Value clashes, power competition and community trust: why an NGO’s earthquake recovery program faltered in rural China

ABSTRACT

NGOs in rural China cannot operate successfully and achieve their goals if they lose the trust of the people they aim to serve and the grassroots leaders they must work with. Following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, an environmental NGO in P village became entangled in competition with village cadres and value clashes with villagers who had their own understanding of development, sustainability and environmentalism. Initially, ‘borrowed power’ from higher-level governments enabled the ENGO to enter the community fairly smoothly and to gain a degree of trust, but disputes with villagers (over home construction, organic agriculture and eco-tourism) and a power struggle with local cadres (over their role in the village) triggered resistance that ultimately drove the ENGO out. The story of P village is a cautionary tale about power relationships and community micropolitics. ‘Borrowed power’ from above is no match for opposition from below on two fronts. Sadly, however, ‘success’ in expelling the ENGO has not meant success more broadly. P village’s economic performance remains weak and old divisions between the powerful and powerless have re-emerged, as lack of trust in outsiders has been replaced with a lack of trust in insiders.

KEYWORDS:

• Earthquake recovery
• trust
• NGO
• value clashes
• power competition
• resistance

Acknowledgements

Our deepest thanks go to the many villagers, cadres and NGO staff who made this article possible. We gratefully acknowledge the journal’s three referees, remarkably incisive suggestions by students and faculty at an ISS seminar in The Hague, and helpful comments from Guobin Yang and Zhongdang Pan. We also greatly appreciate research assistance provided by Chen Sijia, Deng Lihua, Guan Jiawei, Huang Ying, Lu Xiangbo, Mao Chaofan, Shi Yahuan, Sun Qiang and Wang Yingyi.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A comprehensive account of volunteers who arrived to help can be found in Xu (2017).

2 These goals were laid out in a speech delivered by EcoLiving’s director on 12 May 2009, the first anniversary of the earthquake.

3 For other, more bottom-up understandings of environmentalism, see Martinez-Alier (2004).

4 Miao is a pseudonym.

5 Building trust with the government and partnering with it is crucial for Chinese NGOs (Hsu 2010, 2012; Spires 2011; Menefee and Nordtveit 2012, 604; Hasmath and Hsu 2014, 945–48; Teets 2014; Tam and Hasmath 2015, 291; Hsu and Hasmath 2017, 23, 34–35). So is establishing close ties with state authorities (Spires, Tao, and Chan 2014, 80). If individual officials trust NGO leaders that can spill over to the NGO itself, at least in the short term (Hildebrandt 2013, 142–44, 150–54; Heurlin 2016, 92). Yang and Alpermann (2014, 328–29) suggest that maintaining good relations with the state is a sine qua non for Chinese NGOs, though less so for those with clear institutional standing and a fully legal status.

6 The fortunes of Chinese NGOs ‘oscillate’ depending on state behavior (Tam and Hasmath 2015, 286; also Spires 2011; Stern and O’Brien 2012, 178–80; Hsieh 2016).

7 Liu, Wang, and Dang (2018) and Liu and Wang (2019) have conducted pioneering research on NGO-community relations in other Sichuan villages after the earthquake. Teets (2009, 331, 338) also notes the importance of building trust with the community.

8 This term elides important differences that exist within many villages. In some circumstances, lineage leaders, factory owners, and better-off entrepreneurs are additional parties to be considered. In P village, however, the key actors were cadres on one side and villagers on the other.

9 Surveys show that public trust for NGOs declined in the 2000s after rising in the 1990s. Interestingly, environmental NGOs are the most trusted of all NGOs in China and the Wenchuan earthquake pushed trust up significantly (Heurlin 2016).

10 Some informants were interviewed twice. In total, we did 41 interviews in 2013.

11 Interview 28 with an EcoLiving staff member working in P village, 19 May 2013.

12 Interview 14 with the vice director of EAP, 18 May 2013.

13 Interview 28 with an EcoLiving staff member working in P village, 19 May 2013.

14 Local governments elsewhere in Sichuan also distrusted the intentions of civil society associations after the earthquake (Teets 2009, 2014, 137–38). Chinese local officials often fear that ‘the presence of NGOs erodes their own power and authority by substituting civil society for local governments’ (Heurlin 2016, 92).

15 Interview 28 with an EcoLiving staff member working in P village, 19 May 2013.

16 Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013.

17 According to Menefee and Nordtveit (2012, 605), political sensitivities were greatest in the most devastated areas, where ‘If you come in and do something the government is not doing, it can look like you’re challenging them.’

