Friday, 13. July 2007, 18:18:51
China Development Brief
Dec 31, 2004This essay prefaces our January 2005 special report, '200 International NGOs in China'. (In fact, the report profiles, in Chinese, 211 organisations). The essay below sets out to introduce a Chinese readership to the diverse range of organisations included. Hard copies of the directory, in Chinese, can be ordered from DINGOs. Order now on behalf of your Chinese partners. English language versions of the report, photocopied and ring-bound, are also available in English. "NGO" is one of the silliest terms ever coined. It is confusing because it covers such a large number of quite different entities, so it is rather like describing chairs, cupboards, sofas and even television sets as 'non-table furniture'.
How did such a mystifying term come into existence? The most likely answer is that a United Nations bureaucrat invented it. In UN parlance, official agencies of member states are known as Government Organisations (Gos). Back in the 1960s, when the UN started to invite other kinds of organisation to consultation meetings and events, it needed an easy way to refer to them, and settled on Non-Government Organisation (NGO). Over time, organisations that had already been established for many decades, but that had never before thought of themselves as ‘NGOs’, began to refer to themselves in this way. The term also served as a ready-made label for hundreds of thousands of new organisations that have since been set up across the world, in what has been called an ‘associational revolution.' 1
The global NGO community is thus very broad, encompassing organisations with different histories, values, ideas, objectives and ways of working. For some observers, such diversity is itself an important strength of the NGO sector. As a friend of mine once put it, 'It’s a tropical rain-forest, not a plantation' – that is, an ecosystem whose value derives from its diversity and complexity, as opposed to a farmed area containing just one or two species.
This introduction (and the directory itself) will serve as a rough guide to the rain forest – or, at least, to those parts of it that have established seeds and saplings in China. The main purpose of the guide is practical: to facilitate further, constructive partnership and exchange between Chinese and international agencies. A second purpose is simply informative. Since the beginning of the 'open door' policy, a great deal of information has been published in Chinese about international business, educational and diplomatic linkages, but there is a relative dearth of information about China's encounter with international NGOs. This directory aims to fill that information gap. I believe it shows that engagement with international NGOs is a significant and extensive, although until now largely over-looked, aspect of China’s integration with the outside world.
A third, also very important purpose relates to the development of China’s own emerging NGO and non-profit sector. Many Chinese researchers and social activists have attempted to create a theoretical framework and justification for NGOs -- for example, by discussing the respective roles of government, business, and 'the third sector.'2 But I am not aware of any systematic attempt to place China's non-profit sector in a global, historical context. To what extent do Chinese NGOs resemble or differ from NGOs elsewhere? What impact are international NGOs having, or likely to have, on the kind of NGO/non-profit sector that is emerging in China? These questions are not merely of scholarly interest; they are also practical questions that Chinese policymakers and NGO activists should consider.
To cast light on these questions this introductory essay firstly reviews the different historical traditions that have generated today's international NGO community. That historical sketch is followed by a rough typology of organisations and their different ways of working. The next section considers the impact that NGOs have had on international ideas of what 'development' is, or should be. A final section briefly explores the theme of 'globalisation', and how this is likely in future to both influence, and to be influenced by, local and international NGO activity.
The origins and evolution of international development NGOs
Knowing the past helps us to understand the present (通古晓今), so it is worth examining the different origins of modern NGOs. It is appropriate to begin with faith-based organisations, especially those with a Christian affiliation, because they have the longest, historical roots, intertwined as they are with past colonialism.
The Christian tradition
The Church possessed great power and wealth in Europe long before anything like the modern nation state had developed. In common with other major religions, Christianity taught the duties of charity and compassion, and its churches and monasteries dispensed charitable relief as well as serving as centres of learning, art, and what we would today regard as agricultural technology. (Buddhist temples and monasteries in Asia played a very similar role.) Much later, in the era of nation states and industrial capitalism, churches continued to play a major role as a provider of social services. They mobilised local relief for the poor and the sick in rural communities and they pioneered new kinds of assistance for newly urbanised populations in the cities forged out of the industrial revolution. Moreover, through weekly collections from their congregations, the churches established a tradition of almsgiving. This was an important precedent – one might say, a kind of template – for regular contributions to the secular, charitable organisations that have since arisen.
