Hope Is With the People: Why China Should Welcome Back Foreign NGOs
On the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference last November, President Biden and China’s Xi Jinping agreed to make people-to-people exchanges a priority in US-China relations. Specifically, they agreed to strengthen “educational, student, youth, cultural, sports, and business” exchanges, which are deemed essential to keeping the bilateral relationship stable. Biden and Xi also decided to increase the number of scheduled passenger flights between the United States and China next year to facilitate people-to-people interactions.
While these steps to enhance academic and business exchanges are welcome, it is notable that the plan excludes civil society organizations. Washington would undoubtedly support reinvigorating cooperation between non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but Beijing would likely oppose it. This is short-sighted, however, as the excessive securitization of people-to-people exchanges is harmful to Chinese interests. Beijing should reconsider its tightening of laws to regulate the activities of foreign NGOs in China based on its assessment that they pose a national security threat.
China’s Foreign NGOs in the National Security Era
China’s paramount concern for national security in its governance of foreign NGOs runs at cross-purposes to the stated desire to strengthen people-to-people exchanges.
Since China opened to the world in the 1980s, foreign NGOs have played a key role in promoting the development of Chinese civil society. The number of foreign NGOs operating in China likely peaked in the 2010s, when the figure for registered and unregistered foreign NGOs ranged from 1,000 to 6,000.
China’s policy toward foreign NGOs changed radically with the adoption of the Law on Administration of Activities of Overseas Nongovernmental Organizations in the Mainland of China (Foreign NGO Law), which came into effect January 1, 2017. The law requires foreign NGOs to register with the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) before establishing a representative office or to collaborate with a Chinese partner to acquire a “temporary activities” permit that can last up to a year. Foreign NGOs are permitted to work in economics, education, science, culture, health, sports, environmental protection, poverty, and disaster relief. Their activities must not harm China’s national interests or the interests of Chinese society. Political and religious activities are explicitly banned.
The law transfers the supervisory duty from the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) to MPS, which essentially defines the registration and management of foreign NGOs as a national security issue. A Chinese official explicitly cited national security concerns as the reason for the changes in the Foreign NGO Law, and this was later echoed by Huang Haoming, former deputy director of the China Association for NGO Cooperation. The law was intended to better regulate foreign organizations that are deemed to exert a negative influence on the Chinese people.
Since the Law went into effect, foreign NGOs have faced staggering obstacles to registering and operating in China. Designed as a 60-day process, registration of a representative office generally takes six to 12 months in practice. Even for registered foreign NGOs such as Give2Asia, a US-based organization that coordinates international donations to China, each grant takes some three to four months to receive full approval. Moreover, months of administrative work to ensure compliance with the Foreign NGO Law do not guarantee approval. The end result is uncertainty, frustration, and high fees for foreign NGOs to register and operate in China.
By regulating foreign NGOs and controlling their registration, the MPS has effectively selected the preferred types of foreign NGOs allowed in China. In 2012, the top three thematic foci of foreign NGOs in China other than “multi-sector” (20.4%) were the environment (19%), health/HIV (16.3%), and education (12.2%), according to a study by the China Development Brief. As a result of the Foreign NGO Law, education and health NGOs dropped to third and fourth place, and environmental NGOs dropped to seventh place as of 2022. The top two categories were trade and international relations. Moreover, there are no foreign NGOs focusing on human rights or LGBTQ issues in China, which used to be tolerated in a gray zone. The changes reveal the broad impact of the new foreign NGO regulations and Chinese authorities’ clear preference for certain types of NGOs under the law.
As of this writing, 758 foreign NGOs have registered in China, although 86 later opted to leave and de-register their offices, according to the MPS website. Additionally, 6,265 temporary activity applications have been filed since 2017 for foreign NGOs. Compared to the 1,000 to 6,000 foreign NGOs active in the mid-2010s, the current number is small. This likely suits Beijing’s goal of better controlling foreign NGOs’ work.
