[npoc-voice] Chinese Non Profits and NPOC

["klaus.stoll" <klaus.stoll@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Friends

Please read this excerpt from an recent article as is raises an important 
aspect for our work which I address at the end of this email

Civil Society, Chinese Style:The Rise of the Nonprofit Sector in Post-Mao China 
Written by Chao Guo, PhD, Jun Xu, PhD, David Horton Smith, PhD, and Zhibin 
Zhang, PhD 

Created on Thursday, 25 October 2012 17:11 



“Chinese nonprofits, especially the officially registered ones, do not fit 
neatly into the definitions of nonprofit organizations commonly used among 
Western scholars and practitioners. According to the current classification 
system developed by MOCA, the more than 460,000 officially registered NPOs fall 
into three broad categories:

  1.. “Social organizations,” which include economic groups (trade unions and 
chambers of commerce, etc.), social groups (social clubs, research 
organizations, hobby groups, etc.), religious groups, and membership-based 
public-benefit organizations; 
  2.. “Private non-enterprise organizations,” which include nonprofit schools, 
hospitals, and social service organizations, among others; and 
  3.. “Foundations,” which include public fundraising foundations (such as 
Soong Chingling Foundation, China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, etc.) and 
non-public fundraising foundations, often referred to as private foundations.
While the majority of NPOs do serve a public- or mutual-benefit purpose, these 
registered nonprofits vary in the extent to which they are autonomous and 
voluntary. In fact, many nonprofit organizations currently registered with MOCA 
are actually “government-organized nongovernmental organizations” (GONGOs). 
Nearly all of the national associations are GONGOs, as are many NPO service 
agencies. There are also many organizations not included in the 460,000 
registered NPOs noted above that operate on nonprofit principles but are 
registered as for-profit businesses, as in the case of some private schools and 
social welfare NPOs. NPO founders have frequently taken this path because the 
formal MOCA registration process is difficult to get through in a timely 
manner, if at all. Becoming a registered business is much faster and simpler, 
and allows NPO leaders to get on quickly with their desired service delivery to 
people in need in a legal manner. There are no formal statistics on how many 
registered businesses are NPOs “in disguise,” but estimates suggest there are 
probably some hundreds of thousands in all of China.”

I have just some questions in the light of this article to the NCSG leadership: 
“Given the current definitions and evaluation criteria for NCSG membership, how 
the hell will be able to greet and integrate the Chinese NPO “hoards” that 
without doubt will soon knock on NCSG’s and it’s constituencies doors and quite 
rightfully demand entry?” Isn’t it time that we adopt criteria and evaluation 
patterns that reflect the whole Globe and not just our own realities? When will 
be be brave enough to allow entry to those who might be a threat to our own 
carefully guarded bases of power?. When will be strong enough to permit 
opinions that might not be ours? When are we ready for real representation and 
not just the one that suits us? When will we stop hiding our own interests 
behind a sacred multi stakeholder model that has been distorted to a near 
meaningless because we allow only those stakeholders that are guaranteed not to 
rock our boat? 

Yours

Klaus