For many hundreds of years, European ‘Christendom’ was synonymous with the Roman Catholic Church.3 Rather like an army that is divided into regiments, the Catholic church is made up of different ‘Orders’ – Franciscans, Jesuits, etc, each with their own special emphasis – but it is a single, unified church that recognises the divine authority of the Pope in Rome. From the sixteenth century, however, a major division began to develop, leading to the establishment, especially in Northern Europe, of Protestant churches that rejected the Pope’s authority. In English, ‘catholic’ means broad or universal – and it was originally used to assert the universality of the Catholic Church as encompassing all believers. ‘Protestant’ comes from the verb ‘to protest’. In addition to their theological differences with Catholicism, the early Protestants generally opposed the worldly power and wealth of the Catholic Church.
Although Protestantism is officially regarded in China as a single religion, there have always been a number of distinct, Protestant denominations. These have different emphases, reflecting the time and places where they emerged, and they are also divided by doctrinal differences that can seem puzzling and obscure to outsiders. Over the centuries, the number of Protestant churches grew, as new, ‘non-conformist’ preachers challenged the teachings and authority of the older denominations. Many non-conformist Christians fled to America to seek freedom from religious persecution, and the United States proved fertile ground for the multiplication of Protestant denominations.
Nearly all variants of Christianity were until recently highly universalistic: Christians believed that theirs was the only true faith, and that they had a duty to spread the word of God. Thus, from the earliest times, Christian missionaries sought to establish and propagate their faith elsewhere. When the Spanish conquest of the Americas began, the Catholic Church was an important partner of the Spanish crown. In Marxist terms, the Church provided ideological justification for the conquest: saving souls by converting them to Christianity. But as well as spreading its creed the Church set out to instruct local communities in European technologies, literacy and medical knowledge. Many missionaries also tried to defend local people from the worst excesses of imperial plunder. European colonialism in Africa and Asia followed a similar pattern. The Bible accompanied the gun, with Catholic and Protestant denominations competing to root their own churches in foreign soil; but the missionaries also established schools and hospitals and promoted Western techniques of farming, forestry and construction.
Sometimes, these efforts were aimed at the most needy and marginalised people. For example, a nineteenth century Belgian priest devoted his life to working in leper colonies overseas, himself contracting leprosy in the process. (The Damien Foundation, included in this directory, is a lasting testament to that service.) Some missionaries to China based themselves in poor and marginalised ethnic minority communities – notably, for example, among the Miao people in the Southwest. But Christians were also active in introducing the most advanced scholarship and medical knowledge that the West had to offer. For example, the present-day Beijing Union Hospital and Medical College and Guangzhou’s Zhongshan University both grew out of institutions established by 19th century missionaries.
By the late 1970s, when China re-opened its doors, the world had changed profoundly and so, in some ways, had Christianity. It was now a largely post-colonial world with greater, if often still precarious, respect for the sovereignty of independent nation states. Christianity had become much more internationalised, and was no longer exclusively, or even mainly, a 'European' or 'Western' religion. In Latin America, Africa and Asia, churches originally established by missionaries had grown and flourished. Christian congregations in these continents had come to outnumber, by a large margin, those in North America and Europe. Moreover, churches in developing countries had themselves been through something of a decolonisation process and were now led by local people. This process stimulated new theological currents, such as the 'liberation theology' that many Latin American Catholics espoused, consciously siding with the poor not only as fitting recipients of charitable aid but also in their struggle against political and economic oppression.