Looking ahead, China’s prioritization of national security in its governance of foreign NGOs is likely to continue. After China’s third plenum this past July, the Chinese government published the Decision of the CCP Central Committee on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform to Advance Chinese Modernization. The Decision includes an entirely new section titled “Modernizing China’s National Security System and Capacity”, in which national security is described as a “pivotal foundation” for China’s modernization. The section includes a goal to improve “the management system for social organizations”—the Chinese term for non-profits, foundations, and other NGOs—illustrating the security concerns that continue to permeate China’s NGO governance.
Civil Society Needs Foreign NGOs
The departure of foreign NGOs has had a detrimental impact on China’s domestic NGOs.
One major consequence of the Foreign NGO Law is the increasing difficulty in fundraising for Chinese NGOs. As stated in Article 32 of the law, organizations and individuals in China shall not be “entrusted or financed”, either directly or indirectly, by an unregistered foreign NGO or through an unauthorized temporary activity.
According to a Quartz report from 2017, a Guangzhou-based environmental NGO worker estimated that her NGO would receive 10% less funding that year due to the prohibition against taking money from some of it existing foreign donors. Additionally, according to Jessica Batke, a senior editor at ChinaFile, “Beijing has implicitly directed international funding away from less-favored sectors by denying legal status—and therefore access to foreign grants—to domestic NGOs working in these fields.”
The Foreign NGO Law’s national security focus affects fundraising even outside its scope. This past February, the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) publicly suggested that China’s Charity Law should include a clause allowing domestic NGOs to accept funds from international counterparts that do not operate in China. As CBCGDF argues, the Foreign NGO Law applies only to foreign NGOs that have activities in China and therefore does not deny domestic NGOs’ receipt of international grants. However, the lack of clarity in the Foreign NGO Law and the enforced conformity to the national security agenda have led to the unlawful confiscation of such grants by MPS.
The departure of foreign NGOs has also resulted in the loss of human capital and knowledge for domestic Chinese NGOs. According to two Shanghai-based NGOs, Shanghai Sunrise and Morning Tears, local NGOs in China still cannot compare with foreign NGOs in their professionalism and expertise. Continuous collaboration with foreign NGOs is needed for the further development of China’s civil society, which is important for China’s social, political, and economic progress.
Due in part to pressure from the Chinese government under the Foreign NGO Law, NGOs now increasingly focus their programs on China’s global role, such as its investment abroad and the Belt and Road Initiative. However, the law now stands at a paradoxical position as it might gatekeep China’s much needed non-governmental partners for global development. For example, although trade and industry-oriented NGOs are allowed to operate under the Foreign NGO Law, organizations such as the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation and Confederação Nacional do Transporte from Brazil have nevertheless left China for undeclared reasons. The increasing difficulty for foreign NGOs to stay in China, which explains some of their departures, hinders partnerships that are critical to China’s “going out” policy between Chinese and foreign NGOs.
For these reasons, China’s support for people-to-people exchanges must include foreign NGOs. Ideally, this should be done by revising the Foreign NGO Law to ease the registration process and reduce risks and operating costs for foreign NGOs in China. However, this is unlikely as practices seem to have stabilized in recent years with China’s continuous prioritization of national security.
Other steps could be considered to attract foreign NGOs to return to China. The Chinese government could facilitate foreign NGOs’ access to the “professional supervisory unit” (PSU) required for registration and the “Chinese partners” required for temporary activities by the Foreign NGO Law. These changes are more feasible in China’s current domestic policy environment. For example, Beijing could send clearer guidance to local governments, which tend to be more conservative in supporting grant proposals out of fear of reprisals.
Beijing could also motivate PSUs to be more active in their supervisory roles, as PSUs not only fear their responsibilities but also lack incentives. This makes registration particularly challenging for foreign NGOs that have fewer resources and are not well known.
If Xi genuinely believes that “the hope of the China-US relationship lies in the people” and “its foundation is in the two societies”, the exclusion of foreign NGOs certainly poses a high cost for China. While boosting academic and business exchanges is a good step toward stabilizing US-China relations, opening up to foreign NGOs is essential for China’s own development