Scrutiny by Chinese Officials Dampens Hopes of Charitable Groups

A year ago, nonprofit groups in China were cautiously optimistic that their precarious relationship with the government might improve.

Chinese authorities, long suspicious of charities, had just completed a yearlong, thorough

investigation into the activities of these organizations and had come up with little to justify their fears. In an interview with The Chronicle last year, Nick Young, the founding editor of the China Development Brief, in Beijing, said that he believed the government investigation could have a positive effect in the long run, by reducing the mystery surrounding charitable groups.

“It could be that the senior leadership will get the message that most of these organizations out there are actually good guys, they are the best of their kind, they are the best of their communities, who really want to do something,” he said last year. “And fundamentally, their objectives are not anti-Chinese, are not anti-Communist Party.”

Apparently, officials did not get the message.

According to an e-mail message Mr. Young sent to the news media, in July a dozen officials from the Beijing Municipality Public Security Bureau and the Beijing Municipality Statistics Bureau walked into Mr. Young’s office unannounced. After three hours of interrogations, the officials ordered him to shut down the China Development Brief, a nonprofit newsletter published in Chinese and English that monitored the expansion of civil society in China.

Officials accused his organization of conducting illegal surveys in contravention of the 1983 Statistics Law. Mr. Young denied having done any surveys, saying that the government’s definition of the term was broad and could involve just about anything, “even a foreigner talking to any Chinese person.”

The move came as a surprise. Mr. Young, who had published his newsletter since 1995, had long been seen as an active defender of China and a critic of the Western news media, which he said unfairly portrayed the country as repressive. He urged nonprofit organizations to look for ways to work with the government rather than criticize it. One of the last articles on his newsletter’s Web site criticized a recent report written by Amnesty International, which said that the more than 150 million workers who have moved from rural areas to Chinese cities have inadequate health care and housing.

AIDS Charity

Mr. Young’s group was not the only one to feel the sting of this renewed scrutiny of charities.

The axe next fell on AIDS activists and their organizations. In August, police shut down two offices of the China Orchid AIDS Project, in Henan, one of the places hardest hit by HIV/AIDS in China, and detained Li Dan, the head of the organization. The move cut off funds that the organization provided to AIDS patients living in villages. That same month, several AIDS conferences around China were canceled by the government.

Things are not always obvious in the opaque world of Communist Party politics, but observers say the crackdown on charities may have had something to do with heightened surveillance of nonprofit organizations in the months before the 17th Party Congress in October — the gatherings are held every five years and are a time of political maneuvering — and the 2008 Summer Olympics, which will open in Beijing next August.

In July the Associated Press reported that China’s intelligence services were stepping up their efforts to gather information on potentially dangerous international organizations in the months before the Olympics.

“The effort is among the broadest intelligence-collection drives Beijing has taken against foreign activist groups, often known as nongovernmental organizations, or NGO’s,” the news service said. “It aims to head off protests and other political acts during an Olympics the Communist leadership hopes will boost its popularity at home and China’s image abroad.”

The moves highlighted the party’s continued concern about civil-society organizations, which it fears could fan opposition against the party and undermine its authority, says Russell Leigh Moses, a political scientist in Beijing.

“The central government continues to worry that the NGO’s could be used as a stalking horse, as a front for another organization,” he says.

Mr. Moses and charity leaders say the leadership is said to have been suspicious of the role that international human-rights groups and pro-democracy organizations played in the “color” revolutions in the former Soviet states in recent years. In 2005 it sent researchers to several countries to assess why the governments fell from power and if foreign charities played any role.

It also sent agents to gather information on Chinese and foreign charities in China, sometimes using strong-arm tactics to obtain information from staff members, says Mr. Young of the China Development Brief. While the government never acknowledged the details of its investigation, it is believed that no evidence was found to support any conspiracy theory.

Mr. Young says that a survey of domestic groups carried out by his organization last year showed that while some were “spoiling for a fight,” most were “trying to engage constructively.”

“They share many of the government’s objectives and agendas,” he said. “The Chinese government has nothing to fear from NGO’s.”

Despite this, Mr. Young and other charity leaders say the government remains wary of them for the most part. “The attitude is that NGO’s are antagonistic toward the government,” says a woman who has worked in the Chinese nonprofit world for five years. “They don’t understand the value of NGO’s. At present the government doesn’t welcome civil participation in society.”