At the same time, recent decades have seen some rapprochement between different faiths. A World Council of Churches, established in 1949 to promote church unity, now embraces 340 Protestant denominations worldwide. It is also probably fair to say that in most countries today there is more mutual respect and tolerance between Catholics and Protestants than at any point during the previous 500 years. Moreover, in many places nascent ‘inter-faith’ movements are exploring common ground between major religious traditions, including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam.
There are, of course, strong and dangerous counter-currents: we have by no means yet seen an end to religious bigotry and inter-faith conflict.
But, without venturing upon those large and sombre themes, the point I want to emphasise is that most 21st century Christians are more respectful of local culture and identity than the colonial missionaries of earlier centuries. Christianity today, like other major faiths, remains a major catalyst of social service, and motivates many individual donors, workers and organisations in international relief and development efforts. (There is, indeed, ample evidence to show that religious believers are more generous than non-believers in giving their time and money to charitable causes.) But the relief and development efforts motivated by Christianity are no longer inextricably linked, as once they were, to efforts to propagate the faith. Organisations such as Heifer Project International, Project Orbis and Christian Blind Mission International all have a Christian background and spirit of service, but their operations address social goals in quite specific fields that have absolutely no bearing on religious activity. Many churches, or coalitions of churches, have also established development NGOs that have largely replaced the Missionary Societies of earlier years. These new Christian organisations may seek especially to assist overseas communities that share their faith, but they also aim to serve the wider community. They do not generally seek to ‘convert’ non-believers, leaving the development of their church to its local representatives.
It would be misleading to paint too uniform a picture, and quite false to claim that no Christian churches nowadays send missionaries overseas to proselytise. There are still those who seek to ‘evangelise’ their faith, and who do send people to China for this purpose. This can lead to official suspicion about the motives of development NGOs that do openly acknowledge a Christian affiliation. At the same time, organisations that have a Christian background but that engage only in development work often fear that their motives will be misunderstood. All of this creates an atmosphere of ‘sensitivity’ that is not helpful for constructive partnership.
It is important to understand that, like the NGO community itself, the community of people and organisations professing Christianity is in fact very broad. Even within a single church there can be a broad spectrum of opinion on social issues – as can be seen from the fact that many churches are today internally divided on issues such as homosexuality and the role of women in the church. Faced with such complexity, it is prudent not to pre-judge any person or group merely by the label that they use, but to attend, rather, to what they actually do; for, as the Bible itself points out, ‘By their deeds ye shall know them’ (Matthew 7:16).
The humanitarian tradition
Solferino, Italy, 1856. Henri Dunant, a Swiss merchant banker, has travelled to Italy, chasing a business deal that requires the approval of the French emperor, Napoleon III. Napoleon is a hard man to meet, invariably busy with warfare. Dunant follows him literally to the battlefield, and personally witnesses French and Italian forces clashing with troops of the Austrian empire. It is one of the bloodiest battles of the 19th century, and among its thousands of casualties are many who simply bleed to death for the lack of any help to staunch their wounds. Appalled at the carnage, Dunant tries to organise local peasants to get wounded men off the battlefield.
Dunant thereafter embarked on a personal crusade to make modern warfare more humane. He was a wealthy man, well-connected and determined. His efforts led directly to the creation of the international Red Cross movement, and also to sixteen European nations signing a treaty – ‘the Geneva Convention’ – pledging to allow medical workers and supplies onto battlefields and to recognise and respect the famous red cross on a white background as an emblem of neutrality. This was in effect the world’s first piece of international law, and it was created as a result of private, non-government initiative, 60 years before the League of Nations was formed, and 90 years before the formation of the United Nations.
Henri Dunant, like the overwhelming majority of Europeans of his time, was a Christian. However, his initiative as a private citizen signalled a new era of humanitarian organisations that were established independently of either the church or state. These have grown steadily in number and size over the last 150 years. Many of them, although by no means hostile to Christian traditions of charity and compassion, have tended rather to emphasise what might be called ‘the French revolutionary tradition’ of universal fraternity and human rights.
