How to Exploit the Chinese Party-State: Lessons from One Chinese NGO

• In Event: 392 - Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 10. The Third Sector in China

Abstract

The majority of scholarship on Chinese NGOs has revolved around questions of civil society or state corporatism. These approaches focus on the way the Chinese Party-state constrains and limits the actions of NGOs and GONGOs (“government-organized NGOs”), but neglect the ways that these organizations may use the party-state for their own purposes. The Party-state is not a monolithic organization, but a loosely affiliated group of organizations with overlapping and competing interests. From the perspective of an NGO, this conglomerate can be an excellent source for the resources they need.
The China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF) has been one of China's largest GONGOs, known for its Project Hope campaigns for rural education. This paper, based on interviews with CYDF’s founder, leader, employees, volunteers, and beneficiarie, examines CYDF’s strategies for dealing with Party-state agencies at the national, provincial, and local level. My research reveals that CYDF was highly successful in manipulating and exploiting Party-state agencies in order to make them serve the organization’s needs.
CYDF’s strategy was to simultaneously create a moral panic over a social problem and offer a Party-state bureau or department a way to “solve” the social problem. This provides the Party-state agency protection from government downsizing. This strategy provided a template for other GONGOs and NGOs seeking to transform state policies to alleviate social problems.

Author

• Carolyn L. Hsu, Colgate University