Between Control and Empowerment: Governmental Strategies towards the Development of the Non-profit Sector in China

Abstract

Continuous economic reform and social development have induced and forced the Chinese government to adjust its strategies towards non-profit development. Enhanced state capacities, emergent legitimacy of non-profit organisations, genuine demand for non-profit partners, public management modernisation and other factors have not only enriched the “control” mandate by introducing persuasive means, but have also driven the government to become a major empowering force for non-profit development. Advanced local governments in China take the lead in adopting mixed strategies of control and empowerment to forge a path of non-profit development in favour of non-profit organisations that are politically inactive and professionally capable. This paper shows the resilience of the regime by presenting examples of evolving governmental strategies of control and empowerment at the local and national levels. It argues that the Chinese government’s non-profit strategies are increasingly multidimensional and complicated, featuring changes in purpose, constraints, available means and government–non-profit relations.

控制与赋权：中国政府的非营利部门发展策略

摘要

持续的经济改革和社会发展正在促使中国政府不断调整其发展非营利部门的策略。中国不断改善的国家能力、非营利组织增长的合法性、对非营利伙伴的真实需求、以及公共管理现代化等因素，不仅通过引入诱导性的措施而丰富了“控制”的政策内涵，而且还推动政府成为非营利部门发展的关键赋权者。先进地区的地方政府率先采纳了将控制和赋权相混合的策略，以形塑政治稳健和专业领先的非营利部门。本文通过分析中央和地方政府在非营利部门发展上的突出案例，展示出当前社会管理体制的策略演变和制度弹性。文章认为，中国政府的非营利部门发展策略正趋向多维和复杂，反映出在目标、约束、可用手段和政府非营利组织关系上的变化。

Keywords:

• China
• NGOs
• charities
• non-profit development
• corporatism
• state–society relations
• civil society
• social service delivery

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant 14AZD047; the National Research Foundation of Korea under Grant NRF-2013-S1A3A2053959; and the Shuguang Scholar Program of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission under Grant 13SG08. The author thanks Thomas DuBois and Michael Barr for their insightful comments and generous editing work on the paper. Sincere gratitude is also owed to the anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. This paper follows the definition of corporatism by Schmitter (1974, pp. 93–94). In this paper nonprofit organisations are considered equivalent to social organisations due to the vast overlap between them. Official documents in China tend to use the term social organisations.

2. Wang and Hu (1993) proposed extractive capacity, steering capacity, legitimation capacity and coercive capacity.

3. Based on the author’s conference record, 15 January 2011.

4. Obviously governments can have other kinds of resources and means of control. This Table is illustrative and intends to capture the major categories of control as well as the major trends.

5. For example, for a given administrative jurisdiction such as a district in a city, there can only be one elderly association that claims to represent elderly people in that jurisdiction under the supervision of the district government’s Bureau of Civil Affairs.

6. The fastest growth occurred between 1998 and 2001, basically due to the registration of existing service organisations.

7. The World Bank (2004) estimated that there were more than a million unofficial and unregistered non-profits in China.

8. For example, 75.8 per cent of the revenues of public charities in 2005 in the US were from service fees or investment income.

9. China’s fiscal revenues increased from RMB 1,339.52 billion in 2000 to RMB 8,310.15 billion in 2010, with an annual growth rate of 20 per cent. In 2007, the growth was 32.4 per cent.

10. For example, the Fund of the Disabled is collected and managed by China’s Disabled Persons’ Federation and its local branches, and the Charity Fund of Welfare Lottery is collected and managed by the Civil Affairs system.