Several of the best-known organisations were, like the Red Cross, founded in response to the humanitarian catastrophe of war. For example, The Save the Children Fund, which soon spawned a global federation of organisations, was first established in the UK in 1919 in response to World War I. At that time, the victorious allies were still subjecting Germany to punitive economic sanctions. Eglantyne Jebb, one of Save the Children’s main founders, was arrested by London police for publicly distributing leaflets, entitled ‘A Starving Baby’, that held her government responsible for malnutrition and starvation in Germany. The magistrate who tried her case ended by making a personal donation to her emergency fund, which shipped relief supplies and workers across central and Eastern Europe. Jebb meanwhile went on to write a Charter for the Rights of the Child that was adopted by the League of Nations and later served as the basis for the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. A second, major piece of international law created through the visionary determination of a private, non-government individual.
In 1937, a British journalist who was covering the Spanish civil war established another large children’s organisation, Plan (originally known as ‘Foster Plan for War Children’). Heifer Project International was also born out of relief efforts during that war. In 1942, during World War II, a group of British citizens established an Oxford Committee for Famine Relief to send relief supplies to civilians in Greece. ‘OXFAM’ as it later became known (from the organisation’s telegraphic address) has grown into one of the world’s largest, non- government relief and development networks.
The war in Biafra in the late 1960s gave rise to another leading international NGO with a distinctive, new approach: Médecins Sans Frontières. The French journalists and doctors who established MSF were disturbed by the failure of international humanitarian agencies to prevent genocide in Biafra. Some of them had been working with the Red Cross, but that organisation’s strict commitment to neutrality prevented it from apportioning blame for the conflict. MSF’s founders set out to create an emergency medical aid organisation that would not only provide direct assistance but that would also speak its own mind, drawing public attention to humanitarian crises and denounc-ing human rights abuses wherever it encountered them.
Cambodia’s humanitarian crisis in the 1970s also prompted the establishment of two international organisations. French doctors who had been making artificial limbs for victims of land-mine victims created Handicap International; and American citizens established a Save the Refugees Fund that was later re-named Mercy Corps.
In addition to steady growth in the number of humanitarian organisations, the last thirty years have seen numerous new NGOs established in response to perceived, global environmental stress and crisis. Some conservation organisations have quite long historical roots. For example, in 1903 colonial naturalists living in Africa established a Society for the Preservation of the Wild Fauna of the [British] Empire that has endured and evolved into Fauna and Flora International. In 1895, a New York Zoological Society was established to manage public zoos in the American metropolis; this has since evolved into the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs conservat-ion and environmental education programmes worldwide. The Ecological Society of America, established in 1915, has evolved into The Nature Conservancy, with a global project portfolio. These older groups have been joined by many new ones, such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, which was established in 1961 to serve as a ‘Red Cross for Nature’; Environmental Defense, which was established in 1967 and pioneered the use of legal action to halt the use of pesticides in the USA; and Conservation International, which was established in 1987 and pioneered ‘debt for nature’ swaps.
All of these are ‘operational’ NGOs in that they raise funds for specific conservation projects and experiments, including policy experiments. Others, like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth or the International Rivers Network are mainly campaigning organisations that advocate and rally public support for their cause. They also often conduct or commission research in order to influence policy, but can be distinguished from operational NGOs in that they implement ‘campaigns’ as opposed to ‘projects’. However, as we shall see below, many operational NGOs, both humanitarian and environmental, have in recent years themselves increasingly sought an ‘advocacy’ role, adopting campaigning approaches to problems they identify during their project work in the field.
It is also worth noting that over the last thirty years most humanitarian relief and development NGOs – especially those that concentrate more on longer-term development than on emergency relief – have also come to emphasise environmental protection as a necessary condition for human development. Meanwhile, many NGOs that started from a concern with conservation have come to see human development as a necessary condition for environmental protection. This growing confluence of approaches to development, which also embraces faith-based and philanthropic foundations, will be discussed in more detail below.