“China wants what it can’t have,” says Mr. Young, who, since the closure of his newsletter, has returned to England, his home country. “A charitable sector that will go out and do good work without any problems. It doesn’t want social advocates shouting at it, or groups that could cause unrest or protests.”

What’s more, given the opaque nature of the Chinese government, nonprofit groups are never quite sure what the official position toward charities is. The government has not publicly discussed the crackdown on charities.

Nonprofit groups have long faced obstacles in operating here. It is extremely difficult to register as a charity. An organization needs an office, the names and addresses of 50 members, a person who is appointed as the legal representative of the organization, at least $3,500 in its coffers, and, most difficult, a government sponsor.

Potential sponsors are reluctant to stick their necks out. “You have to prove that you won’t do anything to hurt them,” says the head of one new charity, who preferred not to be named for fear of government reprisal. She says it took her four years — and considerable guanxi, or connections — to get approval for her organization.

As a result, many charitable groups pretend to be companies and operate in a gray area.

The female charity founder who has worked with Chinese nonprofit groups for five years says her own organization is registered as a business, but she says there are still many obstacles, citing a conference that was recently canceled on orders from the government.

Meanwhile, the government itself appears to be undecided about what to think. “We’re in a situation now where there is no consensus,” says Mr. Moses, who characterizes the situation “as a shift from concern to confusion.”

This confusion was highlighted last year when the Study Times, the newspaper of the Central Party School, published an analysis of the Communist Party debate over nonprofit organizations, criticizing the two extreme views in which “one demonizes foreign NGO’s while the other deifies them.”

The article praised foreign-aid groups for bringing capital, experience, and know-how into China, adding, “This is what’s needed for China’s development and progress.” It then went on to list some of the negative influences, alleging the outside organizations threatened national security and damaged political stability. No examples were provided.

Mr. Moses says that in some cases local officials see charities as important because they focus on social problems the government should be trying to fix.

“On the other side of the line,” he continues, “some local authorities see NGO’s as a potential political and financial threat that could break their iron rice bowls,” a colloquial Chinese term for entrenched power or wealth.

Analysts say that the State Environmental Protection Administration needs organizations such as Greenpeace to help push its agenda. “SEPA wants to encourage NGO allies,” says Mr. Young.

But so far, no high-level official has stepped up to champion the cause of charities and advocacy groups, despite the positive role many nonprofit groups believe they can play.

“Some people in SEPA may fight for them, but the vast part of the bureaucracy sees NGO’s as radioactive,” says Mr. Moses. “No one wants to step out and say we need to hold hands with NGO’s.”

Promoting Giving

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which oversees nonprofit groups, has set up a charity-information center, a Web site, and a partnership with Western experts on nonprofit law.

According to the China Development Brief, the ministry two years ago issued a document titled “Guidelines for Development of Charities (2006-2010),” which among other efforts proposed a public campaign to “popularize charitable education, charitable culture, and charitable spirit.”

What’s more, Mr. Young says the National People’s Congress may consider a new charity law next year. However, the draft seems to be more about creating a framework for donations than registering charitable groups.

The subject also attracted a good deal of attention during this year’s meeting of the National People’s Congress in March. Yang Lan, a popular television hostess, called for new rules to simplify donation procedures.

Chen Tiedi, president of the Shanghai Charity Foundation, told the English-language China Daily newspaper that the law should offer preferential treatment, such as tax breaks, to encourage businesses to make donations.

The state news organization says that several regulations are under consideration to increase donations to charitable causes, including a new corporate tax policy to be put into effect next year. Under the structure, companies could get write-offs by donating up to 20 percent of their yearly profit.

Mr. Chen said that in 2006, corporate donations to charities, which came from just 1 percent of the country’s more than 10 million companies, rose to about $1.74-billion, equivalent to 0.05 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. He said the figure is generally between 3 percent and 5 percent in the developed world.

“China has a number of burning social issues, and the country needs its small, fragile NGO network to grow and thrive in order to address them,” says Sara L.M. Davis, the director of Asia Catalyst, a New York group that works with charities in China to foster new programs that advance human rights, social justice, and environmental protection.

“It seems as if some authorities think that all social problems can be postponed until after the Olympics,” she says. “But these small, fragile grass-roots NGO’s are actually key to addressing poverty and social injustice. If the current crackdown continues, it will fuel the instability, not end it.”