Volunteering for the Propaganda State: Unveiling the New Era Civilization Practice Campaign in Xi’s China

• In Event: Emerging from Crisis: New Developments in Civil Society and Civic Action in China

Abstract

In late 2018, the Chinese government started a new policy, “Building the New Era Centers for Civilization Practice.” The policy incorporates volunteer service administration into the government’s internal system so that the government directly manages volunteerism and volunteer affairs. Moreover, under the new policy volunteering is utilized as a propaganda vehicle for promoting the Party and state’s ideological control.

In the following years, the Centers for Civilization Practice have soon spread to almost all county-level jurisdictions in mainland China and have significantly affected the development of volunteer service and non-profit organizations. They may also greatly impact citizens’ public morality as well as their attitudes and behaviors about political participation. However, academic research on this new policy is still scarce. This study aims to explore the political nature of volunteering under the new policy by examining the relationship between the government and volunteer service. This study seeks to reveal the Chinese government’s purposes and strategies about this new volunteering policy on one hand, and examine the responses of volunteers and volunteer organization leaders toward the policy on the other hand. The research approach taken in this study is exploratory qualitative research with data collection through archival research and semi-structured interviews. This study will contribute to the existing literature by laying a solid conceptual and theoretical foundation for future research on the new volunteering policy.

Hu, Ming, Qianjin Zhang, and Mark Sidel. "Building State-controlled Volunteering in China." The China Quarterly (2023): 1-17.
Wells-Dang, A. 2012. Civil Society Networks in China and Vietnam: Informal Pathbreakers in Health and the Environment. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Author

• Ming Hu, Macau University of Science and Technology