Most humanitarian and environmental NGOs derive a significant proportion of their operational income from donations made by ordinary citizens. Typically, NGOs try to recruit a number of regular supporters who donate a fixed sum each month or year. These donors come from all walks of life and most of them are not wealthy people by the standards of their own societies. (It is worth remarking that giving of this kind echoes the established, Christian tradition of church ‘collections’.) Regular donations are supplemented by income from wider, fundraising appeals, and also from bequests: many people decide, when making a will, to leave a part of their personal wealth, however modest that may be, to their favourite charitable cause; and some families ask friends to recognise the passing of a relative by making a donation to a nominated charity, rather than by sending funeral flowers. Even schoolchildren, from an early age, donate and raise money for charitable causes.
The number of international NGOs working overseas has grown steeply over the last few decades. New organisations are created every month. This proliferation is doubtless largely due to the steady rise in disposable incomes of ordinary people in the West, and also to new fundraising techniques such as direct mailing (involving mass mailing of charitable appeals to targeted households). As a proportion of gross domestic product, the amount of money donated to NGOs in Western countries is probably actually declining – people4 are not giving away a bigger proportion of their private cake – but the cake itself has grown, and so crumbs from it are able to support a wider and more numerous range of organisations. A determined and resourceful individual or group of people is therefore usually able to establish and find funding for a new organisation. Precisely such individuals, who had lived in China and who wanted to make a humanitarian contribution to the country’s development, established several of the younger and smaller NGOs listed in this directory (eg, DORS, Enfants du Ningxia, Couleurs de Chine).
As well as drawing on a private citizen supporter base, many NGOs also raise some of their income from corporate donors. It is noteworthy, however, that European organisations have on the whole been more cautious than their US counterparts about accepting money from corporations, fearing any kind of association with activities that might be linked to exploitation of workers, environmental damage or other social ‘externalities’. This reflects significant and enduring differences, discussed below, between European and North American political and charitable traditions. For all the talk of globalisation, the Atlantic Ocean remains a large body of water.
The philanthropic tradition
As industrial capitalism took off in the Western world of the 19th century, a new entrepreneurial class began to accumulate wealth that soon outstripped that of the landed gentry. Some of the nouveau riche industrialists devoted part of their fortunes to creating charitable trusts or foundations. This occurred to some extent in Europe, but philanthropy of this kind is more especially associated with the United States, where today about 65,000 private foundations give away a combined total of approximately USD 30 billion each year.5
Private foundations start with an endowment donated by their founder(s). The endowment is invested, and each year a proportion of the income from the investments is given away in grant funds. A board of trustees is appointed to make funding decisions, in accordance with the purposes of the foundation, as laid down in its charter. Under US law, in order to remain exempt from paying taxes, foundations must each year spend on charitable activities at least 5% of the value of their assets in the previous year. If investment funds are well managed, the total assets of a foundation will increase over time, because the value of their investments is likely to grow by a larger margin than the 5% per annum that they must spend. Of course, mismanagement of funds or a stock market crash can also lead to a decline in a foundation’s net assets. But in most cases the value of assets grows, and in the United States the foundation sector as a whole has grown steadily, with a marked increase of the last twenty years both in the number of foundations and the combined size of their assets.
One of the most prominent early American philanthropists was Andrew Carnegie, the son of a Scottish weaver who settled with his family in Pennsylvania in 1848. Carnegie started his working life at twelve years of age as a factory hand in a cotton mill, but he went on to make a fortune by establishing a steelworks in Pittsburgh. In 1901, when he was 65, he sold the company for USD 480 million – a stupendous sum in those days – and devoted the rest of his life to giving that money away. He created over 2,500 free public libraries across the English-speaking world, and endowed a variety of trusts and foundations that continue to this day to support education, science and culture. Carnegie not only gave his own money away, he also urged others to do likewise. In an essay called The Gospel of Wealth, he argued that it was a disgrace to die rich: the wealthy should first dispose of their fortunes for the benefit of the wider community. This idea, radical at the time, doubtless drew on Carnegie’s contempt for the old and undemocratic power structures of Europe, where landed wealth, titles and privilege passed from generation to generation.
