CDB and CLB: Claiming the Space for An Independent, Progressive Civil Society in China

Sometimes you need to leave home to appreciate the family you left behind. I had that epiphany recently. Having worked for China Development Brief and China Labour Bulletin, two civil society organizations that developed a reputation for independent and authoritative monitoring and analysis about civil society and labor in China, I confess to taking their importance for granted. Then, when I was invited recently on a fact-finding mission to Israel and Palestine to meet with NGOs working on human rights and humanitarian issues, it suddenly became clear to me.

The purpose of our mission was to investigate restrictions on NGOs’ access to funding, a critical component of their freedom of association rights. These NGOs play an important role in monitoring, documenting and seeking to ameliorate violations of international human rights and humanitarian law in Israel and Palestine. Over the last few years, like their counterparts in many other countries, they began encountering greater pushback by the Israeli government, including on issues such as funding. In 2016, an NGO Transparency Law was passed in the Knesset requiring Israeli NGOs that received more than 50% of their funding from foreign governments, to declare their foreign government funding sources on their publications and websites, and in meetings with government officials. This law had the clever but sinister effect of singling out Israeli human rights NGOs that rely heavily on foreign government funding, while leaving untouched nationalist, right-wing NGOs that also rely on foreign funding but from private donors.

In our meetings with these NGOs about the pushback against their funding sources, one name came up again and again: an Israeli civil society organization called NGO Monitor.  On the surface, NGO Monitor comes across as the kind of organization that China Development Brief was meant to be, an authoritative one-stop shop for foreigners interested in NGOs in that country. Its objective, as stated on its website, is “producing and distributing critical analysis and reports on the activities of the international and local NGO networks, for the benefit of government policy makers, journalists, philanthropic organizations and the general public.”

On closer inspection, though, much of its content takes a very critical and even hostile view of more progressive, left-wing NGOs that monitor and call attention to human rights violations against Palestinians. One common line of attack is to point out the reliance of these NGOs on foreign government funding, particularly funding from European governments. Labeling these NGOs as “foreign agents,” NGO Monitor along with other nationalist, right-wing NGOs, with support from powerful politicians and officials, have over the last decade launched media and lobbying campaigns to delegitimize the work of human rights NGOs in Israel and Palestine. Their campaigns have worked. They led Israeli legislators to draft the 2016 NGO Transparency Law, and pressured European governments to review their funding commitments to human rights NGOs in Israel and Palestine.

The case of NGO Monitor shows how important it is for independent, credible, progressive NGOs to claim and defend the epistemological space and language for talking about NGOs in any country. It is clear that NGO Monitor now occupies a vital space for civil society in Israel. It has become an almost indispensable resource for those who want to better understand the NGO space in Israel. Like CDB’s NGO database, it has a large database of local and international NGOs working in Israel and Palestine. In fact, it seems to have the only such database in the English language. When you type in an Israeli NGO’s name, the first search result to come up is from NGO Monitor’s database which presents profiles of that NGO’s funding sources and activities written from the perspective of NGO Monitor.

The problem of course is that NGO Monitor has a highly partisan agenda, one that is intent on dividing civil society, and aligned with nationalist, right-wing NGOs and the current Netanyahu government.  What it and other right-wing groups in Israel are doing is eerily familiar to the ideological warfare taking place in President Trump’s America, and raises deeper concerns about their role in undermining Israeli democracy. As Professor Amal Jamal notes in his report, The Rise of Bad Civil Society in Israel, “bad civil society” organizations like NGO Monitor, make “use of democratic procedures to silence and delegitimize any critiques of government policies, especially those voiced by [human rights organizations]…. “The cooperation of ‘bad civil society’ with…government ministries and central political parties feeds the public sphere with anti-democratic values and norms, which undermines civil and democratic ideals and liberal freedoms and brings the entire democratic system into question.”

At CDB and CLB, we spent hours discussing and debating our positioning in Chinese civil society, knowing we were one of the few go-to sources on civil society and labor for the international community. We emphasized our independence from the government, and our support for grassroots NGOs, workers and the progressive values they stood for. But in the process of defending them, we ensured that our reporting and analysis remained credible and impartial, and tried our best to use accurate information, adopt a neutral tone, and avoid attacking other civil society organizations.

