Chinese Communist Youth League, political capital and the legitimising of volunteering in China

Abstract

In China, the Chinese Communist Youth League (CYL) has been the most important impetus for formal volunteering since the early 1990s. This article begins by scrutinising the historical and institutional impulses that motivate the CYL to promote volunteering, and examines the CYL's major role in legitimatising volunteering in the past 20 years. Findings suggest that the ascribed political capital of the CYL has bestowed enough power to legitimise volunteering under the current regime, and in turn, the efforts in legitimising possibly re-enhanced the CYL's political capital. First, as a policymaker, the CYL has established a national monitoring system to legitimise volunteering. Second, as a policy executor, the CYL prefers to legitimatise grassroots voluntary service organisations in a flexible way, rather than just strictly following the written rules. In addition, the CYL's special political status affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party also indicates that, in essence, the CYL's potential in legitimisation is contingent on broader institutional change in China.

Keywords:

• Chinese Communist Youth League
• political capital
• volunteer
• legitimisation
• China

Introduction

The notion of volunteerism not only embodies a set of altruistic values that emphasise an action taken by personal choice and without expectation of pay (Dunn, 1995), but is also a fundamental building block of civil society that can actually help people who are not involved in politics to pursue freedom, opportunity, safety and social justice (Cheung & Ngai, 2004; De Tocqueville, 2000; International Association for Volunteer Effort, 2001; Kramer, 1981; Ngai, 2006; Ngai, Ngai, Cheung, & To, 2008; White, Howell, & Shang, 1996). It is true that volunteering service organisations (VSOs), which include transcendent moral values for the public good, often become an enclave among various organisations and work towards the development of civil society (Brown et al., 2001; Xu & Ngai, 2011). However, when voluntary organisations seek to promote equality, autonomy and democracy through the spirit of volunteerism, the governments in the autocratic countries would regard such volunteerism as a challenge to their authority (Fisher, 1998). Therefore, for the non-Western countries without a tradition of civil society, legitimising of volunteering should be the first step of the country's development towards a civil society. However, little research has been done to explore the process of legitimising volunteering, especially in developing countries.

Legitimisation refers to a process of removing legal prohibitions or creating new institutional forms (Kahler, 2000). No legalised institutions can be designed to encompass all future circumstances; stakeholders towards legitimisation may also change over time according to the changing political or social environment (Kahler, 2000). In this respect, legitimising is a dynamic process toward legitimisation that illuminates broader change in a certain social context (Finnemore & Toope, 2001). Moreover, evidence shows that the process of legitimising volunteering in developing countries is often influenced by the preferences and incentives of domestic political actors, because there is a lack of well-developed legal systems (Goldstein, Kahler, Keohane, & Slaughter., 2000; Kahler, 2000). Law and politics often intertwine at all levels of legitimisation (Abbott, Keohane, Moravcsik, Slaughter, & Snical, 2000). For instance, in East Africa, the Kenyan government shut down the larger, urban-based non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and created their own (GONGOs) that are oriented towards the official party in 1995 (Fisher, 1998).

In China, the most important impetus for legitimising the formal volunteering was the Chinese Communist Youth League (CYL) (The Research Group of China Youth Research Center & the Central Committee of Young Volunteer Activities Center, 2001a, 2001b; Tian, 2004), which is a party-like organisation that has been ascribed a privileged political status that is second only to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which is the ruling party in the nation (Barnett, 1967; Funnell, 1970; Li, 1993). This article scrutinises the historical and institutional impulses that motivate the CYL to promote volunteering, and examines the CYL's efforts in legitimising volunteering in the last 20 years, through the lens of the political capital. In addition, the CYL's potential in legitimising volunteering in the future is also discussed.

The background

Altruistic behaviour (such as offering a bus seat to an elderly person) can sometimes be considered as an act of informal volunteering, which does not necessarily require any organisation. However, formal volunteering should be an organised action (Brilliant, 1997, pp. 2469–2482). Historically, although China has a tradition of individual-based informal volunteering on the basis of charity and religion, Confucians, feudal governments and the government in the early days of communist China believed that the government should be the primary welfare provider and discouraged associations (Liang, 1997). This was because they worried that organised voluntary service could be too influential in the society (Tian, 2004). The earliest formal volunteering, which refers to a process of any individual who chooses to act through an organisation in recognition of a need and without concern for monetary profit (Cnaan, Handy, & Wadsworth, 1996), can only be traced to the year 1990, when the ‘11th Asian Games’ were held in Beijing. The Beijing Municipal Commission of the CYL and the Organising Committee for the Asian Games cooperated to recruit volunteers for the international sports event (Ou, 2009). To date, promoting volunteering has been one of the most important regular tasks of the CYL. In the following sections, CYL's political capital will be scrutinised and its efforts in legitimising China's voluntary sectors in the transitional period of China will be examined.

