News
Olympic Challenges for Chinese Grassroots Groups
By Sara Davis
Dec 18, 2007 - 1:02:14 PM

It was a sweltering morning in the dusty office of a small Beijing AIDS organization. I had just dumped my 12-pound laptop bag on the desk when the office manager rushed in. "Our director has disappeared," he said.

The executive director had not come home the previous night. His panicked girlfriend had called the office twice. The previous day, police had cancelled our planned conference on AIDS and law. In all likelihood, we knew, police had detained him. But while we anxiously waited for news, we still had to take care of mundane tasks: budgeting, setting up accounting systems, and more.

It was a surreal but not atypical day in the office of a Chinese grassroots organization, where political restrictions are as normal a part of everyday life as second-hand furniture, confusing Excel files, and malfunctioning air conditioning.

While Chinese health authorities have committed to involving nonprofits in the fight against AIDS, security agencies may abruptly override this pledge when sensitivities are high--for instance, in advance of high-level political meetings or international events such as the Beijing Olympics. But while political pressure interests foreign observers, it is only one of many uncertainties facing China's new civil society.

Grassroots Agencies

My U.S.-based group, Asia Catalyst, assists nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Asia to get off the ground. One of our first projects was assisting China Orchid AIDS Projects to establish a legal aid center for people with HIV/AIDS. We help with strategic planning, budgeting and fundraisingˇXskills that may be new to a Chinese group.

The past decade has seen an impressive blossoming of grassroots Chinese NGOs. These groups are led by young activists who represent China's best and brightest. Several hundred thousand organizations have formally registered in China as charitable organizations. However, experts differ as to how many of these are "truly" nongovernmental.

Many groups find it difficult to get officially registered. Instead, some register as commercial enterprises and pay taxes, thus gaining the permission to operate, but making it difficult for private foundations to donate. Others never register at all. These small, independent groups call themselves "grassroots agencies" (caogen jigou).

Advocacy and programs

Many of these grassroots agencies focus on economic and social rights: health issues (HIV/AIDS, hepatitis or hemophilia), lesbian/gay/bisexual rights, migrant labor, and environmental protection.

Advocacy is also a relatively new concept in China, and strategies are still emerging. Some groups lobby representatives to the National People's Congress, encouraging them to represent citizen concerns. Others are adept at using the media, nurturing contacts with reporters at a small number of progressive newspapers. Open letters and petitions are also popular, drawing on Chinese traditions of written complaint. Such missives are circulated by e-mail or posted on websites. Chinese civil society is highly web-savvy--the internet and text messaging are used obsessively.

Building on efforts to improve rule of law in China, some grassroots entities, such as the group we partner with, utilize the legal system. In their case, while authorities permitted litigation and legal counseling, the prospect of an international conference that would bring together foreign AIDS law experts and Chinese lawyers made the police nervous.

Such restrictions are accepted as the norm, and NGOs spend a lot of time strategizing about how to circumvent them. As one Chinese activist quipped, "We have to convince the government that nongovernmental organizations are not antigovernmental organizations."

Challenges of a new movement

These human rights issues receive the most attention outside of China; but in practice, far more groups probably collapse from lack of skills and funding than from police pressure. The NGO movement in China is in its first generation, and its leadership has limited means of gaining nonprofit management skills. Most senior staff at Chinese NGOs have little prior non-profit experience. For some, starting an NGO was their first job.

As a result, employees struggle to master budgets, staffing, and fundraising. Most have to seek funds overseas, but may lack the necessary English-language skills.

Some foundations offer capacity-building workshops, but grassroots agency staff complain that these courses are oriented towards texts and lectures, and rarely help them master day-to-day skills required to run an organization. Chinese groups need peer organizations that can "incubate" them, offering hands-on training and in-office technical support.

Building a foundation

Fortunately, our colleague was released from detention within twenty-four hours. Authorities had worried that our planned conference would lead to bad press for China on the eve of its entry onto the world stage as Olympic hosts. Ironically, while our conference was closed to the press, the detention and conference cancellation created a wave of critical press reports.

And as soon as our colleague was back in the office, he turned to the more pressing challenge: finding and organizing receipts for his first foundation financial report.

Grassroots agencies like this one are laying the foundation for the country's future civil society. But they need more practical help. With it, they can survive and thrive, becoming a permanent feature of the Chinese social landscape long after the Olympic games have come and gone.

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Sara (Meg) Davis (catalystasia@gmail.com) is founder and director of Asia Catalyst, www.asiacatalyst.org, and a member of the Committee for Human Rights.