18 Interview 15 with EcoLiving’s local program chief in P village, 18 May 2013. Elsewhere in Sichuan, NGOs set up their own management team for village cooperatives and prohibited current village cadres from being director ‘in order to prevent over-centralization of power’ (Liu, Wang, and Dang 2018, 54).

19 Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013.

20 Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013.

21 Interview 27 with a village cadre who served as P village’s accountant, 19 May 2013.

22 Interview 1 with the director of the P village committee, 17 and 18 May 2013. Other NGO managers in the quake zone were also viewed as too ‘bookish’ and lacking in the government experience and connections necessary to be successful (Sorace 2017, 126).

23 Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013.

24 Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013.

25 Interview 9 with a P village team leader, 18 May 2013; Interview 27 with a village cadre who served as P village’s accountant, 19 May 2013.

26 Guobin Yang (2005) provides a thorough discussion of the main types of Chinese environmental NGOs and their collective action repertoires, interactions with the state, and early history.

27 Elsewhere in Sichuan, villagers resisted ‘architects’ romantic ideas of the countryside and how it should look,’ and instead preferred ‘modern,’ efficient designs that maximized space (Liu, Wang, and Dang 2018, 52). Commissioning world-renowned architects was common throughout the affected area (Sorace 2017, 110).

28 Time has proved correct the villagers who, in accord with the ‘environmentalism of the poor’, questioned the suitability of the building materials recommended by the big-city architects. Unlike most private homes, public buildings were constructed according to EcoLiving’s design. Within a few years, most of them were in poor condition and many were unusable. Although it might have appeared early on that villagers did not care much about sustainability and the long term, they understood their humid climate, forest resources, and land use options better than EcoLiving. Villagers had ‘an intimate experience of living close to nature,’ much to lose from poor decisions, and ‘an intrinsic motivation to be careful managers of the environment’ (Davey 2009, 1, 4).

29 Other Sichuan villagers in the quake zone successfully resisted an NGO’s efforts to get them to build new homes in a designated area and altered design details as they pleased (Liu, Wang, and Dang 2018, 51–53; Liu and Wang 2019). Such ‘everyday modifications’ (Tria Kerkvliet 2009, 238) are not conventional resistance, but can change outcomes.

30 Interview 15 with EcoLiving’s local program chief in P village, 18 May 2013.

31 Interview 28 with an EcoLiving member staff working in P village, 19 May 2013. ‘Fishing’ in this passage referred to farmed fish.

32 Interview 1 with the director of the P village committee, 17 and 18 May 2013; Interview 9 with a team leader of P village, 18 May 2013; Interview 14 with the vice director of EAP, 18 May 2013. Yasuda (2018, chap. 5) explains that trust is an important element of the success of community-supported agriculture and that Chinese consumers are willing to pay a considerable amount if they are convinced their food is safe. In the word of one producer (Yasuda 2018, 79), ‘I don’t sell vegetables, I sell trust.’

33 Interview 1 with the director of the P village committee, 17 and 18 May 2013.

34 Interview 3 with a villager from P village, 17 May 2013. The need to work can interfere with an NGO’s efforts to pursue ‘accountability dialogues’ (Unerman and O’Dwyer 2010, 484).

35 Interview 17 with a villager from P village, 18 May 2013.

36 Interview 14 with the vice director of EAP, 18 May 2013.

37 Interview 28 with an EcoLiving staff member working in P village, 19 May 2013; Interview 36 with EcoLiving’s longest-serving staff member in P village, 20 June 2013.

38 Interview 6 with a villager from P village, 18 May 2013.

39 Interview 6 with a villager from P village, 18 May 2013.

40 Interview 6 with a villager from P village, 18 May 2013; Interview 9 with a P village team leader, 18 May 2013.

41 Interview 9 with a P village team leader, 18 May 2013.

42 Interview 5 with a villager from P village, 18 May 2013.

43 Interview 6 with a villager from P village, 18 May 2013.

44 Interview 24 with the wife of a leader of EAP, 18 May 2013.

45 Interview 36 with an EcoLiving staff member who had been working in P village for several years, 18 June 2013.

46 Interview 15 with EcoLiving’s local program chief in P village, 18 May 2013. Officials and documents about recovery from the earthquake often referred to the ‘traditional peasant mentality’ of ‘waiting, depending and demanding’ (deng, kao, yao) (Sorace 2017, 101).

47 Interview 27 with a village cadre who served as P village’s accountant, 19 May 2013.

48 Interview 9 with a P village team leader, 18 May 2013; Interview 27 with a village cadre who served as P village’s accountant, 19 May 2013; Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013.

