ALAIWAH!

I was in Beijing for the last couple of weeks for conferences and setting up CSR Asia’s new office there. One of the conferences that I attended was very interesting and caused me to think a lot about its central issue; the accountability of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in China.

The “International Conference on NGO Accountability” was hosted on 26-27 April by the NPO Research Centre of Renmin University and co-organized by the China Social Enterprise Foundation and Fuping Development Institute. It was sponsored by the Ford Foundation.

The introduction to the conference stated “while social organizations and NGOs are growing vigorously, self-discipline and accountability issues have caught attention too. In the past few years, abuses have emerged in the process of public interest service provision by foundations, public interest organizations and voluntary organizations. These involve illegal operations, financial abuse, and personal deals that have led to public doubts over the credibility of NGOs, and have reduced people’s enthusiasm to participate in charity or public interest causes. Now that the lack of credibility has seriously limited NGO development, it is about time to establish an NGO accountability system”. 

To a certain extent, I agree with this statement, but there are other issues that need to be discussed before talking about accountability of NGOs in China.

Due to the high sensitivity of the term “NGO” in China, similar events previously could only be organised on a small scale and with less publicity. As one of the first large-scale conferences discussing civil society publicly in China, I think that its focus could have been more on the linkage between the situation of NGOs in China and accountability, rather than “how to be accountable”. The pre-condition of being accountable (such as the survival of NGOs in China) was not discussed, which I thought was a pity.

My other disappointment was that most of the participants were from foundations, academia, government-operated NGOs (GONGOs), international NGOs, and well-known NGOs in China. If there were more participants from small grassroots NGOs discussing their difficulties in being accountable, the conference would have been much more meaningful in the sense of explaining what accountability means for them. This is an important aspect because the number of grassroot groups in China is much bigger than so-called social organisations.

After attending the conference, I think there are various questions that need to be considered before discussing the accountability of NGOs. The first question is “why should NGOs be accountable?” Is accountability of NGOs similar to the way it is understood in the language of sustainability, or it is just an obligation for those organisations because of ideology and social purpose? I agree that NGOs should be accountable, but in the sense that there is space for survival and promoting social good. Accountability comes after rights. But what if a grassroots group does not have the right to survive (i.e., they don’t have legitimate status)? Should they be accountable to their stakeholders? Another related question is about incentives for being accountable. This is a point that almost no participant mentioned during the conference.

The second question in my mind is “for whom should NGOs be responsible?” Is NGO accountability for regulators, funders, beneficiary group, society, or the organisation’s ideology of establishment? If we use a stakeholder model to look at this issue, regulators, funders, and beneficiary groups are the major groups that NGOs in China should be accountable to.

I believe the Central Government really does believe that civil society is an essential element for the sustainable development of the country in the sense of providing social goods for which the government may not have sufficient resources. President Hu Jintao made an interesting but important announcement at an event in 2004; he said that social organisations are able to contribute a lot in constructing a “well-off society”. Moreover, officials from the Ministry of Civil Affairs acknowledge that these organisations have “exerted a positive influence in boosting China’s economic growth and helping maintain social stability.”

The Chinese government often supports the development of civil society organizations to help address social problems, such as poverty and AIDS. However, just like other policies and laws, how this is implemented locally is a critical difference between success and failure. According to official Chinese statistics, the number of registered civil society organisations increased from 288,936 in 2004 to 381,000 in 2007, but academics have estimated the number of unregistered organizations to be as high as 2 to 3 million. Registering an NGO in China is a major challenge.

There are various requirements for registering a social organisation in China. The “Regulations on Registration and Administration of Social Organizations” issued in 1998 require that civil society organizations (social organisations, private non-enterprise units, etc) have a government-approved sponsor organization to register and obtain legal status (for which the government limits sponsor organizations to designated government and Party bureaus). Based on my personal experience, if the leader of an NGO does not have personal connections with any party or government-related body, it is extremely hard for them to register as a private non-enterprise unit. The only option in this situation is to register as a business entity, but this then raises issues such as taxation and financial deposits, which small grassroot groups may not be able to bear. Therefore, in most of the cases, grassroot NGOs just work on the ground without registration. If there is no legal right to being a legitimate organisation, is there any obligation to being accountable to regulators? If accountability is applied, what basis should grassroot groups follow? Should they follow laws and regulations for civil society, social organisations, or business entities? This is a question that we can think about.

I agree that NGOs should be accountable to their funders, but in a balanced way. Consider the following question: do funders have responsibility to help local NGOs be accountable? Civil society is a relatively new concept in China, and so too is accountability. In many cases, NGOs in China are established by only a small number of people. For example, unlike many labour NGOs in the West, most labour groups in China are formed by one to two injured workers instead of students, academics or lawyers. They have great passion to help labourers and specialised knowledge on labour related issues. However, they often lack capacity on issues such as organisational, financial and project management, communication, and so on. There is an increasing number of organisations such as the China Association for NGO Cooperation (CANGO) to provide NGO capacity building, but in relation to the large number of grassroots groups it is only a drop in the ocean.

In my opinion, funders must bear part of the responsibility for assisting local NGOs to build capacity for accountability. When funders provide money to local NGOs, do they think of procedure such as monitoring mechanisms to ensure the transparency and effectiveness of programmes? In the past ten years, we have seen many cases where big sums of money have been thrown into specific fields such as labour by foreign foundations. They support local NGOs to work on projects such as workers’ training programmes, capacity building of manufacturers, labour rights awareness raising programmes, etc. There are a lot of similar programmes running in China, and the financial contribution of these projects is huge. But how many organisations, including foundations, have asked workers what they really want? If we assume the needs of beneficiary groups without consulting them, is it accountable?

I raised a question during the conference on impact assessment. I do think that it is essential for funders, no matter whether they are foundations or business donors. Some foundations with good practices have comprehensive mechanisms, such as needs assessment, project management and monitoring to ensure the effectiveness of programmes. Impact assessment can be a meaningful tool to ensure accountability for both funders and beneficiary groups. But for many it is still a relatively new concept that needs to be developed.

Currently, NGO accountability, especially for grassroot groups, is internal; there is no incentive for them to be accountable to other parties. This is the result of a lack of legal status, resources, and capacity. I hope that there will be more discussion on NGO-related issues in China following this conference so that the policy framework for civil society can be adjusted to ensure the survival of NGOs. ■