The CYL and its political capital

Political capital refers to the resources based on the political advantages that can facilitate an organisation to access, possess or dominate more resources or power (Booth & Richard, 1998; Cao & Nee, 2000; Fox & Gershman, 2000; Fuchs, Shapiro, & Minnite, 2001; Jacobs, Cook, & Carpini, 2009; Kesler, 2003; McCracken, 2003; Ramaswami & Dieher, 2007; Raymo & Xie, 2000; Xu & Ngai, 2011; Zhao, 1990). In other words, the possession of political capital means having political advantages in achieving the organisation's objectives in the existing political system. Moreover, political capital can be classified into two categories: the ascribed political capital, which refers to the political resources conferred on to the organisation through historical inheritance, and the achieved political capital, which refers to the political resources achieved by the organisation's own efforts (Xu & Ngai, 2011).

Owing to the historical inheritance, the CYL has taken a privileged position, and thus, has profound ascribed political capital to launch new youth policies or legitimise the policies in the one-party system. First, the CYL is a party-like youth organisation with a profound link to the party and the government. The establishment of the CYL's political capital can be traced back to the year 1919. It is viewed by the CCP that the May 4 student movement of patriotic protest against Japanese imperialism in 1919 was a revolutionary ancestor of the Chinese youth in their anti-imperialist struggle under the influence of Marxism-Leninism. In addition, it is believed that the May 4 student movement led to the establishment of the CYL in 1922 (Pringsheim, 2009). To date, as ‘a school for the broad masses of youth to study communism in practice’ (China Youth Network [CYCNET], 2006a), the CYL has aimed to train the youth to be faithful people willing to work for the CCP's goals and provide personnel for governmental positions, since the establishment of People's Republic of China (CYCNET, 2002). Many Chinese leaders, for example, the current Paramount Leader General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Hu Jintao, Chinese vice Premier Li Keqiang, and the former Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang, were each once the general secretary of the central committee of CYL (Wang, 2009).

Second, according to the Constitution of CYL, as ‘an assistant and reserve of the CCP’ (CYCNET, 2006a), the CYL committees were subordinate to the CCP committees at the corresponding levels; the organisational structure of the CYL is closely modelled after that of the Communist Party; the CYL cadres receive subsidised payment from the State, similar to the CCP cadres; and more importantly, and as all the programmes under the auspices of the CYL completely support the goals of the CCP, the CCP normally will support the CYL's programmes as well (Funnell, 1970).

Third, the CYL is not only a party-like organisation, but is also the largest youth organisation that has offices and members all over China. By the end of 2008, the CYL had a total of 78,588,000 members (about 26.02% of the country's young people aged 14–28 years) (Chinese Youth League Network, 2009). In schools or universities, the students normally should seek the CYL's approval if they want to establish organisations, or reserve classrooms or other venues to organise activities.

Promoting volunteering as the CYL's rational choice

To promote volunteering is a rational choice of the CYL to act in concert with market-oriented economic reforms that the CCP started since 1978. The market-oriented reforms have not only empowered the youth by creating more work opportunities ‘outside of the system’ (tizhiwai), but also shrunk the ‘work unit’ (gongzuo danwei)-based communities (National Population & Family Planning Services Administration, 2010; Unger & Chan, 2004; Wang, 1990; Zhao, 1990). As a result, the membership of the CYL has lost much of its allure in the workplaces or in the communities. In other words, though the CYL has considerable influence on students because it actually reserves great power and holds many resources in schools and universities in China (about 51.3% are student members, i.e., 40,337,000 students), the steadily increased new non-state social mobility channels (e.g., the rural youth came to the city and worked in the private enterprises), which are fostered by the economic reforms, had dwindled CYL's ability in linking the youth and the CCP (National Population & Family Planning Services Administration, 2010; Ngai, 1997).

It is estimated that 44% of the inter-provincial youth aged 14–29 years migrated to cities in 2005 (Unger & Chan, 2004), and the migrant population in China reached 211 million people in 2009 (Wang, 1990; Zhao, 1990). The number of migrants will steadily increase and it will be about 350 million in 2050 (National Population & Family Planning Services Administration, 2010). ‘This led the League leadership to modify its old emphasis on rigid discipline and indoctrination and to adopt more flexible, enlightened and educational approaches to win over youths’ (Ch'I, 1990, p. 149). For the organisation's survival and development, the CYL's cadres and theorists have to adapt to the reform and change its working approaches to rejuvenate its influence on the youth in the workplace and communities (Wang, 1990; Zhao, 1990).