Of course, any reporting in China has to tread carefully in a restricted and censored space where there is less room for different ideological positions. In a democratic and open society like Israel’s, the space is more wide open for organizations to voice more critical and extreme views. That makes NGO Monitor’s occupation of the English-language space there that much more astonishing. Now, recognizing that they waited too long to respond, human rights organizations in Israel and Palestine are considering ways to fight back and reclaim some of that space by setting up a more independent, impartial alternative to NGO Monitor.

Here’s where I had my epiphany. After seeing what happened in Israel, the significance of CDB and CLB became clear to me. These two NGOs occupied the civil society space in the early days back in the mid-1990s, when there wasn’t much of a civil society in China, and they spent the last 20 years or so defending that space with integrity on behalf of an independent, progressive civil society. In doing so, they helped to build the linguistic and epistemological infrastructure for understanding and talking about civil society in China.

The Chinese government is now seeking to reclaim some of that space with more assertive legislation and initiatives and, at some point in the future, as China’s society opens up and discussion and debate become more ideological and contentious, other groups on both the right and left will enter the fray. But I’m confident that Chinese civil society is in a good position to deal with these challenges, in part because of the contributions made by CDB and CLB.

Dr. Timothy Hildebrandt's Summer Course in Beijing on NGOs, August 6-17

Dr Timothy Hildebrandt (associate professor of social policy at the LSE) is again offering his course on Chinese social organisations this coming August 6-17 at the LSE-PKU Summer School. In the course—which is consistently ranked highest in student satisfaction at the Summer School—students will gain a theoretical grounding in the development of NGOs generally, as well as a deep empirical understanding of how these organisations have developed in China.

The course is dynamic by design, responsive to the fast changing environment for NGOs in China; it is cutting edge in its discussion of new issues and exploration into concepts and theories to understand them. Particular attention is paid to emerging issues, such as changes in laws on registration, the precarious future of international NGOs, and the growth of government-organised NGOs (GONGOs) and social enterprises. Although no single issue area is the central focus, lectures and seminars will draw attention to environmental protection, public health, HIV/AIDS, elder care, labour, and LGBT rights, among others.

The intensive 2-week course is designed for a wide variety of students. In the past, the class has included advanced undergraduates, those just having completed their bachelors, masters students, PhD students, and career professionals in government, law, and business.

To learn more about the course and apply for the summer school, please visit http://www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse/Summer-Schools/lse-pku-summer-school/courses/lps-sa301. The deadline for applying is June 15. Should you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact Dr Hildebrandt at T.R.Hildebrandt@lse.ac.uk.

Please feel free to disseminate this widely to any individuals or institutions where you think there might be interest! 

The Humanity of the Z35 Hard Sleeper

I decided the other day to ride hard sleeper on the Z35 express train from Beijing to Guangzhou. Taking the train is a great way to see the country. China has one of the most extensive and best railways in the world. For long-distance travel, there are several classes of train. One is conventional, locomotive-pulled trains which have various levels of express and local service. The other is the high-speed or bullet trains which have made China the envy of other countries including the U.S. China started building their high-speed railways about 15 years ago and already has the most extensive high-speed system in the world.   

The conventional trains feature different classes of travel: soft sleeper, hard sleeper, soft seat, and hard seat. The soft sleeper has four bunks per compartment, two on either side, and the compartments can be closed for privacy. Hard sleeper has six bunks per compartment, three on either side, and the compartments cannot be closed. If riding hard sleeper is like being in the gritty city, soft sleeper has the feel of the quiet suburbs. The bullet trains and soft sleepers are more expensive, so people with less means or who want to save money generally take hard sleeper or even hard seat.

It’s been decades since I took hard sleeper, but I associate it with being with regular people, and wanted to take my time to see China’s countryside. The Z35 route goes through the central provinces of Hubei, Henan, Hebei and Hunan before arriving in Guangdong at China’s southern gateway, traveling a total of 2294 kilometers. 

Riding the Z35, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the same China I knew 30 years ago. Yes some things have changed. The hard sleeper compartments now have nicer linens and air conditioning, there is no smoking allowed in the compartments, and the trip from Beijing to Guangzhou takes only about 22 hours instead of two days.

