1/30/2018 Daring to think, daring to act - Civil society

SPECIAL REPORT

Civil society

Daring to think, daring to act

Civic engagement of all sorts is becoming much more widespread

Print edition | Special report Jul 7th 2016

THE CONVERTED FLAT in a quiet residential neighbourhood in north-east Beijing

does not look like a hotbed of revolution. A sticker on the door declares it to be a
“safe space”; inside are some armchairs, a meeting table, a rainbow flag and a
counselling room. Yet over the past two years this organisation in Beijing, which
represents the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, has attracted
increasing attention from the police. On one occasion the head of the centre was
questioned for nine hours without a break. It is becoming harder to predict what

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forms of activism the Communist Party will tolerate, she says: “We often say our
government is full of G-spots. You don’t know how and where you touch them.”

These days many Chinese want to get involved in non-profit organisations and
civic groups, but the government does not always make it easy for them. After the
party seized power in 1949 it stamped out anything that stood between it and the
proletariat. Society was divided into work units, distinct walled communities that
provided not just jobs but food, housing, schools, medical services and elder care
for the toiling masses. The state claimed to meet every need from first to last gasp.
What is now called civil society all but disappeared.

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As the party has retreated from people’s daily lives since the 1990s, a host of civic
organisations has sprung up to fill gaps in state coverage. The needs and demands
of society have become far more complex, but state provision is surprisingly thin.
Some civic outfits work with particular groups, such as the elderly or migrants;
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This looks like an outbreak of altruism in a country often charged with lacking a
sense of morality. The rise in individualism that has caused some to pursue blind
self-interest has had the opposite effect on others, instilling more of a social
conscience and increasing civic engagement. Many Chinese are responding to the
anomie and inequality caused by their country’s accelerated modernisation by
trying to improve the lives of strangers. Such groups meet the demand for such
services and provide an outlet for the mainly middle-class individuals who want to
do their bit for society and have the capacity for it. Their efforts seem to enjoy
widespread support: people’s trust in NGOs is increasing year by year, according to
the annual “trust barometer” put together by Edelman, a public-relations firm.

This urge to engage has recently spread to charitable giving. Total donations have
nearly quadrupled since 2007, to $16 billion, though ordinary folk tend to
contribute ad hoc when prompted by some crisis or natural disaster, rather than
systematically. Giving in China is still paltry compared with America, which
collects 25 times the Chinese total from a population a quarter of the size, but it is
rising fast. The richest individuals lead the way. According to researchers at
Harvard’s Kennedy School, over a third of China’s biggest philanthropists made
money in property; nearly 60% of their donations go to education, reflecting a
wider Chinese concern; and most give to the province where they work, replicating
and reinforcing China’s overall wealth gap.

A large and growing body of NGOs are essentially service providers for the state.
The nine-storey building from which Datong, or “Great Harmony”, a government-
sponsored NGO, operates in the southern city of Guangzhou is home to a bevy of
similar organisations; their names form the leaves of a tree in the lobby,
representing the Guangzhou government that nurtures them. The local
government commissions Datong to provide social services for the elderly,
children, migrant families and HIV sufferers. Its founder, Liu Jinglin, is a party
member, as are some of her social workers.

Some hoped that by working with the

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government, NGOs like Datong might
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influence it from within, but most of them
turn out to have little autonomy over their
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A travel agent is trying to charge fees for sunbeds the state. “The party wants to take all the
GULLIVER
credit for sorting out society’s problems,”
See all updates says Jing Jun of Tsinghua University in
Beijing.

Any size as long as it’s small

Datong is precisely the kind of civic group that the government hopes will help it
increase social stability by alleviating social ills. In March China’s first charity law
was passed to allow registration with the government, legalise fundraising and
protect donors. It sends a strong signal that the state encourages at least some
kinds of civic groups. Despite reservations, most people in the sector see it as an
important step forward.

But the new charity law also sets clear limits. In effect, it caps the size of such civic
groups. Institutions have to be in business for two years before they can raise
funds, which is longer than some will be able to wait. Charities’ operating costs
must not exceed 10% of spending, which will make it hard to find and retain skilled
staff. And most of the income must be distributed, so accumulating an endowment
will be next to impossible.

The party is wary of civic groups because it views

them as a training ground for political
participation. It is well aware of the role that trade
unions, churches and other civic groups played in
bringing down the Soviet bloc. Mass participation
is also an unwelcome reminder of China’s own
Cultural Revolution. There is a reason why the party calls NGOs “social
organisations”: it fears that “non-government” may be misread for “anti-
government”.