Actually, the CYL elites have tried to explore new working approaches and expand its functions to ‘keep pace with the times’ (yüshijujin) since the late 1980s. For instance, Yuqi Li (1993), a researcher at the Institute of Youth Movement History of China Youth Research Center, claimed that the CYL's functional mechanism and work approaches, which were formed in the 1950s, have faced difficultly to adapt to the development of the new situation with deepening of the opening-up of reforms. Thus, the CYL has no choice but to carry out reforms at both the institutional and working-approach levels. Changjiang Li (1990), who worked at the Research Office of Youth Movement History of the Central Committee of the CYL, further advocated that the CYL ‘should clarify its social function, gain the trust of youth and be able to work independently under the Party's leadership’. Secretary of Shenzhen Municipal Communist Youth League Committee, Baocheng Yuan (2003), clearly pointed out that ‘in order to more effectively bridge and link between the party and youth, we can make a reference to the operation mechanism of NGOs in developed countries, and extend the work sphere of the CYL’ (p. 42).

Under these circumstances, promoting volunteering is the CYL's rational choice: First, altruism, which is a crucial spirit of volunteering, is ideologically right because it is coordinated with the Party's collective ideology. Second, promoting volunteering is politically safe, because the voluntary services are non-political and mainly aiming for the good of the commonwealth and because the party-state has cautiously welcomed the social welfare role played by the NGOs (Xu & Ngai, 2011). Third, given the fact that China is in a period of rapid transition and various social forces are on the rise (Teets, 2009), encouraging people to organise themselves under the auspices of the CYL, the CYL is providing new channels to link the people in the communities and workplaces. Just as LU Hao, who is currently the first secretary of the CYL Central Committee mentioned, ‘youth volunteering is an extremely valuable working brand created by CYL in the last 20 years’ endeavor … The CYL should draw on the experience of the volunteering work to promote the comprehensive work of CYL effectively' (CYL, 2010).

Method

Sampling and data collection procedures

This research used purposive sampling and multiple methods to collect and triangulate data, including in-depth interviews and documentary reviews. The documentary data mainly included the CYL's official documents, CYL's other publications, such as articles and books, the voluntary service organisations' (VSO) internal publications and meeting notes, newspaper articles, video reports, emails and posters in the Bulletin Board System (BBS).

The interview data mainly stemmed from a pilot study in 2005 in Beijing and a larger, main study conducted during 2005–2007 in Jinan. In contrast to the super cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai or Hong Kong, Jinan has more representative features of the institutional system, city size and culture. For example, Jinan is the capital city of Shandong Province and one of the ‘National Heritage Cities’ (guojia lishi wenhua mingcheng) of China. As early as 1929, at least 33 charity organisations were established in Jinan (Editorial Committee of the Historical, 1997). The municipal committee of CYL responded positively to the call of the Central Committee of the CYL and started the ‘Youth Volunteer Movement’ (qingnian zhiyuanzhe xingdong) in the early 1990s (Jinan Daily, 2009 ). Moreover, Jinan was the first city legislated on volunteering in Shandong Province. Led by the CYL, Jinan Volunteering Administration Regulations came into effect on 1 October 2006 (The Thirteenth Jinan Municipal People's Congress Standing Committee, 2006).

The transcriptions from 17 interviewees were selected for this study. The 17 interviewees included one coordinator of the ‘Research Center of Volunteer Service and Social Welfare of Beijing University’, six officials who were responsible for promoting the voluntary projects, two organisers and seven volunteers from two voluntary service organisations that are under the auspices of the Committee of Communist Youth Leagues (i.e., VSO-D and VSO-F), and one organiser of a grassroots VSO (i.e., VSO-C).

Each interviewee was initially interviewed face-to-face one or two times. To get an understanding of each interviewee, at the end of the first-round interview, each interviewee was asked to fill out a basic background information form, which recorded his/her education, occupation, birthplace, length of residence in Jinan, gender, personal income, family income, political affiliation, phone number, email address, blog address and other information he/she would like to provide. After the first-round interview, each interviewee was also interviewed via phone from one to six times. All the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim with the interviewees' consent.

Moreover, to get a better understanding of the VSOs, on 1 January 2007 and 10 February 2007, the author participated in the voluntary services of VSO-F (a service unit under the auspices of Jinan Municipal CYL), and wrote observation notes to record the direct experience of participating in the activities and the unstructured conversations with the volunteers.

Data analysis and trustworthiness

To enhance the trustworthiness of the data, multiple measures such as the participant check, investigator triangulation and perspective triangulation were applied in the data analyses.

Participant check

To deepen the understanding of the interview and clarify the transcription, the author asked the interviewees to check the interview data. Communication between the author and the interviewees via phone or email continued intermittently for about 10 months. In addition, a triangulation method was used to help verify the data.