But the people haven't changed much, and that was refreshing to see in a country where blocks of old buildings and alleyways are razed, and gleaming skyscrapers and efficient subway lines go up in their place, in a blink of an eye.

Passengers still struggled to get up and down the bunks, and rummaged around for places to place their suitcases. They sat in the narrow corridors looking at their phones, or lay on their bunks looking at their phones. They lined up at the hot water area to fill their thermoses. They waited patiently for the one bathroom in each car to disgorge its occupant. A few kids played around the feet of their parents. People’s belongings began to spill into the open on their bunks and in the corridors. The trash bin cover was conveniently stuck so people began piling their instant noodle containers and plastic bottles near the bathroom sink. 

The train attendants walked past sweeping the floor, cleaning the bathrooms which seemed to be constantly occupied, and pushing food carts through the corridor calling out the names of the foods – milk, yogurt, chicken leg and rice. One attendant made several sales pitches in our car for prunes from Xinjiang, and chrysanthemum tea from Anhui. 

One lady who boarded in Henan entered our compartment and looked for a place to put her suitcase. She was pretty and dressed smartly in high heels and a knee-high skirt. I made sure to dress comfortably in shorts, t-shirt and sandals but some preferred the more formal look despite the proletarian furnishings. When she didn’t see a space for her suitcase below the bottom bunks, she put her suitcase on the middle bunk. Then she climbed up, placing her feet on the metal footholds and pulled herself up.  Once on the bunk, she stood up and tried to put her suitcase in an opening above the top bunk. She had to stretch and an elderly gentlemen in a dress shirt and tie came over to help. I was sitting on the bottom bunk and feeling awkward because I could see up her skirt and I felt bad the old man had acted faster than me in lending a hand. The studious looking guy reading across from me was trying hard not to look at the scene, and I tried not to stare.  Then after some effort, she and the elderly guy managed to raise her suitcase into the opening, whereupon she settled back in her bunk, and made a call on her phone. The old guy also went back to his phone, sending encouraging, peppy audio texts to people I imagined were either friends or business partners that went something like “let’s get together sometime and talk” and “let’s help each other out, and improve our situation together!”

Watching these scenes play out, I couldn’t help but feel a common humanity in these moments, witnessing the same inefficiencies, foibles and concerns in Chinese today as I remembered 30 years ago. China may be on the way to becoming a global economic and technological power, but that ambition was not evident in the people in the hard sleeper section who were just trying to figure out how to get by, and pass the hours, in their cramped spaces. In confining us to close quarters over a long period of time, the hard sleeper had a kind of leveling effect, doing away with any pretense of status and privilege. The old guy in the dress shirt and tie, the pretty woman in high heels and skirt, they were all in the same bunk and bathroom as the rest of us. Now if they could just put aside their smart phones and start talking again.

Resources for contextualizing recent developments in philanthropy and civil society

I'm proud to announce the release of a set of infographics, graphs, timelines, factsheets and FAQs that I developed with the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. You can find these resources on ICNL's website. The purpose of these resources is to help people understand the significance of recent developments in the philanthropy and civil society space in China. They are meant to complement a longer, more detailed China Philanthropy Law Report that I wrote and published with ICNL.

The idea behind these resources was to 1) provide context for the report, and 2) highlight the significance of the legal developments discussed in the report.

In terms of context, we wanted to provide a visual way to understand the universe of civil society actors affected by recent legislation, particularly for those unfamiliar with the Chinese civil society space. Thus one set of resources is a Universe of Chinese  and Overseas NGOs, and graphs showing the growth of Chinese NGOs since the 1990s.

Another part of the bigger picture is how these developments fit into the longer-term evolution of philanthropy and civil society, and its regulation, in China. Thus, another set of resources are two timelines, one a timeline on the rise of philanthropy and civil society in China, and another timeline on major developments in the regulations of philanthropy and civil society.

In highlighting the significance of the legal developments discussed in the ICNL report, we wanted to drive home how major legal developments starting in 2016 have substantially reshaped the philanthropy and civil society space in China. Thus, we developed three factsheets underlining major changes in the regulation of Chinese and Overseas NGOs after 2016.

Finally there are two sets of FAQs, one on the 2016 Charity Law and another on the 2016 Overseas NGO Law.

