually meet these needs, and that is why they
just choose one NGO. I think the fact that professional people or more media
people are going to the NGOs and different foundations is a benefit, but it can
also create some chaos.
Li Bo: I think I
differ slightly from what Liwei just said. I actually believe the government
has a reservoir for very smart people. If you just look at any recruitment of
public servants, almost all of the bright university graduates first go to
those opportunities. It is only now with this government’s anti-corruption crackdown that these smart
graduates seem to express some disdain for government jobs. The problem is that
it is a centralized government that is not used to being criticized from
anybody else. They can criticize internally but nobody from the outside can
criticize or challenge them. I think this is universal for all one-party
regimes. It has little to do with professionalism. When there is a problem, no
matter whether people put it harshly or professionally with figures and data,
it is up to you to absorb that and come up with a new solution. Chinese
government is hosting probably one of the biggest armies of technicians, and
for so many years they have had so many smart and technically know-how people.
But I agree with the earlier conclusion that a lot of those experts or
intellectuals do not have the independent space to express what they really
believe. That is how a lot of projects have been pushed through, even if the
environmental impact assessment is wrong. The environmental impact assessment is
made to support the project of political will and is not based on scientific findings
or real, feasibility, scientific studies. Chinese NGOs, no matter in what
field, need to become more professional. We should not make professionalism
more important than independent positions in order to express our views. I have
noticed in the last couple of years that a lot of Chinese entrepreneurial
foundations or quasi-NGOs tend to speak of professionalism too much. It is so dangerous
for people to become so caught up in becoming professional that they end up
with no confidence to speak out when there is a problem, especially when they
do not have data. And if they say something even though they do not have data, they
will be categorized as a lousy NGO.
Liwei: You said that
there are good people in the government, which is right. The smart people will
pass the examination to join the Chinese government, but after they join the
government they will change. They will become stupid. Before they joined the
government they were really smart but that is the situation because even if
there are smart people in a very stupid system, you will be become stupid, and
if you are a stupid person but in a smart system, you will become smart. So I
think the system is very important. There are not very smart people in a stupid
system.
Zhai Yan: I would like to
add a sentence. Having a professional organization is very important and you
really need this in order to satisfy the increase in demands the public has of
us. I often compare professionals with volunteers and I’m finding that it is
not just skill, but how you translate your skill into empathy and into showing
that you care. That is real professionalism.
Shawn: I think that
these points about independence are really important. Especially when Zhai Yan
was talking about how right now, the government is preparing a big initiative
to carry out government contracting of services to social organizations and
there is a lot of money that’s going to go into the system as a result. I think
Zhai Yan said that she is really skeptical about how this money is being used
because it is all happening in a black box and we do not know exactly if this
money is being used effectively or if it is going into someone’s pockets. So I
think that is another reason to have independent monitoring. You guys have been
so patient and I want to let you guys ask some questions, but I just have one
more question that I have been dying to ask. I feel like I can ask this
question because these people are my 老朋友 (old friends). I hope this question does not offend
you. Do
you think that Chinese NGOs are too timid? Some people criticize NGOs because
they say that NGOs do not do enough to promote, to advocate, to try and change
policies, to try and push for more public participation or for more social
movements. Chinese NGOs are just doing服务, or community
service. Do you think Chinese NGOs are too timid, too careful in their work?
Zhai Yan: We talk with up
to thousands of NGO staff every year and it is probably because of how
political the basic education system is. They do not have this drive for
advocacy. They do not have this consciousness. They only think about service
right now, so it all really starts with education. China has enough laws and
regulations. I used to make recommendations and give advice on policy. But what
effect does it have?
Liwei: I am an NGO
member so you think that I should be brave. I think Chinese NGOs are already
very brave. Look at the past twenty years. They have survived and existed. They
have already shown that they are strong and are not timid. But, we should have
a different way of talking about policy and advocacy. However, the purpose
should be the same. To steal Obama’s word, the purpose should be ‘change’.
China still needs to change. But how do we do that? Different NGOs or different
people can do different things. Zhai Yan can do her part, Li Bo can do his
part, and I can do my part. But we should have one goal, which is to change and
improve our standard for civil society.
I agree with Zhai Yan that we must start from education. If people know
things, you will not have to tell them what to do and they will know how to
choose. The only problem is that in China, we only understand that we need food
and an apartment. That is why apartments are so expensive because then Chinese
people have to work more, which gives them no time to think about civil
society. Why is it that in the U.S. and the UK you have so many demonstrations?
