Control, Promote or Collaborate? Evolution of Government Tools for the Nonprofit Sector in China

The nonprofit sector in China has made great growth since the start of reform and opening-up in 1978. By the end of 2014, there were 606,000 registered nonprofit organizations in China which hire 6.82 million employees and... [ view full abstract ]

The nonprofit sector in China has made great growth since the start of reform and opening-up in 1978. By the end of 2014, there were 606,000 registered nonprofit organizations in China which hire 6.82 million employees and contribute 0.8 percent to the total employment (Ministry of Civil Affairs of China, 2014). The dominant analytical frameworks of Chinese nonprofit sector focus on the state-society relations of which the two leading paradigms are civil society and corporatism (Lu, 2009:11). Though the Chinese government has struggled to decide how much restraint to impose and how much freedom to allow the nonprofit sector, the growing cooperation between the nonprofit sector and the government has been evolving during the past decades (Ma, 2006:48, 208). But what specific methods has the Chinese government used to control or promote the nonprofit sector? By what ways has the government built collaboration with the nonprofit sector in China's context? Salamon (2002) develops the new governance paradigm from the perspective of government tools to help us look inside the black-box of the government-nonprofit relations. Following this analytical paradigm, this article identifies three types of tools that the Chinese government has developed to govern the nonprofit sector: political/administrative tools, legal tools and economic tools. To an extent, they are different from those used in developed societies. Then this article describes and explains the changes and differences of the government tools used toward the three types of nonprofit organizations (i.e. associations, private non-enterprise units and foundations) since 1978. Final, this article argues that government tools are changing from political/administrative tools to legal tools and economic tools while the policy orientation of Chinese government is transferring from strict control to control plus promotion and collaboration.

References:
Lu, Yiyi. 2009, Nongovernmental Organizations in China, Routledge
Ma, Qiusha. 2006. Non-Governmental Organizations in Contemporary China: paving the way to civil society? New York: Routledge.
Ministry of Civil Affairs of China. 2014 China's Social Service Development Statistical Bulletin.
Salamon, L.M. 2002. The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance. New York: Oxford University Press