I hope these resources are useful for those who want to understand the importance of these very substantial changes that have taken place in the legal environment for philanthropy and civil society  in China over the past 2-3 years. Please share these resources if you think they would be helpful to others.

My move from Hong Kong to Guangzhou

I realize I haven't blogged since last December and I do feel a bit of blogrust writing this. I don't have many excuses, except that I left my job as Deputy Director at China Labour Bulletin in Hong Kong in January and moved out of my Hong Kong flat and over the border to Guangzhou where I now reside. In addition to moving and settling down in a new and fascinating city, I've been very busy finishing up some consulting jobs, writing and producing content about the legal environment for philanthropy and civil society in China, and how NGOs can counter the closing of civic space in China and the Asia-Pacific.

Now that I've gotten my excuses out of the way, I plan to blog and write more regularly about my recent projects, the civil society landscape after the 19th Party Congress and recent National People's Congress, and much more, in the days and months ahead.

Because blogging and writing are about as profitable as singing on the street, and I always need a good excuse to get out of the house, I'll also continue to do consulting for organizations working in China and other parts of the Asia-Pacific. Below are my areas of expertise:

• Analysis of political and policy trends in China, particularly in the area of philanthropy, civil society, labor and law 
• External evaluations of programs, and writing grant proposals and project reports
• Providing guidance for NGOs on complying with the Overseas NGO Law in China and registering in Hong Kong
• Developing innovative civil society fundraising, programming and management proposals and strategies in challenging operating environments, with a focus on China and the Asia-Pacific
• Developing service learning curriculum and programs in China for Chinese and international college students

If you know of anyone who needs help in any of these areas, please have them get a hold of me at shawnshieh@gmail.com.

The Charity Law and the mainstreaming of philanthropy and civil society (sort of) in 2016-17, Part 2

In my last post, I mentioned some events and trends that suggest philanthropic and civic activity is slowly entering the mainstream of Chinese society. These are trends that some of us may not want to recognize but we ignore them at our peril. Whether we like it or not, Chinese (and here I mean citizens and non-governmental actors and not just the government) are driving social change. Below are two more trends we should be keeping an eye on.

One is the growing interest of Chinese individuals in giving as evidenced in the rapid rise of online fundraising. In 2016, the Ministry of Civil Affairs approved 13 charitable organizations’ online philanthropy platforms. Among them, the Tencent Philanthropy (腾讯公益平台), Ant Group Philanthropy (蚂蚁金服公益平台) and Taobao Philanthropy (淘宝公益平台) platforms raised 1.289 billion RMB, 37.79% higher than the figure for 2015. Looking at the age groups of the donors, the generation born in the 80s ranked first, making up more than 45% of the donors. Online donations went mostly to education and health, followed by disaster relief and environmental protection. More than 70% of online donations were via mobile phones.

One event that has stimulated a great deal of public interest in philanthropy is Tencent’s 9/9 (September 9^th) Day of Giving which began in 2015. This year’s 9/9 Day of Giving (which actually takes place over three days) was the most successful so far, generating over 1.3 billion RMB in donations, of which 829.9 million RMB came from public donations, 299.99 million RMB came from matching funds from the Tencent Foundation, and 177 million RMB from social enterprises.  A total of 12. 68 million donors made contributions to around 6,466 charitable projects.

While the results of the 9/9 Day of Giving are impressive, concerns about fraud have cropped up with reports about a small number of donations being machine-generated. Tencent Foundation has promised to investigate the issue and issue the results soon.

The second trend is the internationalization of Chinese philanthtropy. Over the last few years, largely following the outflow of Chinese investment, Chinese foundations have begun to fund and even set up their own charitable and CSR activities in Southeast Asia, Africa and even Europe, sometimes leveraging the expertise and experience of international NGOs. Until now, however, there has been little connection between Chinese foundation activities abroad and global development goals such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). That was the aim of a recent report, “Philanthropy for the SDGs in China,” jointly released by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and China Foundation Center (CFC) which are jointly setting up a knowledge sharing platform to mobilize Chinese philanthropic actors to link their activities more closely to the SDGs. One contribution of the report was to call attention to the current imbalances in Chinese philanthropy which has poured funding into education and poverty alleviation, yet neglected areas such as gender equality, sanitation, clean energy and climate change.