It is because they have too much time. The government makes Chinese people want
to make money. I think that is a good policy for the Chinese government because
once you have some money, then you have to pay for education. You have to pay for
health care. You have to pay for the apartment. So you never have time to sit
down and think or read a book.
But I think for us NGOs, what we can do is we
can give opportunities for the Chinese people in terms of education and
independent thinking. Then we can let them know how to do it and make them
understand that NGO members cannot be the leaders. People should be their own
leaders. Chinese people always want a leader, but I think they have to learn
that they are their own leaders. They should decide what their future is. For
Chinese people, their future is always made by their leader and that is not
right. If we know our future is in our own hands, then we will know what to do
with it. I think NGO work should do the basic groundwork, and then when the
time is right, everything will come into place. We should follow the Chinese
philosophy that the right thing should happen at the right time. So in the end,
timing is a big issue.
Li Bo: I agree with
you on that. About two years ago I had a volunteer who came from Taiwan. He is
a very seasoned activist in Taiwan. We had a lot of conversations about what
happened in Taiwan and I still vividly remember one thing he said to me. He
said that when the Guomingdang collapsed, there was a period of a sort of
government coma when nobody knew who was responsible for what. Everyone felt
like an orphan because nobody was in charge of anything. That period, according
to this friend of mine, was extremely important for Taiwanese society because
it was during this time that many self help groups formed on the corner of
every street in places like tea houses. People came together to discuss what they
should do.
I think that China, however, does not have an answer. Over time,
either people will mature or there will be a bloody fight, and I can see how
social instability could seriously happen. I tend to think we need to take time
and we need some form of what the Taiwanese people have experienced. In Burma,
for example, when there was a lot of control in the media, and then all of
sudden, everything loosened up. However, you can see that they need time and
they need to learn. It is very difficult thing to say, but what I strongly feel
that people in this country need to take a lot more initiative in what they are
doing in terms of trying to make a living, which is already very overbearing. Our
political system will not change in one day. In fact, if China’s political system
suddenly changed tomorrow, it would actually create a lot of chaos.
Shawn: Thank you.
Alright, so now I’m going to open it up to questions from the audience. We will
take three questions at a time and then ask our panel to respond to them.
Question #1: I wanted to talk about the problem of funding. I guess it
depends on which field you are working in, but there has been a shrinking of
international funding in China, generally speaking. I wonder if you suffer from
that and if you see Chinese people or Chinese companies filling the gap or been
interested in approaching you in any way. And what do you do to fund your work?
Question #2: My question is related to media. What it is the role of the
social media and mainstream media in terms of increasing the respect for NGO
work here in China?
Question #3: My question is a bit of a practical question because I guess
if you work in the civil society sector, sometimes you might touch on grey
areas where you are not one-hundred percent sure whether it is ok or whether it
goes a bit too far. I mean obviously there are instances where NGOs have been
closed down or activists are put in jail. Do you think that beforehand, they
usually receive feedback and signs of stepping back so they are able to see
what is coming?
Zhai Yan: These are all
questions we often run into. As for the funding one, when the international
funding started to dry up a little bit, a lot of grassroots organizations in
China died, especially in remote areas. We still get most of our funding from either
international organizations or from national contracting. Especially from
company foundations and private foundations.
As for the question about grey area, we are an organization that is
followed by the security bureau and they often get in touch with us even before
we put out something new. They will give me a call and they’ll actually have a
chat with me. So it is a good way of knowing where the red line is. As for he
second point, we are now also doing a lot of policy research. At first we did
not understand this, but now we know that we need a lot of expert advice. For
example, from lawyers or from companies, to tell us how we can prevent anything
negative from happening. As a Beijing based NGO, we cannot go to other areas in
order organize anything. So now I know that we first let a local NGO organize,
and then we follow them. This way, we prevent a lot of problems and this is
very necessary for Chinese NGOs right now. We do not want to do anything
illegal, but we often happen to do so without knowing. So it is very important
to do as much research as we can in advance.
Liwei: Regarding
funding, we know that if there is no money, there is no work. I feel a little
bit sad that international NGOs have stopped answering Chinese NGOs because
they think China is rich and that the Chinese government is rich, so they do
not need to sponsor their NGOs. The Chinese government is rich, but they do not
give their money to NGOs and instead they use their money to send spaceships to
space. But of course, in the long term, Chinese NGOs should be self-supported.