The party is particularly cautious about foreign NGOs and foreign-funded domestic
ones, seeing them as potentially subversive “anti-China forces”. A new law requires
international NGOs to register with the public-security bureau; they risk being shut
down if they “endanger national security”, a vague term critics worry will be used to
justify increased monitoring or harassment. “It’s unfortunate that they decided to
see us as criminalised from the get-go,” says the head of one such foreign group.
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The state’s fear that activism will turn into political action explains the ambiguous
and at times antagonistic relationship between NGOs and the state. Yang Xiong of
the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences says social organisations are “friends of
the government”, and only those working on “religion, politics or the military” are
sensitive. In fact the distinction is not as clear-cut as that.

Since Xi Jinping took office in 2012, the crackdown on civil society has intensified.
Tolerance of the more sensitive groups has declined and previously accepted
groups have been subjected to greater scrutiny. Leaders of labour-rights groups
have been arrested. Courses on civil society at some universities have been closed
and professors told to behave. In March 2015 five feminists were imprisoned for
over a month, purportedly for planning a campaign against sexual harassment.
Their crime was not that they stood up for women’s rights, but that they wanted to
stage simultaneous campaigns in several cities. The idea of like-minded souls
bound by a common cause linking up around the country is anathema to the party.
Most of its responses can be explained by this overriding concern.

Rather than bow to government repression, the feminists have changed their
strategy, becoming active on social media and looking for crowdfunding to pay for
ads against harassment. LGBT groups have changed tack too. Although Chinese
society is becoming more tolerant of diversity, even at the top, the state worries
that such groups are becoming increasingly well organised. In the past LGBT groups
have helped stage “performance art” such as faux gay weddings in popular tourist
spots to raise awareness. Now they have taken to helping people use the legal
system to advance their cause. Individuals have brought cases fighting illegal “gay
conversion” therapy, homophobic language in textbooks and pushing for the right
to marry.

Bold star
Activism is not restricted to the non-profit sector. Luo Changping, a journalist, is
known in China for his online exposure of the cheating and corruption of a top
party official in 2013, which eventually got the cadre sacked. Mr Luo himself,
although not exactly sacked, was moved from his reporting role at Caijing, one of
China’s more outspoken magazines, for investigating secret offshore accounts, and
transferred to an affiliated research institute. Now he works for Okoer.com, a

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Chinese-German joint venture that tests the quality of products made in China and
other countries.

Mr Luo is a rare individual in China who is willing to speak truth to power, so

inspecting sex toys, soy sauce and biscuits may seem like a comedown. But his
work still involves exposing the effects of corruption, negligence and the weak
legal system on the lives of ordinary Chinese people, he says. “What I do now is
more effective than journalism. One test can affect millions of consumers, but a big
media exposé would change nothing.”

That points to another reason why the party fears such engaged citizens: they lay
bare the gross failings of the state, including its institutional inability to protect its
citizens. Food safety is a particularly touchy subject in China. Most notoriously, in
2008 vast quantities of baby milk were found to be contaminated with melamine,
killing four babies and sending 50,000 to hospital. Every month brings new such
scandals. Though individuals sometimes go to jail for their part in them, the
underlying failure of regulation and accountability is not dealt with. Since the
subject is so controversial, Chinese labs often will not test food samples from
private firms or individuals, so Okoer sends all its products to Germany to be
analysed.

Ai Weiwei, a Chinese artist, once remarked that a distinctive feature of

dictatorships is that they make individuals feel powerless to change anything in
society. Yet although civic engagement is politically sensitive, China today has
more and more engaged groups such as parents’ associations at schools and
residents’ groups that represent apartment-block tenants. Few of them are
interested in liberal causes; they may be NIMBYists, or objecting to migrant
children in their middle-class schools. The vast majority are tiny and would never
consider themselves part of a broader movement. Yet in pressing for action, they
show that their voice matters, that the party cannot direct all social change from
the top. Slowly they are shaping China, step by tiny step.

Special report: The new class war

More in this special report:

Chinese society:
The new class war

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1/30/2018 Daring to think, daring to act - Civil society

Chinese nationalism:
East, west, home’s best

Family, identity and morality:

A nation of individuals

Wealth:
Keeping up with the Wangs

Public opinion:
Crowd control

Civil society:
Daring to think, daring to act

Emigration:
The long march abroad

Looking ahead:
The writing on the wall

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