Sustainable Legitimacy? Why Chinese Philanthropy is warming up to the UN Sustainable Development Goals

• In Event: United Nations SDGs and the Third Sector

Abstract

The past decade has been one of great upheaval for China’s non-profit sector. Notwithstanding massive quantitative growth, especially in the foundation sector, smaller NGOs have suffered from the massive securitisation characteristic of Xi Jinping’s authoritarian “social governance” approach, which has notably drained sources of foreign funding for the sector (Shieh 2018; Sidel 2019). Nonetheless, a growing number of Chinese philanthropic organisations have started to develop international ambitions {Deng 2017 #38}, looking for ways of contributing to solving global problems, notably in the areas of education and sustainability (Lang, forthcoming).
This paper analyses and explains Chinese non-profit organisations’ (NPOs) growing embrace of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a strategy to simultaneously acquire domestic and international legitimacy in this context of growing political and financial pressure on the third sector. Building on neoinstitutional insights into legitimation in organisational fields under conditions of structural overlap (Thornton/Lounsbury/Ocasio 2013), it demonstrates the crucial role of the SDGs as a common reference point for Chinese and Western philanthropic actors.
The empirical analysis is based on a combination of quantitative content analysis of over 12,000 Chinese-language media articles and field research among Chinese philanthropic organizations in Shanghai and Shenzhen between 2017 and 2019.
The article first shows how the Chinese party-state has appropriated the UN 2030 Agenda and seeks to demonstrate its convergence with China’s own diplomatic initiatives, notably the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI). According to a widely internalised policy implementation logic, Chinese non-profit organisations (NPOs) have been pressured to identify areas in which they can make meaningful contributions to social policy goals set out by the party-state all while seeking international recognition from potential partners and funders. Consequently, “sustainable development” as well as specific references to SDGs have been taken up as prominent reference points by Chinese NPOs (Zha/Ma/Wu 2021). They help legitimise third sector activities towards domestic and international audiences simultaneously. Notably, UN representatives and agencies play an important role in giving international credibility to Chinese philanthropy (see e.g., UNDP 2017). Their participation in Chinese field events is highly valued and they serve as amplifiers of claims regarding the compatibility between BRI and the UN 2030 Agenda. An in-depth analysis of SDG references in Chinese philanthropy reveals that these are highly selective and biased towards SDGs aligning with traditional Chinese policy priorities such as poverty eradication (SDG1) and education (SDG4). Thus, the paper concludes that the SDGs primarily serve to legitimise existing Chinese philanthropy activities (see e.g. Xu/Huang/Zhang 2021) rather than shaping them or expanding their scope to other relevant issue areas.
On a global scale, philanthropy has potential to contribute to the UN 2030 Agenda (Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors 2019), which has reached a moment of crisis halfway into its implementation. This paper’s findings suggest pathways for international cooperation with China’s growing philanthropic sector even under complex political conditions, while also pointing to risks involved in Chinese actors’ ambiguous and selective uses of UN vocabulary from a sustainable development perspective.

References

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Author

• Bertram Lang, University of Göttingen