The Chinese Communist Party(CCP) and the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949. The authoritarian government abolished all civil societies (or organisations(COs)). There has been significant progress from the Mao dictatorship. The economic, and political reforms and the opening up played a crucial role in the growth of civil societies in the last 20 years. Despite this, there have been extensive debates as of the true extent of the contentious existence of COs in China. Political scientist Yu Keping (2000) states that civil society groups are defined as:
“a diverse fabric of organisations created by people to help define and advance their own interests, it gives substance to politics and also checks the power of the state and the tyranny of the majority. Furthermore, they are the “intermediate /Third” sector between the state and enterprises e.g. interest groups, government organised non-governmental organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)”.
All civil societies are supposed to be non-partisan, non-profit, self-governing and have voluntary participation (Wacker, 2012, Keping 2000). Consequently, Foster (2001) a modern conflict theorist, states that the CCP will always be reluctant to disseminate control to organisations in China. Arguably, modern NGOs have increasingly becoming more tenacious and ‘negotiating the state’(Saich,2000) as they find their place in the system. This essay will evaluate the three main causes of growth; firstly, the lack of political transparency and arbitrariness of the law, then economic reform and finally social protest and the use of telecommunication. Furthermore, to fully answer the question, this essay will go on to argue that these civil societies are still restricted to large extent but are leading towards more independence.
Firstly, one of the most important causes of the growth of civil society has been the the lack of political transparency and arbitrariness of the law. The post-1978 political reforms abandoned many communist ideologies, and led to the use of rational-legitimacy. This attempt to have a stronger more stable legal system, led to more cases filed against the government. Therefore, there was a growth in NGOs like Zhicheng (Tai, 2015) that helped people get more access to the legal system. However, due to the arbitrary nature of the law across local governments, the strength of law failed to win the people’s support. Furthermore, those NGOs provided assistance to poorer people who felt that no justice would be served with high levels of corruption and favouritism to political elite. Eventually, the use of performance legitimacy had solidified the party support instead. As a result, he government had to give local governments more power. Furthermore, as the local governments were unable to fulfil their functions, they strategically incorporate and created societies to do its work or used corporatism to prevent the NGOs from acting against the authority. Foster (2001) highlights that with these links the groups would need to sacrifice autonomy, and accept constraints and monitoring to achieve its objectives. This allows for a high level of political corruption which allows local leaders to take advantage of them. Nonetheless the number of organisations grew, as many preferred to stay unregistered ‘underground’. In 2016, studies showed that around 3 million unregistered (Beijing Review,2016) grassroots organisations, thus illustrating the enormous empirical growth compared to the 1980’s where there were non-existent.
Arguably, as the groups are still restricted to a large extent, the state-dominance theory says that by making many groups illicit, the government is able to control society better and reduce the threat to the party legitimacy. Furthermore, the legal red tape is becoming more difficult to combat, like the the new Charity and NGO laws that are operational from January 1st 2017 (Sources, 2016) that are affecting over 7,000 organisations (Wong, 2016). For example, the Ministry of Civil Affairs states that all civil organisations have to have 3 or more party member in it. This is making it significantly more difficult for local and foreign civil societies to operate without major interference. Additionally, their main objectives are to be the distinctive voices of their members and be vehicles of change. Institutional theorists affirm that it is customary for civil societies to be controlled to some degree by their government (Balzer, 2005, p.237). However, with the 1998 law on civil organisations and with the level of scrutiny and patrolling from the new laws, that label foreign NGO’s like Amnesty International possible threats to national security. This curtails their work. these groups have improved their protest styles by being more flexible and elaborate, and by piggybacking on larger registered groups in quasi-legal state (Tanner, 2004). Although, politically these groups are quite restricted in growth, but as seen above strides are being made.
