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Even Further Beyond Civil Society: The Rise of Internet-Oriented Chinese NGOs (Response to Kin-Man Chan and Li Zhang)

The relatively recent emergence of Chinese NGOs has drawn the attention of many scholars for good reason. For those interested in state–society relations, Chinese NGOs are at the nexus of a far-reaching transformation in political life. For those interested in organizations and social movements, they provide an opportunity to study social change in the process of unfolding. For those China scholars interested in the environment, education, poverty, and inequality and a host of other topics, they lie at or near the centre of action. From the point of view of research, Chinese NGOs seem to be a potential gold mine. Yet the current obstacle we scholars face in cashing in on this potential is the lack of good, comparative data on these organizations. Because so many Chinese NGOs choose to ‘fly under the radar’ of the state (to quote one of my interviewees), either registering as businesses rather than NGOs or not registering all, there is no reliable database of these organizations. As a result, those of us who study Chinese NGOs have to depend on our own samples, often cobbled together from personal introductions and by word-of-mouth. ‘Beyond civil society’ (Hsu, 2010) was based on data analysis from five NGOs. With help from my research assistant, Yuzhou Jiang, my sample has increased to about 22, although several organizations have failed since we began studying them. Like everyone else who studies Chinese NGOs, I run the risk of being like one of the five blind men with the elephant, making vast pronouncements about the whole when I only have access to a small part. The only way we will get an accurate picture of the beast is to pool our knowledge. I thank Kin-Man Chan and Li Zhang for sharing their information, along with their constructive critiques, in their response essays to my article. And I must confess to Journal of Civil Society Vol. 7, No. 1, 123–127, April 2011