He’s a Chinese government official. She’s a British lawyer. Together they publish a magazine that hopes to lift a veil of illegitimacy clouding a local NGO scene that’s thriving in a gray area of Chinese society.

Edited by Wang Liwei, vice-mayor of Guan County in Shandong Province, and Clare Pearson, a lawyer at the Beijing offices of DLA Piper, The Charitarian wants to encourage the local non-profit sector by informing NGOs about how to operate within government goal and guidelines.

Though there’s a flood of activity in the local NGO scene, reliable information is scarce. Sources of reliable information are even less assured. A crew of Chinese and foreign volunteers under chief-editor Wang is working hard on the March issue.

There are thorny issues to be explained: A recently proposed tax on investments by non-profit organizations has pitted the national Tax Bureau against the Ministry of Civil Affairs, which worries that such a tax will kill off many NGOs which rely on earnings from those investments to run their operations in China.

Different backgrounds, same goal

Wang describes the operation as “Chinese food with a British cook and an African market.” The British cook is clearly Pearson, a corporate lawyer and corporate social responsibility (CSR) expert who put up much of the cost of the first issue of the magazine (helped by adverts bought by companies, including her law firm and Boeing).

In charge of CSR – the voguish but often questioned science of corporations contributing to local communities – across Asia at DLA Piper, Pearson met Wang at a conference. Well connected, she helped put together a 3-week tour of the UK to explore how Western governments regulate and cooperate with NGOs.

Pearson recalls being introduced to Wang by a mutual media friend in Starbucks.

“We immediately hit it off and realized we represented two sides of the same charity coin, the Eastern and Western approach. He interviewed me for the magazine and it turned out to double up as an interview as English language editor. The rest is history.”

The African link is Vimbayi Kajese, the Zimbabwean-born editor who uses time off her anchoring job on CCTV9 news to write for the magazine. Author of a searching article on sexual abuse of women in the workplace, Kajese said the magazine finds stories “as much in what’s not reported as what’s reported [in the national media]. An example is fears of quakes in coal-rich central China, which went unreported due to coal companies’ fears of walk-outs by frightened miners. The human element of the story, workers’ welfare, will be reported in the upcoming Charitarian.”

The magazine is a bridge between government and the non-profit sector: Stories touch on sensitive issues but are written in a constructive manner, explained Wang.

Introducing the magazine at a recent Beijing launch party he explained the magazine’s purpose in three acronyms: CSR, GSR and PSR. “Corporate social responsibility, government social responsibility and public social responsibility.”

Sure enough in the latest issue of the magazine peppered between pieces on local NGOs there’s articles for a corporate readership about CSR budgets getting cut in the recent recession. Some interviews with local CSR heads of multinational companies read like heavily censored corporate copy.

Some of the more interesting copy centers on a trend of CSR among local companies. A relaxed Jin Siyu, head of publicity at the State Owned Assets and Administration Commission talks frankly on why some State-owned firms are giving more money than others to needy causes.

More controversially, there’s two pages on successful water bottler Nongfu Springs suing two government-affiliated entities the Philantrophy Times and the China Association of Social Workers for allegedly defaming the company by raising skepticism on their pledge to donate 0.01 yuan to charity from every bottle sold between January and July 2006. The case has prompted Chinese lawmakers to reshape laws in favor of charities.

Drawing the line

Upbeat and smiling, Wang’s energy is infectiously articulated in language that’s more that of an evangelical preacher than that of a hard-faced bureaucrat. He talks of wanting to influence change, “to bring hope and love to people.”

Yet Wang is a government insider with a duty to implement the government line. His role as a vice-mayor – he divides his time between Beijing and Shandong – means Wang has an insider’s knowledge of what goes in terms of issues open for coverage. Being a government official means he knows “where to draw the line.”

Wang also wants the magazine to increase trust between government, NGOs and the community to ease disaster relief work and charity work. “We want to bring trust and security,” he said.

Yet Wang won’t take sides in intra-government affairs. As the manager of a non-profit firm and a government official Wang finds himself uniquely in the middle, and he’s not taking sides. On the spat between tax officials and Ministry of Civil Affairs, he said: “Time will tell us what is the best solution to this issue.”

As a government official Wang is also au fait with the commercial realities of media in China. Since 75 percent of local publications are losing money, the government wants to reform ownership. “The government wants to own the media but it doesn’t want to operate it.” 

Changing attitudes to have nots

The magazine will take advantage of a recent media preoccupation with charity work and NGOs. Wang recalls last year sharing a TV talk show couch with one of China’s wealthiest men, Chen Guang, who on live TV donated 40 million yuan ($5.8 million) to help underprivileged locals have a better Chinese New Year. The outsized gesture was criticized as the attention-seeking ploy of a man with more money than sense. “But I thought ‘why not?’,” recalls Wang.

Chen’s gesture, said The Charitarian editor, was useful if it encouraged others to similarly share their wealth. The episode convinced Wang that media and charity work depended were interdependent.

“Media is now really interested. And charities really need media [to get their message out].”

The son of a working-class Shenyang family – “we were poor,” he recalls, Wang nonetheless feels he has reached professional as well as personal satisfaction out of caring for others. He recalls a reunion with his university classmates, 15 years after their graduation. With the wealth and responsibility of executive roles some of his classmates had no hair, some had big bellies, were overweight and overstressed.

“Of them all I was the happiest. I make a living in a job I like.”

Competition

There’s plenty of publications, online and off, covering charity in China. They range from the dry, corporate-focused CSRChina to Global Charity, a bilingual monthly published under the umbrella of the China Soong Ching Ling Foundation, a government-affiliated organization.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs meanwhile authorizes its own monthly journal the Philanthropy Times, detailing what’s happening for a mostly political readership.