Carnegie was unusual in that he articulated a philosophy of philanthropy, but many other American industrialists also set aside huge sums for charitable purposes. Notable examples include Henry Ford, creator of the Ford Motor Company, who endowed the Ford Foundation; William Kellogg, who amassed a fortune from sales of the breakfast cereal, Corn Flakes (which he chanced to create while trying to devise a nutritious meal for elderly hospital patients), and the Rockefellers, whose interests in oil and banking made them one of America’s great, capitalist families throughout the 20th century, and who created a string of foundations. This philanthropic tradition remains strong among American business leaders today. Successful entrepreneurs in new industries, such as David Packard (of the Hewlett-Packard computer company), Ted Turner (who created the CNN news network), and Bill Gates (of the Microsoft software company) have endowed major, private foundations.
It is worth pausing to ask why this philanthropic tradition has been so strong in the United States. I believe it reflects a highly distinctive, libertarian view of the proper relationship between state and society. European nation states were built on the historical legacy of feudalism, which involved quite complex relationships of social obligation, and in many European countries the state started, from as early as the 17th century, to assume some responsibility for poor relief, education, and care of orphans and elderly people. Today, Europeans tend to see the state as having a wide range of duties, and European governments indeed play a leading role in provision of public goods, and in modest redistribution of wealth, through raising and spending taxes. By contrast, the United States was essentially created by individual pioneers, many of them escaping poverty or religious persecution in Europe. Americans have always accorded paramount importance to freedom of the individual, including freedom from government interference6. The American social model has, accord-ingly, generally been one of relatively low taxation and limited government. Rather than government redistributing private wealth through the tax system, the wealthy themselves decide what, and how, to give back to the community. (And not just the wealthy. As well as private, grant-making foundations, the US has a myriad of charitable organisations that raise funds from the general public, and the American public is among the most generous in the world: American individuals donated a total of USD 183.7 billion in 20037.) Voluntary, private giving thus plays a significant role in redis-tribution, in providing ‘safety nets’ for poor or disadvantaged people, and also in supporting the arts. For example, European national, local and city governments frequently invest in opera houses, art galleries and museums, whereas in the US a very great deal of funding for such amenities comes not from government but from private foundations. American universities, libraries and hospitals also depend very significantly on private donations, whereas in most European countries these institutions are still largely funded from the public purse.
These broad differences in European and American attitudes and experience are worth pointing out for at least two reasons. Firstly, they suggest a set of critical questions about the respective roles of government and society in China’s ‘socialist market’ economy, as a new, NGO sector develops. China will, no doubt, develop its own model, drawing on its own, specific history. But will that model bear a closer resemblance to Europe or to the United States? Secondly, when Americans and Europeans enter the debate about ‘civil society’ in China, it is important to remember that they may be speaking from quite different perspectives. These issues are too large and complex to pursue here; but it is worth at least drawing attention to them.
Private, grant-making foundations do not generally regard themselves as ‘NGOs’. They existed long before that label was created, and see themselves as comprising a distinct, philanthropic community. We have nonetheless included several foundations in this directory because they are, clearly, non-governmental in character, and their contribution is undoubtedly significant – not least because they themselves very often make grants to NGOs. (Confusingly, however, some organisations that called themselves foundations – for example, the Surmang and Kham Aid foundations, both listed here – are not grant-making bodies but, rather, themselves raise funds to implement projects.)
The confluence of traditions: a basic typology of NGOS
These three, major traditions – the faith-based, the humanitarian and the philanthropic – converge in today’s community of international NGOs that work overseas. (The global environmental movement perhaps deserves separate consideration but space will not permit that here.) These traditions are by no means mutually exclusive: in many ways they have long overlapped and blended. Some grant-making foundations, for example, have a clear basis in religious belief; and virtually all other foundations could reasonably be described as ‘humanitarian’. Some faith-based organisations, meanwhile, employ professional staff who are not themselves believers; while, on the other hand, many religious believers work in humanitarian organisations that have no religious affiliation.