Perspective triangulation

To explore the uniqueness of the data collected in Jinan, the author triangulated perspectives to examine and interpret the data. First, the author conducted two supplementary field visits in Hong Kong (i.e., the official department of the Central Office for Volunteer Service Social Welfare Department at Social Welfare Department of Hong Kong, and the leading private voluntary institution, Agency for Volunteer Service). Voluntary agencies in Hong Kong and Jinan have similar organisational goals, but have very different paths for the organisation's development. The extended visits enhanced the author's confidence in the validity of the data through careful consideration of potential causes and effects of the different management systems and social environments. Second, extensive literature review closely accompanied data analysis. For example, a thorough literature review was conducted when it was found that several interviewees emphasised the political background of the VSOs. Comparison of the theoretical perspectives in the related literature with the empirical data not only led to a better understanding of the empirical data, but also generated new knowledge on the basis of empirical data.

Results

With its ascribed political capital presumed, the CYL played a dominant role in legitimising the voluntary sectors while vitally promoting volunteerism in China. The word ‘zhiyuanzhe’ (volunteers) can hardly be found in the literature from mainland China until the year 1990, when Beijing Municipal Commission of the CYL (Gongqingtuan Beijing Shiwei) and the Organising Committee for Asian Games cooperated to recruit volunteers for the ‘11th Asian Games’ that were held in Beijing (Ou, 2009). On examining all the chronicle documents from 4 May 1919 to 31 December 2008, which were available at the CYL's official website (2011), the author found that the reports of the national events of volunteering gradually increased since 1993 (Figure 1). In 1993, there was only one national event of volunteering (i.e., the Central Committee of the CYL formally launched the Chinese Youth Volunteer Movement on 19 December 1993), and the number of events increased to 61 in 2008.

Figure 1 National events about volunteering that appeared in the official documents of the Central Committee of the CYL. Source: ‘Youth Work Events in China’ (1993–2008), available at the CYL's official website: http://www.ccyl.org.cn/history/events/

The ascribed political capital helps the CYL establish a national monitoring system of volunteering

As the CCP's assistant, the CYL is a part of the party-state and has the ability to influence the youth policy at both local and national levels (Ngai, Cheung, & Li, 2001). During the past 20 years, the CYL worked as a policymaker and set up a national system governing the operation of VSOs. This national system not only reinforced CYL's dominant status in the voluntary sector, but also provided more space for the development of volunteering by legitimising grassroots VSOs.

The CYL's power in governing the voluntary services gradually strengthened in the bureaucratic system since the 1990s. The earliest effort in building a national volunteering governance network can be traced back to 5 December 1994, when the Central Committee of the CYL founded the ‘Chinese Young Volunteers Association’ with the aims to enhance its leadership and supervision of the voluntary services. At almost the same time, various ‘young volunteers’ associations' were also founded at provincial and city levels all over China (CYL, 2006a). In 1998, the ‘Action Guidance Center of Young Volunteers’ Actions of Central Committee of CYL' was set up. The centre is responsible for programming, coordinating, and directing national youth voluntary services, and acts as the Secretariat of the Chinese Young Volunteers Association. It shows that CYL has begun to take greater initiative to monitor the voluntary services (CYL, 2006b). On 16 October 2003, the Secretariat of Central Committee of the CYL elevated the above-mentioned ‘Action Guidance Center’ to ‘Department’ status and began to work in the name of ‘Department of Young Volunteers of the Central Committee of the CYL’ (CYL, 2003).

In the meantime, the local branches of CYL began to promote the legislation of voluntary service. For example, the Guangdong Committee of CYL issued its first ‘Regulations of Young Volunteers of Guangdong Province’ on 3 September 1999. Afterwards, the Shandong Committee of CYL, and the city-level Committees, such as Nanjing's and Jinan's, also promulgated the local ‘Regulations of Young Volunteers’. These efforts not only laid down the groundwork of the national regulation in future volunteering development, but also demonstrated that the local CYL branches also have institutional initiatives. Furthermore, a proposal for developing the national ‘Youth Volunteer Services Regulation (draft)’ was proposed at the third Session of the Tenth National People's Congress in March 2005 (People's Daily, 2005).

Nowadays, the CYL successfully set up a national system governing VSOs, and there were two parallel established systems monitoring VSOs in China (Figure 2): (1) the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) System, according to the regulations promulgated by the State Council, and (2) the CYL system, according to the regulations issued by the Central and local committees of CYL. The MCA system covered all kinds of NGOs (e.g., VSOs, professional societies or hobby groups) registered under the MCA Department and the CYL system was specially designed for those VSOs registered with the CYL.

Figure 2 National monitoring systems of VSOs in China.