Telecommunications, especially the internet has a played a strong role in the growth of Cos and increased the scope and breadth of social protest methods. For example, with the use of Wechat, this is a platform that hard to censor (Tu, 2016) and has grown the grassroout media and informal civil groups. Furthermore, Weibo is another social platform where people can connect with international groups to get funding, support and training. It is illegal to have similar organisations on the same but these social platforms remove some of those barriers. In China, there are currently around 668 million internet users who have access to these platforms. However, the government have recently created new cybersecurity laws to minimise the outside interaction. Additionally, , there has been a huge growth of environmental NGO’s in the past decade, but in the need to sustain performance legitimacy the environment has suffered severely therefore the government has passed a law saying that civil society groups can sue companies that pollute(Boyd, 2016). and this is one area that the government supported those civil societies, and they have flourished. Some provinces had invested heavily in steel, and cement, exploiting these regions and becoming China’s new nouveau rich. As they became richer, they drive the property prices higher in places like Beijing and Hangzou,(Tanner, 2004) therefore the income disparity became increasingly higher. As a result of the disparity increasing, and the hukou (which was a birth registry that gave benefits) if you moved you not collect your social benefits. This increased NGO’s like Project Hope. The income regional disparity between the rural and urban areas increased migration for jobs and reduced state control.
The Great Chinese Firewall is used to keep control on the internet usage of those outside and those within. Although, there are some NGOs that are thriving within the social sphere, realistically the state still hold a significant amount of power, and uses it as a very strong repressive apparatus . For example, if “if a rumor is retweeted 500times on Weibo, the creator is liable for 3 years in prison” (Tu, 2016). This shows that even with the growth of civil societies, it has been relatively minimal relating to social protest and it seems to continued to be heavily restricted.
It is debatable that the economic reforms designed by Deng Xiaoping, and the pressure of maintaining the results of the performance legitimacy are the most important causes of growth. Performance legitimacy maintains that when you accept the party base line and in return they will make you rich. Its argued that this means the party legitimacy is measured in economic success. In 1978, the peasant communes were abolished. This meant that peasants were significantly freer from the communistic confines. Although, the government forbid farmers from forming organisations (Pickson, p.155). This created space for a platform for the growth of COs to advocate for education, worker’s rights and other social benefits. This created a mini vacuum of state control, as the growing economic inequalities were not contained. Furthermore, a comparative development study shown in Tanner’s article declared that the inequality is “zone of genuine danger” of instability(Tanner, 2004). Consequently, without the danwei(work units that provided benefits, healthcare and housing) it showed that the government couldn’t provide public benefits any longer. This contributed to the growth of the societies like Global Village Beijing (Hsu, Jiang 2015) especially for the disabled and elderly. Additionally, the number of state owned enterprises(SoEs) deceased considerably during the period of privatisation. NGO’s like the China Labour Bulletin(Tanner,2004) highlighted that millions of victims of corruption that caused unemployment.
These civil society groups has grown rapidly to fill the void for the lack of state capacity, and the government is coming to see that these organisations, assist rather than hinter society. It can be argued that most civil societies have only grown with the the permission of the state, as the state has allowed them to intervene and those NGOs need to demonstrate their capacity to ‘deliver public goods’(CBD, 2006) before they are given permission. The state delegation is terms of co-option and corporatism, may seem to make the NGOs the transmission belts for CCP policies, but may groups in this field may need the links to government in terms of assistance of the state to attain its goals. For example, over 200 million people were lifted out of poverty over the last 15 years(Bingzhong, 2012). From the economic perspective, NGOs are allowed more growth as they share a role in public benefit functions and might become more independent over time.
In conclusion, the three main causes for the growth of civil societies are evaluated above, however it was argued that economic policies were the most important cause, as they are most important to the CCP and in return received more freedom. The Chinese government may restrict civil society firmly with the strict laws and regulations, however it cannot sustain performance legitimacy indefinitely. Furthermore, to keep control, it will have to rely on NGOs to support the society and allow for more political transparency to for the people.