It may be helpful to think of these three historical traditions as distinct streams flowing into the headwaters of a single river. Downstream, there are several other, significant tributaries that are worth pointing out.
Firstly, a number of specialist, technical NGOs have grown up as an adjunct to the international development aid industry. Examples in this directory include Family Health International, PACT, PATH and Winrock International. These organisations offer professional con-sulting, training, and project implementation services on a not-for-profit basis. Their income derives almost entirely from contracts with government aid donors and grants from foundations. They are not membership organisations and they do not in general engage in public fundraising, campaigning or ‘advocacy’ work in the countries where they are headquartered. Furthermore, some such organisations pay their professional staff significantly higher salaries than the faith-based and humanitarian NGOs, which often rely more or less explicitly on the personal commitment and ‘volunteer spirit’ of their staff, and offer relatively modest remuneration. Altogether, then, although these specialist NGOs are non-profit organisations with impeccable social objectives, some of them tend to resemble commercial, development consultancy companies (many of which also have admirable social objectives). The organisations mentioned above as examples of this type are all American. Similar groups can be found in Europe but these technical, non-profit organisations are more common in the United States. Their growth has doubtless been stimulated by the availability in America of very substantial funding from private foundations and from the US government (which is the world’s largest aid donor, although it has never had a large programme in China). These donor agencies need efficient, specialist organisations to implement projects, and they often look to, and even help to create, non-profit specialists. A similar trend is beginning to develop in Europe but, as already noted, in Europe there still tends to be a more marked separation between the NGO and business communities.
Secondly, some organisations that used to work only in their countries of origin are beginning to establish overseas programmes. The Royal Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Animals, from Great Britain, is a case in point. Although much the largest part of its resources is still spent in the UK, it is just beginning to develop overseas programmes. This is a perfectly logical progression: if one cares mainly about animals, why care only about animals in the British Isles? In an increasingly integrated, ‘globalised’ world, it is inevitable that organisations dedicated to a particular cause will increasingly seek to pursue their mission in a wider arena.
This is especially true of environmental organisations, which are naturally inclined to emphasise the indivisibility of the global environment. It does not make much sense for them to concentrate on saving one particular patch of the world, if the rest is in jeopardy. Thus, environmentalism very soon acquires an international dimension.
Many environmental groups are campaigning organisations that set out, through public communications and argument rather than through development ‘projects’, to influence the behaviour of governments, businesses and the general public. Such campaigning organisations are another distinctive and important part of the NGO landscape. There are very few examples in this directory (although many of the faith-based and humanitarian NGOs engage in campaigning in their own countries and in international for a, as a complement to their project work in developing countries). NGOs that are primarily or exclusively campaigning organisations generally need a local supporter base, which lends some legitimacy to their message. Therefore, international campaigning organisations with an interest in China generally try to establish links with Chinese agencies (whether government departments or NGOs) that share their concerns, rather than creating their own ‘China programmes’. By way of example, we have included in the directory the International Rivers Network, which campaigns to protect river systems worldwide, and a Canadian NGO, the Forest Action Group, which campaigns to preserve forests in British Columbia but has found that, in order to do so, it needs to reach out to Chinese furniture and construction companies and consumers of Canadian timber.
Many other kinds of international campaigning and advocacy organisations also have a keen interest in China, on issues ranging from the rights of people with disabilities (eg, Rehabilitation International) to the conditions of workers in developing-country factories (eg, Clean Clothes Campaign in Europe, and Sweatshop Watch in the United States). We have not included those groups, partly because they are not, properly speaking, ‘in China’; but also because a compendium of all international NGOs with an interest in China would run to thousands of pages, and this is simply beyond our modest resources.