As the Chinese government wanted to maintain political stability, the current administration has restrained the number of association registrations, types of associations and range of associations (Cooper, 2006). In contrast, the CYL system provided more space for the development of VSOs than the MCA. For example, if the same type of NGO already registered in the same administrative area, the MCA will consider setting a limit to other NGOs (People's Republic of China Ministry of Civil Affairs, 1998). In other words, if there was an association of environment protection in existence at the city level of Jinan, no similar type of associations would be approved for registration in Jinan. In addition, to be registered in the MCA system, an organisation was required to find a state organ above the county level that was ‘relevant’ to the activities proposed by the organisation to be its ‘professional management unit’ (yewu zhuguan danwei), and it should have 50 individual members or 30 collective members, a permanent residence, and capital no less than ¥30,000 (People's Republic of China Ministry of Civil Affairs, 1998), while the CYL system only required three volunteers to satisfy the criteria of the VSO registration. Hence, the NGOs, which aimed to provide community services but could not register in the MCA system, might turn to register in the CYL system alternatively. Nowadays, many ‘service units’ (fuwuzhan), regardless of the participants' age or whether the service targeted are youth or not, were registered with the CYL (People's Daily, 2001 ).

The ascribed political capital helps the CYL legitimatise the grassroots VSOs

In addition to the role of a policymaker (e.g., formulating the Volunteering Regulations), the CYL also implemented policies as a policy executor. With its ascribed political capital presumed, the local CYLs usually did not just strictly follow the written rules, but tried to build a reciprocal relationship with VSOs by providing legitimate statuses to grassroots VSOs in a flexible and optional way according to the ‘central spirit’ (zhongyang jingshen) of the documents issued by the Central CCP or Central CYL. In this way, on the one hand, the CYL expanded its influences on the voluntary service sector; on the other hand, with the CYL's support, VSOs could get more legal spaces for the organisational development (e.g., recruit members and organise activities publicly) in a relatively conservative social and political environment. The following two cases (i.e., student association VSO-D and the ‘service unit’ VSO-F) reveal the CYL's flexibility in making a reciprocal relationship with the VSOs in policy execution.

Case 1: VSO-D

The CYL had a predominant position in leading students in the high schools and universities in China. The student associations do not need to register in the MAC system, but are required as student associations to register in the General Branch of the CYL in the universities (Chen & Wang, 2011). Obviously, the local CYL branch did not follow this rule strictly. For example, VSO-D, which is a social work student association, is actually technically illegal because it did not register in its University's CYL branch. However, interestingly, the organisation was honoured as ‘2005 Excellent Student Association’ by the CYL office of the university.

As the two core volunteers of VSO-D explained, VSO-D did not register in the CYL system because the founder Organiser-D, who was formerly a social worker in Hong Kong and is now a businessman in Canada who often stayed in Jinan, did not think that he could support the communist ideology, which the Party and CYL insisted. He had tried to set up an NGO, but failed because he could not find a governmental department to act as the NGOs' ‘professional management unit’ that is required by the MCA system. He explained the reason to organise VSO-D and expressed his ideological beliefs as follows:

Organiser-D: Later, I realised the university is an exception that does not need a host official institution. I found a student association in the social work department. I hope and I wait for a policy change in our country. However, I think I might find a host official institution more easily if our organisation provides good services … I hope we will become a relatively democratic society. However, as I gain a better understanding of China, I'd like to do something to promote the development of Chinese civil society, rather than advocate it from outside China (Xu & Ngai, 2011, p. 255).

Moreover, two volunteers explained the following:

Volunteer-D1-Mr. Su: Actually, we have not registered in the University Committee of CYL as other student-associations did. Of course, we have been approved by the school … All our economic support comes from the ‘international social work friend’, Organiser-D (Xu & Ngai, 2011, p. 258).

Volunteer-D2-Miss. Zhang: We do not correspond with the University Committee of the CYL directly. The Committee must know something about us. Our activities are reported by the News-Net of the University (governed by the University Committee of CYL). However, we do not have direct connections with the University Committee of CYL (Xu & Ngai, 2011, p. 259).

There were mainly two reasons for the CYL to be so flexible that it might support VSO-D, even though the organisation does not support the communist ideology. First, support to VSO-D has matched the ‘document of spirit’ (wenjian jingshen) of the Central CCP's policy in promoting social work and the central CYL's position in advocating voluntary service. Social work is a new profession, which is promoted by the Government as a means for building a harmonious society, since the early 2000s. For instance, the official document, ‘CCP Central Committee on Several Major Issues of Building a Harmonious Socialist Society’, which was issued by the 6th Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee of the CCP in 2006, clearly suggested that ‘educating a high quality team of social work professionals is an urgent need for building a socialist harmonious society’ (Central Government Portal, 2007). Thus, although VSO-D did not take an oath of allegiance to the communist ideology, it is politically sound for the CYL to support VSO-D.

Second, as VSO-D's professional service had been highly valued by the service recipients, praising VSO-D was not only morally right, but also helpful to expand the CYL's brand in the communities. All the volunteers were majored in social work. Furthermore, the students regularly provided youth services, elderly services, community services and services for disabled people in a junior high school, a neighbourhood community, and a mentally retarded children's centre. The service recipients welcomed the student volunteers because their services were professional and of high quality. Under these circumstances, even though VSO-D was not registered in the CYL's system, it not only survived, but was also highly valued by the CYL.