I think NGOs will get money from the government if they are lucky or if they
have a good relationship with the government, but NGOs usually get their
fundraising from friends. For Charitarian, we are sponsored by private friends who
trust us and know what we are doing is legitimate.
For the grey area, I think you need practice. There are a lot of grey areas
and the law cannot explain everything, so you need practice and experience. But
of course the red line and the bottom line exists. Supporting the independence
of Tibet or Xinjiang, for example, is the bottom line and you cannot get
involved in that. There are a lot of other things that are in between. So in
the end, you need experience, practice and also a good reputation. I do not
think the police can look after all of the NGOs. They just pick some NGOs and
then if you do your work, let them feel that you are not doing sensitive work
and if you do not give them too many headaches, then maybe they will let you do
your work within their tolerance. It does not have to be permitted or legal,
but something they can tolerate. The space of tolerance is very big.
I also think that social media is very important and we can see that there is
a lot of fundraising done by the social media. Information in social media
travels very fast, and it can reach millions of people right away. Unfortunately,
in China we do not have Facebook or Twitter, but we have Renren and Weibo. So we
should increase our use of social media and use it more intelligently in order
to successfully promote our products with pictures, and let people know what we
are doing.
Li Bo: I think my two
colleagues here have addressed the foreign funding question very well.
Regarding media, I strongly believe that social media is a very important part
of Chinese people’s lives now. I have personally seen a lot of cases, particularly
with people who work in isolated areas. One good thing about China is that you cannot
really find a place that does not have telephone signal, so that means everyone
can share information. I have seen my friends who are part of different media
sources and NGOs who found themselves in a very serious situation in regards to
pollution. They were in an isolated site and ambushed by polluters. However,
they were able to save themselves by sending information out very quickly.
There is almost an unwritten strategy when NGOs go into dangerous situations,
they learn how to relay information to other people ahead of time.
For the third question regarding the grey area, I think that through my
experiences there are two kinds of grey areas. One concerns officials who’s
hearts are in the right place and who share information with us, especially
when there is an investment project facing some kind of situation. I would not
say there are a lot of them but there are some that share quite important
information with us in terms of how to push an issue. The second is public security
as information collection technology today is so advanced. I would not be
surprised if today, here in this room, what we discussed is being shared
somewhere else because this has been my experience. For me, I like to take
every opportunity talking to public security upon their request and use this opportunity
to educate them.
I do have one experience which I thought I was very successful. For a long
time these two public security people talked to me quite frequently. I always
talked about environmental decision-making not being transparent, which has resulted
in pollution or huge social costs to local people that has damaged the social
harmony of the society. Normally, these public security people do not comment
and just listen and take notes. So for a long time, I did not know what they
thought until one day, after I told them that I was working on a report on
Chinese rivers and dam issues, one of the public security agents sent me a
report by BBC which was about WWF’s recent report on the critically endangered
Yangtze river system at the beginning of this year. After he sent this BBC
report to me, he asked if it would be interesting to me. And I said “Yes, of
course. I actually read the WWF report and I believe that this is the
situation.” However, there was no response. Then I asked him why his colleague
did not come the last time we met. He answered and said that she had stomach
cancer. Then he said that what I said is probably true. That environmental
pollution is a serious problem and even though he could not say for sure that
her stomach cancer was a direct result of pollution, it was probably related. This
shows that these opportunities we have talking to public security allows us to understand
what they do or what they think, and you realize that they also have a human
side.
Question #4: What is your relationship, not personally, but as
organizations with the commercial, business world. Not just with fundraising but
also with credibility, protection for you, and the public security bureau coming
to visit you. Our observations have been that philanthropy is a part of a very elite
level and most famous Chinese philanthropists are not really interested, or do
not even know and do not trust the grassroots or independent NGOs. I’d like to
hear your experience with this.
Question #5: My question relates to the public’s trust of NGOs, which as
far as I can see, remains fairly low. What I wanted to ask specifically is if
that is a problem for your individual organizations or for the sector as a
whole. And if so, what is your role as practitioners in addressing that issue?
Or in other words, what can you do practically to raise public trust of the
sector and NGOs.
Question #7: I think in a way, my question overlaps with the other two,
very briefly. The experience in Eastern Europe when the totalitarian regimes
eased up was that a horrifying proportion, something like 75% of the NGOs
turned out to be completely dishonest and crooked. These were just businessmen
who set up NGOs and stole all of the money. How can you be confident that the
same will not happen in China?