An earlier publication, China Development Brief, was pithy and well edited but closed several years ago when its reports proved too revealing for certain provincial governments. The Chinese and foreign sides in this partnership were well represented among the healthy turnout at a launch party in a stately Thai club in the city’s business district.

Judging by the plentiful presence at the magazine’s launch party NGOs are keen on the magazine. “Right now it’s only the first issue and there’s a lot of improvements that would make it more reader-friendly, like using less text. But these issues need covering and there’s no one publication that does that as well as this one has managed,” said an NGO spokesperson present.

Pointedly, she didn’t want to be quoted as her NGO remains on shaky legal ground in China.

The Charitarian clearly has a way to go but the thickness of the first tome and the turn-out for its launch suggests there’s a ready readership. The future editorial direction may still be hazy, and funding is less than secured. But Wang is clear about the end vision: “that there will be no Charitarian because there will be no more poverty… I hope that day will come soon.”

gaofumao@globaltimes.com.cn

(Original Title: Charity Cases, published by Global Times, Februrary 1, 2010: http://www.globaltimes.cn/www/english/metro-beijing/community/events/2010-02/502674.html)

On May 4, 2009, Hauser Center invited Zhang Jiang, Professor and Dean, News & Communication Department, China Youth University for Political Sciences to give a talk on Media as a Venue for Civil Participation in China. Jia Xijin, Associate Professor of Tsinghua University of China and Visiting Fellow at Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations was invited to make comments.

Professor Zhan used five examples of how media created public events that eventually led to policy change to make the case of media’s role as the venue for public participation in China.

Below are notes of the talk and discussions:

Under the current policy environment in China, when citizens cannot easily register nonprofit organizations to convene people with the same interest to pursue the same agenda, today’s civil society in China do not typically feature nonprofit entities, but rather, “media + public intellectuals”.  Since 1990s, there are a number of incidents highlighting media’s role as creating public event, and setting public agenda.   Media has been playing an important role in today’s China in initiating, heating up, or leading civic movement in China.

Media has become an important venue for civil participation in policy change or public agenda setting.  The media driven civil participation follows the following formats:
1.    Court case driven
2.    Issue or agenda driven

Zhan then gave a number of examples under each category.

Court case driven

First the Sun Zhigang incident in 2003. Sun Zhigang, a college gradate was arrested as a vagrant for not carrying ID and was later beaten to death under police custody.  China Daily’s reported: “Sun’s case has triggered a major debate on the validity of the holding system and the two-decade-old Measures for Internment and Deportation of Urban Vagrants and Beggars.  The holding measures, an administrative regulation issued by the State Council in 1982, are currently the legal basis for internment and deportation by public security authorities.  The measures require urban vagrants and beggars to be housed and deported to their hometown and urge the local governments to make proper arrangements for them.  Stirred up by Sun’s case, three candidates for doctorate of laws have written to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s top legislature, appealing for an investigation of Sun’s case and a review of the constitutionality of the measures.  The Law on Legislative Procedure stipulates that any provisions concerning deprivation of the human rights and democratic rights of citizens must be made in the form of laws by the NPC or its standing committee. In other words, the State Council does not have the power to deprive such rights with administrative regulations. Later, five prominent legal scholars backed up the three students by calling for the launch of special investigation into the case and the status quo of the holding system itself and its enforcement. ”

This incident has demonstrated how “public intellectuals” and media worked together to mobilize public participation that led to public change.

Media typically adopts the two methods in participating public affairs: investigative reporting, and commentary.  Since investigative reporting tends to bring risks to the reporter and the newspaper, as the aftermath of the Sun Zhigang incident has shown (It is said that the Police revenged the newspaper and two top leaders were brought down as a result.), newspapers began to use more of commentary as the channel to participate in and lead civil participation.   News commentary enjoys more freedom, and less susceptible to censorship as local authorities tend not to care about the commentary on incidents happening outside of their jurisdictions.  Internet forums and blogs, as well as media commentary columns played an important role in stirring up public awareness, and creating public voice and public pressure for policy changes.

A second incident is the PX chemical facility construction plan in Xiamen. When citizens used internet and cell phone messages to coordinate a mass public “walk” that eventually aborted the construction plan in Xiamen.

Issue Driven

The example is promulgation of Government Information Transparency Regulation (the Regulation).

China’s national Regulation was promulgated in April 2007. Before that since 2003, some regions such as Shanghai and Guangzhou City began to pilot it.

On June 2, 2006, China Youth Daily covered the story of an journalist suing the Shanghai Municipal Government on violating the Shanghai Regulation on Government Information Transparency. That report initiated a wave of discussions in the media on the people’s rights to know, that the government’s obligation to share information. Eventually, the national government promulgated a nation wide regulation on government information transparency.

Comments by Jia Xijin

While in today’s China, there are a lot of restrictions on civil participation through association, media initiated and magnified  participation by diverse individual citizens plays a major role in current society in China. I would like to refer  this force as NGP (nongovernmental persons).

Such bottom up government/policy transformation has the following features: transitional, hot-topic focused, explosive, easy to shift a way, temporary, and mainly about issue on public-sphere (individual interests and private rights are missing on this arena).   How to form a rational, sustainable and strategic civil participation campaign that helps shape a healthy political and governmental environment is the key.

Discussions and Commentaries from the Audience
1.    Though there is no empirical study that has established that media coverage will eventually lead to policy change or government behavior change, coverage has a long-term public awareness impact.
2.    The essence of media’s role in the above examples, are media’s role in “social mobilization”.   When organizations are missing, media is playing such a role.
3.    Small victory in civil participation means a lot: though media these days are not so much about campaigning for democracy or political reform, progresses like these examples helps the citizen gain more freedom and civil rights. This seems to be a more practical path.