‘Volunteer spirit‘ and a big helping of greens

‘Volunteer spirit‘ and a big helping of greens

A year ago our special report, 250 Chinese NGOs: Civil Society in the Making, predicted rapid growth of autonomous groups that broadly fit Western ideas of what counts as an ‘NGO‘, writes Nick Young.

Let us not pass up this opportunity to say ‘We told you so!‘

The continued proliferation of environmental organisations is alone enough to secure the point — and they are well represented among the 41 groups that we profile in the supplement to that report, included in the Autumn 2002 editon of China Development Brief.

Why are so many greens sprouting up? Why don‘t activists simply team up with existing organisations? Are there too many prospective leaders? Is there a danger that China‘s green movement will degenerate into personal rivalries and turf wars?

There may be some risks here, but there is also considerable value in the existing, and growing, diversity. (Some, indeed, would argue that diversity is one of the main points of ‘civil society‘; and others that competition for members, resources and public attention is inherently healthy.) China is itself so large and diverse that it would be extremely hard for any national organisation to do justice to the whole range of legitimate and important environmental concerns voiced by the existing variety of groups.

Many of China‘s green NGOs are addressing specifically local, or specifically sectoral issues. For an example of the former, there is the Yueyang Wetland Protection Association and Xinjiang Environment Fund; for an example of the latter, there are the the various bird protection groups, the Hanhaisha desert watchers and the Pesticides Eco-Alternatives Centre. This specialisation is sensible, and in itself a sign of the sector‘s growing maturity.

Another heartening aspect of ‘second generation‘ NGO growth is the extent to which it depends on networking and enjoys the explicit encouragement and support of groups that are already established. Far from protecting their patch, the first generation organisations - notably, Friends of Nature and Global Village, (themselves often perceived as rivals) - are willing to encourage and cooperate with new groups, providing advice, support and even small amounts of money. Moreover, some of the newcomers, such as the Xinjiang Environment Fund, are setting out to stimulate and foster, rather than dominate and preside over, local initiatives.

This is healthy. Beyond shadow of doubt, the greatest resources that Chinese organisations have are their own initiative, knowledge, skills and people, and these clearly go furthest when shared.

Greens are not alone in sharing. First generation organisations such as the Maple Women‘s Centre and several groups providing services for children with disabilities have also played a supporting role in the start-up of new players profiled here. (Examples include the Oasis hotline, counselling women in Hebei, and the Xi‘an Mentally Handicapped Children‘s Rehabilitation Centre).

The prospects for an ongoing ‘multiplier effect‘ are therefore quite good. Given this, international donors keen to support NGO development in China might do well to think about intermediary grant making programmes, where responsibility for identifying worthwhile initiatives and capacity building needs is entrusted to local players with first hand knowledge and experience of their sectors. This has been the apparently successful approach of the US based Global Greengrants Fund, which has assembled an independent Chinese board to make funding decisions, and which has supported several of the green organisations included here. The Fund is now planning to scale up its China operations. WWF China is managing a similar fund, with money supplied by the Novo Group. There is considerable scope for similar programmes targeted to NGOs in non-environmental sectors.

LOOKING BACK OVER THE GROUPS PROFILED HERE, the word that strikes me most, and most frequently, is ‘volunteer‘. Three of the organisations included have an explicit, generic interest in volunteering (The Research Centre for Volunteering and Welfare, Child Care Volunteers Association, and China Social Work Association). Many others see the mobilisation of volunteers as an important aim of their work, and nearly all depend, to varying extents, on volunteer effort. Much of this volunteering is essentially charitable in nature, described and prescribed by the Chinese groups in terms of ‘loving hearts‘, ‘warm heartedness‘ etc.

This may seem not seem a particularly exciting manifestation of ‘civil society‘ to those who associate the term primarily with intermediary or advocacy organisations, much less to those who think firstly of the citizens‘ movements that shook Eastern Europe in the 1980s. But it may be a significant indicator of forms of ‘social capital‘ and reciprocity that help bind societies together.

Elsewhere, scholars are beginning to take these notions seriously. For example, American political scientist, Robert Putnam, recently documented a 35 year decline in such social capital and ‘civility‘ in the United States. (Bowling Alone Simon and Schuster 2000). Assembling a wide array of quantitative data, he claims that Americans today trust each other less, socialise less, participate less in politics, religion, sport and community affairs, volunteer less, and give far less (as a proportion of their incomes) to charity than Americans did in 1965, which he identifies as the high point of civil America. What are Americans now doing instead? Putnam‘s short answer is: watching TV.

Chinese people are fond of TV too; but the scraps of anecdotal evidence collected in the following pages suggest that some of them are also making time to care for their neighbours. (So, of course, do many Americans; according to Putnam, the stocks of social capital may be depleted but they are by no means exhausted).

In China‘s case, there is no reliable data on which to base a historical comparison. But it is clear enough that until recently both ‘volunteering‘ and ‘charity‘ were the exclusive domain of the state: social ‘participation‘ was synonymous with Leninist ‘mass mobilisation‘. The structures of mass mobilisation are still in place, but at least some volunteering and charity are moving into the realm of private good will. And that is no small change.

Whether they are making ‘exchange visits‘ to ethnic minority communities, teaching in rural schools, picking up litter from urban rivers or playing chess with people in retirement homes, very few of the volunteers would consider themselves either agents of social change or brokers of social capital. But their ‘volunteerism‘ may be significant barometers of both.