Case 2: VSO-F

VSO-F was spontaneously initiated by several journalists who worked in a newspaper publishing company in Jinan in 1997. As a locally based VSO, VSO-F successfully engaged in the communities and its services met people's needs. For example, they recruited electricians to check electro-circuits voluntarily for elders in the winter; and recruited undergraduates to look after the pupils after school whose parents had to work.

VSO-F regularly organised voluntary services on Sundays at different venues in Jinan. They announced service information in the newspaper every Tuesday, introducing service targets, venues and gathering time of the following Sundays. Anyone could call their hotline to register and join their service. In addition, volunteers of VSO-F set up and managed a BBS and eight QQ groups (a real-time chat program). Web users can get service information, register and discuss the services through the Internet.

After offering voluntary services without legal status for almost eight years, VSO-F was registered as a ‘service unit’ under the auspices of the Committee of CYL of Jinan on 21 August 2005. The interviews of Officer-O (a leader of the CYL of Shandong Province) and Organiser-F (a journalist, who currently manages VSO-F) illustrated the reciprocal relationship between the CYL and VSOs clearly.

On the CYL's side, Officer-O not only praised VSO-F's successful service, but also claimed its successes as achievements of the CYL. He said:

Officer-O: VSO-F really did some real voluntary work. Better than us … Many leaders, from the Central Government of the CYL and governors of our province, visited the voluntary sites of VSO-F … However, as a ‘service unit’ of us, their successes are our achievements too.

On the VSO-F side, Organiser-F described the relationship between CYL and VSO-F as follows:

…

Organiser-F: The registration (as a ‘service unit’) means we have obtained the official's admission, from the CYL. In other words, we accepted amnesty and serve the ruler (zhaoan), didn't we? … It give us a legal status though without specific rights …

It should be noted that about half a year after its registration with the CYL, the Central Committee of CYL and the Chinese Young Volunteers Association honoured VSO-F as one of the ‘Ten most outstanding volunteer service collectives in China’ in 2006. China Central Television (CCTV) also delivered a series of commending reports about VSO-F in September 2007 (CCTV, 2007).

These honours bestowed by the CYL provided an important legal base for VSO-F to enjoy greater autonomy and facilitated its development. In March 2007, there were about 20,000 registered volunteers in VSO-F. By the end of September 2007, the registered volunteers of VSO-F increased to more than 40,000, most of whom were middle-class people aged from 23 to 65 years, providing regular services in Jinan (International City Forum, 2008).

The ascribed political capital helps the CYL dominate the legitimising process while constraining the voices of youth volunteers and service organisations

Under the leadership of the CCP, evidence showed that the CYL seemed to have so much political capital that makes it possible to dominate the legitimising process of volunteering without considering the public opinion in the process of legitimisation. For example, Officer-I, who was the chief secretary of the Committee of Volunteering Administration of Jinan, commented proudly during the interview:

Officer-I: We controlled the legislative progress and helped get the government's approval for the Voluntary Service Regulations of Jinan.

In contrast, Organiser-C, who was the grassroots environmental protection campaign leader of VSO-C, complained during the interview:

Organiser-C: I have many suggestions about voluntary service and environmental protection. However, the government doesn't give me the opportunity to express my views.

Moreover, Ms. Pan, the coordinator of the ‘Research Center of Volunteer Service and Social Welfare of Beijing University’ criticised,

Ms. Pan: The CYL-led volunteer services were objects of propaganda platitudes rather than actual voluntary work. The program assessment actually means nothing because it was conducted by their subordinates. For example, the CYL's project ‘Graduates Volunteering the Western China (GVWC)’ was poorly managed, [with] two graduate students dead during volunteering in Xinjiang but no law governing the accident and [no] one responsible for it.

Triangulating the data, Mr. Chen's interview echoed Ms. Pan's criticisms on the dominant role of CYL. Mr. Chen was a very bright student with outstanding school performance before he participated in the GVWC project and served as a volunteer in Xinjiang for a year. He had joined the CCP and had been the chairman of the student union and acted as the class monitor for four consecutive years. However, his viewpoints upon the CYL's volunteering project became very negative after returning from Xinjiang.

Mr. Chen: I won't recommend the GVWC project to the junior school sisters and brothers. I have a feeling that I was cheated. The organiser should have a clear idea of why they recruited us. Moreover, they should provide enough training and other support for us. But they didn't. We not only wasted one year, but got some ‘mental shadow’. Two volunteers lost their lives … They are actually excellent students … I would not appreciate the volunteer service. I am even disgusted with the volunteer service … After I came back from Xinjiang, I felt that the volunteering program is just a hypocritical sermon.