Professional associations – of, for example, lawyers, dentists or teachers – can also be described as NGOs. Such associations serve to promote the professional interests and development of their members, but also contribute to public policy debate in their field and often play a practical role in setting standards within that field: for example, an association of dental surgeons might create minimal acceptable standards to certify toothpaste, and membership of the association might also be important in qualifying dental services to practice. Over the last twenty years there has been an increasing amount of contact and exchange between professional associations in other countries and counterparts in China, across a wide field of professions from physiotherapy to prison administration. This is clearly beneficial to all sides in terms of sharing and developing professional skills and techniques. Again, it is simply not possible for us to include the myriad professional associations from overseas that have some contact with China. We have, however, included two organisations that are working directly to support the development of emerging professions in China. These are the Hong Kong Social Workers Association, and the American Bar Association. Professional associations are, in a sense, a special kind of self-help or mutual aid group. All societies have traditions of reciprocity and mutual aid: indeed, it is doubtful whether any society could exist without such a tradition. In the United States, the immigrant culture of rugged individualism and self-reliance was always complemented by a communitarian tendency to form local associations and mutual aid societies, as famously noted by the French writer, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), in his book Democracy in America. The nineteenth century European trade union movement included practical, mutual support mechanisms such as purchasers’ cooperatives (to reduce the cost of food by buying it in bulk), savings clubs and educational associations. And in both Europe and the Americas farmers associations grew up to provide practical support for farmers, as well as representing their interests in the public arena. Nowadays, economic historians and political scientists describe all this associational activity as amounting to ‘civil society’; and new organisations that are established not for the purpose of helping others, but for the purpose of helping each other, are generally seen as NGOs.
This enormous slice of NGO and civil society activity is almost entirely missing from our directory – naturally enough, since such groups overseas were formed to help themselves, not to help China. However, we have included one or two examples of a particular kind of self-help group – those established by families affected by chronic illness or disability. These examples are Hong Kong-based groups: Retina Hong Kong and the Heep Hong Society.
The final candidates for inclusion here as NGOs were the numerous, overseas research centres and institutes that examine various aspects of public policy and international relations, and that have an interest in China. Many of these are attached to universities or government departments; but some are independent, non-profit institutions. We have not attempted to cover these: partly because it is hard to decide which can legitimately be called NGOs and partly because the field is simply too large.
However, we have included a number of foundations and institutes, attached to political parties in Europe and the United States, that work with Chinese government agencies and NGOs.
This organisational model came from Germany. After the Second World War, the German government began to make regular appropriations to foundations established by the country’s four main political parties so that they could assist in various ways in the post-war reconstruction. Once Germany’s economy was thriving again, government support for the foundations continued, and they began overseas programmes: for example, supporting research studies, seminars and other activities to promote international exchange and discussion on political, economic and social issues. All of the German political foundations have had active programmes in China, described in this directory.
In the 1980s, this model attracted the attention of the United States’ last cold warrior President, Ronald Reagan, who was looking for new ways to spread democracy around the world. The Reagan administration therefore created the National Endowment for Democracy, which receives around USD 30 million per year from the US Congress. These congressional funds are then passed on to four institutes, including two that are affiliated to the two major US political parties, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
We have included these because they do interesting work, usually in close partnership with Chinese government agencies, and much of that work relates to the important theme of China’s international-isation, (discussed below). Yet they are not organisations that spring readily to mind – even to Western minds – as prototypes of NGOs. This, in a way, is another good reason for including them. Overseas observers and students of China’s NGO sector very often highlight, and tend to sneer at, the ‘GONGO’ (government organised NGO) phenomenon as if it were unique to China. Yet in fact Western governments often establish and fully fund quasi-autonomous organisations that have an important role in, for example, directing public funds to the arts and sciences. The German and American political foundations and institutes are fully independent, non-profit organisations, but their reliance on government appropriations serves to show that the Chinese government’s fostering of its own NGO sector is not, in fact, so different from international practice.
At last, then, we are in a position to create a rough typology of international NGOs working in China, as shown in the table below.
(to be continued)