49 Interview 1 with the director of the P village committee, 17 May 2013.

50 Interview 15 with EcoLiving’s local program chief in P village, 18 May 2013.

51 Interview 15 with EcoLiving’s local program chief in P village, 18 May 2013.

52 Interview 30 with a village cadre, 19 May 2013; Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013; Interview 35 with a ‘college-graduate village cadre’ (daxuesheng cunguan) in P village, 17 June 2013.

53 Interview 30 with a village cadre, 19 May 2013.

54 Interview 16 with the wife of EAP’s director, 18 May 2013; Interview 23 with the wife of an EAP warehouse worker, 18 May 2013.

55 Interview 36 with an EcoLiving staff member who had been working in P village for several years, 18 June 2013.

56 Interview 16 with the wife of EAP’s director, 18 May 2013; Interview 23 with the wife of EAP’s warehouse worker, 18 May 2013.

57 Teets (2009, 332) emphasizes how cooperation between NGOs, a community, and local authorities can begin a ‘learning process’ where ‘all actors learn the strengths and weaknesses of the others.’ In a less-affected area, recovery efforts reduced the ‘strangeness’ and ‘otherness’ of NGOs and produced ‘at least a passing familiarity and trust’ (Menefee and Nordtveit 2012, 606).

58 Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013.

59 Interview 28 with an EcoLiving staff member working in P village, 19 May 2013. NGO staff in the disaster recovery project examined by Liu, Wang, and Dang (2018, 57, 58) also rated their own performance highly and believed that their impact would be more long-lasting than most community members did.

60 In most of the literature on Chinese NGOs, ‘success’ is a stand-in for survival. EcoLiving did live to fight another day. But it did not bring most of the social changes it sought to P village.

61 Interview 29 with the EAP director, 19 May 2013.

62 Interview 1 with the P village committee director 17 May 2013.

63 Interview 2 and 3 with villagers from P village, 17 May 2013.

64 Interviews 2–4 with villagers from P village, 17 May 2013. Local people tended to exaggerate the amount of money a project generated.

65 Interview 5 with a villager from P village, 18 May 2013. In another post-earthquake recovery effort in Sichuan, villagers suspected, without any evidence, that an NGO was embezzling private donations and financial support from the government (Liu and Wang 2019, 9).

66 Interview 16 with the wife of EAP’s director, 18 May 2013.

67 Interview 9 with a P village team leader, 18 May 2013.

68 Interview 29 with the director of EAP, 19 May 2013; Interview 14 with the vice director of EAP, 18 May 2013; Interview 30 with a village cadre, 19 May 2013.

69 Heurlin’s (2016, 91) surveys show that trust in NGOs and local government tend to move in tandem, both up and down. Ours is a different story.

70 Interview 7 with a villager from P village, 18 May 2013; Interview 34 with the Party secretary of P village, 20 May 2013.

71 Interview 31 with EAP’s purchasing agent, 19 May 2013.

72 Interview 31 with EAP’s purchasing agent, 19 May 2013.

73 Interview 9 with a P village team leader, 18 May 2013.

74 Surveys and interviews show that the public often prefers to approach the Chinese state for help rather than NGOs (Teets 2009, 331; Heurlin 2016).That local cadres tirelessly worked to promote reconstruction often occurred, and was a major theme of Party propaganda in the aftermath of the earthquake (Sorace 2017, chap. 2) and could also be a source of this shift in trust. In P village, however, trust of the government was low during the first years of reconstruction.

75 Andrews (2014, 99) defines ‘downward accountability’ as beneficiaries having say over NGO practices and the latter must justify their actions.

76 Weltanschauung-based values can conflict with beneficiaries’ ‘temporal’ interests and interfere with downward accountability (Kilby 2006, 953, 954). Giving in to constituents when a values disagreement exists can also delegitimize the work of an NGO elsewhere (Andrews 2014, 106).

77 Thanks to Oane Visser (personal communication, 27 May 2019) for this insight.

78 EcoLiving was able to build without a land quota in the immediate wake of the earthquake. Years later, after tearing the building down, it was much harder to get permission to convert arable land.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Fok Ying Tung Education Foundation (Project Code: 151092), Nanjing University (Project Title: ‘Development of Social Organizations in Contemporary China’), and the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Notes on contributors

Yanhua Deng

Yanhua Deng is a professor in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, China. Her research centers on contentious politics and environmental sociology. She has published articles in China Journal, China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary China, Modern China and Political Studies. She is also the author of Environmental Protest in Rural China (China Social Sciences Press, 2016).

Kevin J. O’Brien

Kevin J. O’Brien is Alann P. Bedford Professor of Asian Studies and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also the Director of Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies. His research interests include rural policy implementation, migrant worker benefits, and village elections, and he is the co-author (with Lianjiang Li) of Rightful Resistance in Rural China.