As with online fundraising, the internationalization of Chinese philanthropy is going through growing pains. While some Chinese philanthropists and foundations have started to make donations and set up projects overseas, they have done so warily, sensitive to public backlash against Chinese resources being used to support development abroad rather than development at home. One of the first studies of Chinese NGOs internationalizing found that while over half of the NGOs surveyed felt it was necessary to internationalize, only about 17% felt the current environment was right while about 46% felt the environment for internationalization was not sufficiently developed[i]. Still there is no doubt that internationalization is taking off and will gather steam following China’s growing footprint overseas and initiatives like One Belt One Road.  The same study found that the value of overseas donations from Chinese foundations in 2015 had risen by a factor of 3.66 since 2014 and 1209 since 2008.

---

[i] Deng, Guosheng. 2017. “Trends in Overseas Philanthropy by Chinese Foundations.” Voluntas, (April).

The Charity Law and the Mainstreaming of Philanthropy and Civil Society (sort of) in 2016-17, Part 1

I’ve been informed that today is International Volunteers Day and the start of International Civil Society Week, with a gathering of civil society people in Fiji of all places. Fiji sounds like a nice place to be at this time of year. Not that you have to go there to be reminded that civil society exists. All you need to do is walk out your front door and find a gathering of people. Ask them what they’re doing and why. More likely than not, they’re getting together for some civic-minded purpose.

At any rate, since this is Civil Society Week, I feel I should write something about philanthropy and civil society in China. I’ve been planning to write something about Xi Jinping’s 19^th Party Congress report and its implications for philanthropy and civil society in China, but will return to that weighty subject when I have more time to wrap my head around it.

Speaking about Xi’s report, a number of informed, sober-minded commentators gave some pretty optimistic appraisals about it after the Congress was over, particularly Xi’s recognition of the role that social forces and organizations play in China’s governance. They may have a point. Xi is making his pronouncements at a time when a number of initiatives and trends are taking place that suggest philanthropic and civic activity are slowly entering the mainstream of Chinese society. It may not always take forms that we in the West recognize, but the changes are happening more quickly than many would think. The 2016 Charity Law had a major role to play in stimulating these changes, some of which are reflected in the following events and trends that took place over the last few months.

In early September, almost exactly one year after the Charity Law went into effect, the Ministry of Civil Affairs launched the National Charity Information Platform (全国慈善信息公开平台) in early September. The purpose of the platform is to make it easier for the public to find information about charitable organizations and supervise their activities, and encourage charitable organizations to disclose information about their fundraising and activities. The platform currently has information about 2,134 charitable organizations and 38 charitable trusts which were made possible by the Charity Law. The official website of the information platform is http://cishan.chinanpo.gov.cn. The platform can also be accessed by visiting the Ministry of Civil Affairs’ website at www.mca.gov.cn or China’s NPO website at www.chinanpo.gov.cn, and clicking on “Charity Information Platform” box at the bottom of the website.

A recent report released by the China Charity Alliance, “Giving China: The Annual Report on Philanthropy,” shows clear evidence of significant growth

in philanthropy in Chinese society last year. According to the report, total donations in 2016 reached a new historic high to 139.294 billion RMB, a 25.65% increase over 2015 (100.859 billion RMB). Per capita giving was 100.74 RMB, a 23.32% increase over 2015 (81.69 RMB).

Unlike the U.S. where individual giving dominates, corporate giving in China continues to account for the lion’s share with 65.35% of total donations in 2016. However, individual donations are rising faster, increasing by 73.52%, compared to corporate donations which grew by 15.86%.

Social donations are heavily concentrated in three areas: education (30.44%), health (26.05%) and poverty alleviation (21.01%). Social donations primarily went to foundations (62.55 billion RMB) and the China Charity Federation system (40.41 billion RMB), although a fair share still went to government departments, public institutions and mass organizations (26.06 billion RMB).

Comparatively speaking, China still lags behind the U.S. and European countries such as the UK. Total donations accounted for 0.19% of China’s GDP, compared to 2.1% for the U.S. and 0.52% for the UK. However, if the growth in giving continues at the current pace, we can expect China to close the gap significantly over the next few decades.

I’ll discuss two other trends – the rapid rise of online fundraising and the internationalization of philanthropy - in my next blogpost, hopefully before Civil Society Week is over.