A graduate student who participated in the GVWC project and served as a volunteer in Inner Mongolia for a year, Ms. Sun, also complained that no channels were provided for the volunteers' to give advice.

Ms. Sun: No one did any research about the program, or consulted our opinion until we completed the service and came back to Jinan. We'd like to propose some suggestions to improve the service program, but we did not have such an opportunity.

In addition, the volunteer-registration movement, which was led by the Central CYL since 2001, showed that the CYL's administrative mechanism was powerful, but not effective. The lower CYL branches mainly worked for pursuing service statistics to report to the upper branches, rather than promoting volunteerism. For example, an official document composed by the Jinan CYL committee in 2006 charged that the number of registered volunteers might provide evidence for the aforementioned argument about some registered volunteers being registered not voluntarily, but compulsorily. It mentioned that ‘to take part in the activities of ”building the civilized city” better, it is mandatory that the number of registered volunteers should be no less than 8% of the city's urban population by 2008’ (Committee of CYL of Jinan, 2006).

The interview of the official of the Committee of CYL of Shandong Province not only confirmed the dominant role of CYL in volunteering, but also verified that the volunteers' complaints were reasonable. Officer-O described and commented on the CYL's approach in organising the GVWC project as follows:

Officer-O: By now, all the youth volunteering in China are governed by the Central Committee of CYL. And we are working purely as a kind of government agency. The Central Committee of CYL issued notifications and sent them to our province, and then we sent the notifications to the city level, and the city to the district CYL, step by step. Thus we organise and implement programs from the Central to the local … Our works are relatively ineffective … The national registration regulations are quite comprehensive, however, the management of some specific part of the registration system does not catch up with the social development … The effectiveness of our volunteering movements should be improved.

To sum up, as an affiliate of the CCP, the CYL not only presumably had abundant political capital, but also held on to the centralist ideology. As a result, the CYL controlled the legitimising process of volunteering, and the volunteers' opinion had a weak impact on the propaganda. In this respect, the CYL's political status also limited its potential of legitimacy in volunteering. In essence, the CYL's potential in legitimisation was contingent on broader institutional change in China.

Discussion

The reciprocal relationship between political capital and the legitimising process

Scholars have argued that although legalisation serves partisan interests or codifies the working structural power and hegemony even in democracies (Hurrell, 2000; Shelton, 2000; Wiener, 1999), normally, the use of political power should be explained and defended in legal or law-like terms even in authoritarian countries (Carr, 2001; Reus-Smit, 2004). In this regard, on the one hand, the stakeholders' political capital, which allows them access to the ‘political-legal system’, may greatly facilitate the legitimising process or determine the agenda of the legislation (Cohen, 2011). For example, the CYL officer in Jinan has proudly acknowledged that the legislative progress was successfully controlled by them. Similarly, in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, led by the regional CYL, the ‘Amendments of the implementation of Republic of China on Protection of Minors Act in Ningxia’ was the only one among all the proposals in the Region in 2010, which was included in the Standing Committee of the legislative programme, and then was approved within a year (Chen, 2011).

On the other hand, the legitimising process, which is presumably facilitated by the ascribed political capital, is helpful for a certain agency to achieve more political capital in turn (Blau & Duncan, 1967; Xu & Ngai, 2011). As the findings of this study reveal, owing to its ascribed political capital, the CYL has established a national system and provided the VSOs with legal status in a flexible way. The VSOs, which are supported by the CYL, could avoid negative interventions from the State and get more autonomy. Meanwhile, the CYL could claim the VSOs' success as the CYL's achievements. Ideally, the CYL may initiate a reciprocal circle through the legitimising process of volunteering: (1) Some of the VSOs gain the CYL's trust through good services, (2) the CYL bestows the ad hoc legal status to the VSOs, (3) the achieved ad hoc legal status is helpful for the VSO's development and the organisation may provide more services, (4) the organisations' development raise the public acceptance of both the CYL and the VSOs, and (5) the public acceptance reinforces the CYL's confidence in legitimising the VSOs.

In summary, the legitimising activities could be a way for the CYL to ‘pursue more accomplishments by its ascribed status; and then promote the status by achieving more accomplishments’ (Xie, 2006, p. 85). If the reciprocal circle operates well, a new form of state–society relation could be developed because the legitimising process not only helps the CYL to accumulate its political capital, but also contributes to the VSOs' achievement of substantial autonomy from the state.

Rethinking the CYL's domination of the legitimising process

As illustrated by the previously mentioned findings, due to its political capital, the CYL's legitimising efforts have long been successful in China. Meanwhile, evidence also shows that the legitimising process may produce a negative effect on CYL's credit in volunteering, because the CYL had been bureaucratic and lacked communication channels between the CYL and the volunteers. As the GVWC volunteers complained, to promote development efficiently, legislation on volunteering can hardly be fully consulted with the stakeholders (Fisher, 1998). In addition, under the current regime in which the Chinese government has implemented ‘a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics’ that rejects the separation of powers similar to the other Western-style legal systems, which place government and the ruling Party under law (Cohen, 2011; Wu, 2011), the CYL tends to have sufficient ascribed political capital to legitimise certain types or to mandate the specific numbers of VSOs or volunteers in relation to its own needs.

