The Chinese State and Overseas NGOs: From Regulatory Ambiguity to the Overseas NGO Law

Abstract This article discusses the significance of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Administration of Activities of Overseas Nongovernmental Organizations in the Mainland of China (hereafter the ONGO Law) for the Chinese state’s regulation of overseas NGOs in the reform period. We show how the ONGO Law represents a dramatic shift in the regulation of ONGOs from a situation of regulatory ambiguity to one where ONGOs now come under a comprehensive law that seeks to regulate all their activities in mainland China. In doing so, the Law has created a dramatic shift in the legitimacy of ONGOs in China. Before the Law was enacted, ONGOs operated in a legal grey area where their work was opaque, received little recognition, and enjoyed limited legitimacy in the eyes of the government and public. The Law will change all of that, making the work of ONGOs more visible and transparent, and providing a formal channel for dealing with the government. At the same time, in putting the implementation and enforcement of the Law in the hands of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), and creating a legal framework that is restrictive rather than enabling, the Chinese state has sent a very different and contradictory message to ONGOs who see themselves being viewed more as objects of suspicion than as legitimate stakeholders in China’s development.