Shawn: This is a
question about the reliability and corruption within the NGOs. How many NGOs
are set up to just make money?
Liwei: This is a
difficult question for me. I think trust is important in every type of
business. If we look at NGO work, it is still a business. So anything that
happens to large industries can also happen to NGOs. This means that while
there are financial crises for investment banks there are also crises and trust
issues for big foundations or big NGOs. So we should not be surprised. Also we discussed
the case about NGOs like the Angel Foundation started by the actor and actress,
Li Yapeng and Wang Fei. NGO work is quite young, so there will be some problems
and mistakes and we should be tolerant. But we should also not make excuses for
ourselves. That is why we need supervision from the public, the media and the
government. But the government doesn’t
know how to supervise and they want to get money from corrupt foundations. They
want another way to participate in corruption from big foundations. I think for
all three of us, our organizations are not at that stage of corruption because
we are still so poor. We do not have enough money to become corrupted but we still
have to be careful. In Charitarian, when we have programs for rural teacher
training, we invite our sponsors so they can see what we are doing and how much
we are spending.
But also I think we cannot be too critical with NGOs. A lot of
people think that NGO people should not have a reasonable salary, which is wrong
because it is still a job. Of course we have compassion but also we need food
and we need to be paid decently. People who work for international NGOs in
China have good pay, but Chinese NGOs’ pay is very low. We see corruption in
government NGOs because they have enough money. This question is targeted at
the wrong group of people. You have to talk to Red Cross, China Youth
Development Foundation or China Children Foundation because they are so big, so
they are the ones that have to be careful. But for grassroots NGOs, I suggest that
their salaries be increased. They should get a decent salary so the smart and
capable people can work in NGOs. Otherwise only volunteers or retired people apply
for the job which they cannot do very well. Also I think the relationship
between NGOs and the companies is very important. Companies have CSR departments
to sponsor the NGOs and to encourage working together, which I think is very
good.
Zhai Yan: Very good
questions. On this issue of public trust, actually it’s basically zero, which
is very low but that makes sense because we always operated underground so the
government would not see us, but that also meant that the public could not see
us. The public still does not recognize us and even now that we are slowly moving
a up a little bit, we are still used to keeping it very low key because showing
off still does not work very well. Even now, of course we very much welcome
donations and government contracting money, so we are trying to be more visible
and transparent, and use legal means to carry out our work. But for now, over
90 percent of NGOs still rely on themselves and this is the phase we are in
right now.
As for our relationship with businesses, we are linked up with companies
and this is not just about money. One resource that companies offer is people
with expertise who can provide professional training. NGOs really need to learn
from the market, from companies about openness, competition and building
professional capacity. NGOs really need the support of the private sector . So
cross-sector collaboration with the business sector is really essential to building
a strong civil society.
As for corruption, that is a legitimate concern because we already see many
companies and businesspeople coming into the philanthropy sector. One reason is
because government providing preferential policies like tax breaks and lots of
government contracting money for NGOs. So businesspeople are taking advantage
of this to set up their own NGOs and getting government money because they
enjoy good relations with government departments. We have been seeing a lot of
things like this happen. These people who entered civil society because of
money rather than ideals might very well turn out to be crooks too.
Shawn: I think Zhai
Yan also said that with the all the government contracting because of the tax
exemptions and this government contracting, that businessmen might be more
interested in getting into this area. I just wanted to say on the question on
corruption that it is obviously connected to public trust. It is really strange
that NGOs in China. One of the reasons being, even though there are certainly
problems with corruption but it is not just because of NGOs but also because of
the system. It is because there is no good regulatory system to regulate NGOs
in China. In the U.S. there is a very clear system for registering NGOs. Here,
a lot of NGOs, especially the grassroots ones, are not registered. So it is a
very strange system. The security controls in China on NGOs are very good. But
the regulations and supervisions of NGO finances are very lax and sometimes
just not there. This is a system that does not help promote healthy development
of Chinese NGO civil society. I think that is something that has to be put on
the backs of government. The government has to do something to change the
situation and to improve the regulatory system of NGOs in China, and of
non-profits.
We’ve now come to the end of this forum. I’d like to thank all of you for
coming and participating, and to thank the Bookworm for providing us the space
to discuss these important issues.
(Transcription by Joanna
Shieh, edited by Shawn Shieh)
