NGOs nest in never-never land
- Source: Global Times
- [22:21 August 20 2009]
- Comments
Wokai lends money to families. Above: Zhang Sheng, Casey Wilson, cofounder of Wokai, and Hao Jinlian, leader of the Chifeng Zhaowuda Women’s Sustainable Development Association, in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia. Photos: Courtesy of Wokai
By Zhang Yuchen
The rain stopped. A refreshing mist hangs over a courtyard filled with migrant workers filing down the narrow gravel pathway that leads to the office of Zhang Sheng.
Zhang, director of China operations for American non-governmental organization (NGO) Wokai – “I start” in Chinese – provides small loans to poor village women.
One trouser leg rolled high and the other low, Zhang leans against a door that barely fits its frame and shares with the Global Times a tale of all-too-typical frustrations. During the course of the interview at the Dongsi Shiyitiao courtyard in Beijing, Zhang several times bursts into good-natured laughter at the Kafkaesque absurdity of his struggle to do a little good on the Chinese mainland.
“No one told me foreigners had to be registered at the local police department.
“And by the time I was finally told, it was half a year later – and the police really criticized us,” Zhang says with a broad, world-weary smile.
Registering a foreigner was the least of his problems during the debilitating process of trying to found an international NGO on the Chinese mainland, according to Zhang.
“Registering as an international NGO was far more troublesome than one could ever imagine,” says Zhang.
“It took us two months just to prepare our registration materials and that all amounted to nothing in the end.”
From December 2007 to March 2008, Zhang and one of his American bosses, Casey Wilson, sat and waited for news of their registration application. Finally, they got the word.
“The official at the Beijing Administration for Industry and Commerce said there was no law banning international NGOs,” Zhang says, “but he was too afraid to stamp ‘approved’ on the registration paper. He just seemed unsure whether or not our organization should be permitted.
“For the NGO registration process, I prepared all the files and documents and spent a lot of money on consulting lawyers … all apparently to no avail, which infuriated my boss. I guess I’m more kind of used to it.
“For at least I am a Chinese and am well familiar with the Chinese way.”
Failing at the legal route, Zhang shifted strategy. Like the vast majority of international NGOs all blocked out of the Chinese system, his NGO sought and received permission from the Ministry of Civil Affairs to run a corporate representative office of an overseas company, something of a shady legal area.
The Beijing-based financial publication Economic Observer reported on August 7 the government was drafting new regulations governing representative offices of overseas companies.
Many offices were suspected of “violating Chinese law”, the paper reported, and some local industry and commerce bureaus are inspecting regional representative offices.
Meaningless law
The 1980s saw the first international NGOs shuttling in and out of the Chinese mainland, says Deng Guosheng, associate professor and deputy director of the NGO Research Center at the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The mid-1990s saw the first wave of NGOs moving into China after the fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. At the 1995 conference, international NGOs shared ideas with domestic at an NGO forum.
“After that, international NGOs flooded into China,” Deng says.
The second influx entered after 2000, a result partly of China’s joining the World Trade Organization (WTO).
“The earliest international NGOs aiding China can be dated back to World War II, ” Deng says.
“Heifer International, the Ford Foundation, Save the Children UK came to China in the 1980s without registration or representative offices, just a few activities and projects. It’s estimated that only around a dozen organizations appeared in that period.”
The NGO Research Center started studying grassroots and international NGOs in 1998, with emphasis on public charities.
“The public charitable international organizations were more active in China but at that time the Chinese government scarcely had any knowledge of NGOs,” Deng says.
On the one hand, China needed both the financial support and the skills. To expel NGOs meant losing out. On the other, administering those organizations went beyond the government’s ken.
“That’s why the law came so late as the government really struggled with the dilemma,” Deng says.
“Actually, it can be seen as a sign of the government’s increasing confidence, because this issue was very complicated.”
International NGOs had to wait until 2004 for the extremely disappointing Regulation on Foundation Administration. “The law only applied to organizations supported by a special fund or foundation, but excluded all those without a fund’s backing,” Deng says.