In the short term, the legitimising process may serve the authorities' own needs rather than protect the freedom of the association. However, volunteerism succeeds with the wish of the citizens to make their own contribution. In the long run, as revealed by the findings of this study, due to the absence of the voice from the VSOs, irrespective of whether the VSOs are legitimised or not, volunteering will hardly be fully aligned with the real needs of the volunteers and service recipients, and will lead to the promotion of passive citizenship among volunteers (Hustinx, 2010; Inter-parliamentary Union, International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies, & United Nations Volunteers, 2004; Milligan & Fyfe, 2005). Moreover, the volunteers are likely to quit volunteering because the service cannot meet the social needs, and the very purpose of facilitating volunteerism could be harmed.

In summary, the political capital presumably affects the legitimising process, but the certain legitimising process may not necessarily lead to a favourable impact on volunteering that may achieve its original goals to promote volunteering in the way in which the CYL hopes. In the long term, unsuccessful legislation on volunteering will not only have negative impacts on volunteerism, but will also weaken the stakeholders' competitive advantage in the political realm (Gold, 1991). In this light, both the CYL and the VSO practitioners have to consider the special political culture and work together towards building a reciprocal relationship during the legitimising process of volunteering.

Limitations and further research

A fundamental shortcoming may be the qualitative analysis of the data, which cannot offer objective evidence for political capital and its leverage. Accordingly, the ascribed political capital of the CYL remains a self-evident truth that has not been fully assessed. As such, the analysis was unable to discern the leverage of political capital from that of other factors. To some extent, the validity of the present analysis and its generalisation is therefore dubious. Moreover, as no international NGO (INGO) has set up the representative office or conducts regular services in Jinan, it is disappointing that this study cannot explore the CYL's role in legitimising the INGOs' voluntary activities. With the rise of globalisation in the past few decades, about 300 INGOs from 20 countries have come to China and carried out voluntary activities (Anheier, Glasius, & Kaldor, 2005; Sun, 2006; Summer Institute of Linguistics, International, 2010), and the CYL has also been regularly cooperating with the Ministry of Commerce in recruiting young volunteers for the INGOs to serve overseas (CYCNET, 2006b). However, there is still a lack of regulations clearly defining the INGOs' legal rights and obligations in China, and the local governments show different, inconsistent attitude towards INGOs' registration and activities (Ma, 2006). As discussed earlier, as the CYL has taken regulatory steps to improve the infrastructure of volunteerism, which is responsible for planning, guiding and coordinating the volunteer work across the country, it would be meaningful if further studies explore the interactions between the CYL and the INGOs.

In addition, as the interview data were drawn from a larger study conducted during 2005–2007, this study could not explore the latest legitimising issues that have arisen. For example, the Beijing government has relaxed its registration rules for four categories of NGOs engaged in the realm of industrial and commercial, charitable, social welfare and social service in the city since 2011. Meanwhile, as the government has not clarified the definition of the four categories of NGOs, some VSO practitioners are worried that the new policy ‘would end up as just another arbitrary decision of the Civil Affairs Bureau official on duty’ (Ng, 2011, p. 1). As this study has implied, on the one hand, the political capital has been the most powerful impetus for legitimising the emergence of voluntary activities in China; on the other hand, it is an incomplete legitimising process because China takes both an open policy to non-political NGOs and a conservative stance strictly confined to the Chinese political system and ideology (Ma, 2006). Hence, recommendations for further research include launching a longitudinal study that uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the development of the VSOs that are legitimised by the CYL, and a comparative study to investigate the differences between the VSOs with legal status and those without it.

Furthermore, it is obvious that accessible communication channels for volunteers and VSOs to express their views upon the related legislation are needed in China. Given the fact that China is in a period of rapid transition, legitimising volunteering based on sufficient consultation not only would be helpful for the CYL to win over youth, but also could reduce the costs for the management of the increasingly complex cross-border interests in the society in the long run. However, the questions remain as to whether the CYL has enough motives to explore new working approaches and expand its functions to ‘keep pace with the times’ (yushijujin), and whether the VSOs will have the potential to engage more extensively with society and have an impact on the legitimising process in China in the near future. To date, only a few studies have investigated these possibilities, and further research is required to account for these tough questions.

Acknowledgements

I sincerely thank Prof. Ngai Ngan-pun for his thorough reading of the first draft of this article and for his constructive advice on the study. I also convey special thanks to the anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the article.