How do non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocate public policies? What impacts their advocacy strategies? Although scholars have addressed these questions in a democratic context, less is known about NGO advocacy under powerful authoritarian regimes. Using China as a case study, we develop an institutional explanation of NGOs’ policy advocacy patterns and explore the impacts of NGO autonomy. Using a unique dataset of registered NGOs in three Chinese provinces, we find that NGOs with more autonomy tend to conduct direct negotiations with the government more actively (more political advocacy). However, these more autonomous NGOs are likely to be more hesitant to mobilize society from the bottom up (less social advocacy). These findings enrich our knowledge of social actors’ roles in the policymaking process in China.

This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine two distinct processes of depoliticization by non-governmental organizations advocating rights for sex workers in China. Drawing upon Bourdieu and institutional theory, we argue that the consolidation of state repression of civil society under the Xi regime created an institutional field of power to which two NGOs responded differently. While one of them relied on government procurement as its major funding source, thus diluting the original mission, the other internalized state rhetoric as it sought political legitimacy through state certification, thus sanitizing its political mission. These distinct responses were then institutionalized into organizational practices, norms and culture. Rather than portraying NGOs in China as either capable political actors or pawns of an authoritarian state, this article illustrates how NGOs are subtly depoliticized by being inculcated in a state-produced, hierarchical social order in which compliance with state norms becomes synonymous with organizational competence.

This paper examines the impacts of state policies and NGO advocacy on female sex workers’ identity and how they manage stigma. Comparing three groups of sex workers – those born and working in mainland China, those born and working in Hong Kong, and those born in mainland China who later migrated to Hong Kong and entered the sex industry – this paper suggests that differences in state policies on prostitution and the different degrees of visibility of NGOs campaigning for sex workers’ rights are related to three strategies used by sex workers to construct a positive self-image to counteract the stigma they face: gendered obligation fulfilment, professional work and responsible citizenship. The paper illustrates that stigmatized-identity management involves complex relationships among individual interpretation, selection and mobilization of gender, work and citizenship scripts, which are contingent on structural features of the environment and may change during migration and relocation.

Since 2015 rights-based NGOs, lawyers, feminists and journalists have endured the most stringent crackdown since 1989. Simultaneously the Xi Li administration has pushed forward a series of laws, policies and regulatory changes to enable service-oriented NGOs to apply for government contracts to provide welfare services. This seemingly Janus-like policy of welfarist incorporation can be traced back to the Hu–Wen period, often described as a lacklustre period, despite significant efforts to tackle issues of poverty and inequality. This article argues for a more balanced appraisal of this period by exploring in depth the complex politics underpinning efforts to pluralize welfare provision by involving service-oriented NGOs. It explores three sets of politics influencing this policy process: inter-institutional politics; state/non-state actor politics; and domestic/external politics. Furthermore, it considers processes of gradual institutional change adopted by key political actors to achieve these ends.

This paper explores the emergence of a highly networked and capable non-governmental organization (NGO) community in disaster relief in China. It provides a review of the growth of non-governmental actors in the relief field since the 2000s and examines the most important platforms and networks in the field, focusing on their strategies of maintaining a broad-based partnership, developing their own capacity, and enhancing overall inter-organizational connectivity. With an in-depth look at a successful joint non-governmental relief operation in Lushan in 2013, the paper also explicates how NGOs can break the state monopoly over disaster information management, public donations and relief operations. This research finds that during crisis times, non-governmental actors carry out relief missions effectively in parallel with state agencies. The rise of non-governmental disaster relief sheds light on one of many trajectories of civil society development in China where social autonomy is earned by innovation, public support and improved capacity.

Early literature on China's civil society focused on organizations’ autonomy from the state. However, the precise ways in which these organizations are dependent on the state – and on individual officials – are less well understood. I argue that NGOs depend on different types of officials whose career incentives vary, with significant implications for relationships with non-state actors. One set of officials, innovators, seeks rapid promotion and uses civil society partnerships to gain higher-level attention. Innovators’ career goals lead them to provide support for NGOs; however, excessive reliance on innovators can force organizations to stray from their mission and can weaken their long-term position in a given locality. A second set of officials, implementers, seeks stability and security. Cognizant of the risks of partnering with non-state actors, these officials are sometimes forced by their superiors to engage with NGOs but see little personal benefit in doing so. These findings suggest the importance of China's multilevel political structure for state–society relations.

While much of the scholarly work on the development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in China focuses on their relations with the state, this paper adopts an anthropological approach to explore previously understudied peasant–NGO relations through the lens of a village-level post-earthquake recovery project in Sichuan. The findings highlight three main types of gaps between the NGO and local villagers: the gaps between the villagers’ immediate needs and the NGO's long-term development plan; the gaps between the villagers’ pragmatic concerns and the “building a new socialist countryside” campaign; and the gaps between the private and collective economies. In spite of the project's unsatisfactory outcome, the NGO did not consider the project a failure. We argue that these gaps were, to a great extent, attributable to the continuing development of the institutional values of NGOs, which guide the transition of Chinese NGOs from traditional charities to modern philanthropic organizations.

Chinese NGOs face strong coercive pressures and limitations yet have still emerged as notable actors in several issue areas. This article studies why and explains how a group of NGOs working on AIDS-related issues have been able to progress into relatively large and vibrant operations. It documents how NGO leaders have learned to navigate opportunities and risks, circumvent formal restrictions and broker pragmatic and largely informal arrangements that have enabled their organizations to grow and advance within China's authoritarian settings. The article contributes to the literature on Chinese NGO development and new institutionalism theory, and introduces a framework for studying NGOs based on their organizational forms and activities.

From a regulatory perspective, philanthropy in China has been officially modernized. Since the government established a legal framework in 2004 based on models from overseas, the number of private foundations in China has grown more than six-fold. Drawing on a nationally representative survey of 214 private foundations conducted in 2012, we present a landscape view of these new philanthropic institutions, discussing both who begins foundations and how their monies are used. We find that despite the rise of new private wealth in China and the adoption of the private foundation form, government priorities are structuring the field of Chinese philanthropy in key and consequential ways. We conclude with some considerations of the implications of these findings for the development of broader civil society.

Relations between the state and labour NGOs in China have been particularly fraught. In 2012, they took an interesting turn when some local governments made overtures to labour NGOs to cooperate in providing services to migrant workers. This article argues that this shift is part of a broader strategy of “welfarist incorporation” to redraw the social contract between state and labour. There are two key elements to this strategy: first, a relaxation of the registration regulations for social organizations, and second, governmental purchasing of services from social organizations. These overtures have both a state and market logic to maintain social control and stabilize relations of production.

This article uses an institutional approach to examine Chinese NGOs as an emerging organizational field. In mature organizational fields, the organizations are powerfully constrained to follow the institutional practices of that field. However, in an emerging organizational field, the institutionalized constraints are not yet established, so actors can try out a wide range of practices. Some of these practices will become the new “rules of the game” of the organizational field when it is established. The content of these rules will shape the relationship between NGOs and the Chinese party-state for future generations. We find that a Chinese NGO's resource strategy is shaped by two interacting factors. First, NGOs operate in an evolving ecology of opportunity. Second, the social entrepreneurs who lead Chinese NGOs perceive that ecology of opportunity through the lens of their personal experiences, beliefs and expertise. As a result, the initial strategies of the organizations in our sample were strongly influenced by the institutional experience of their founders. Former state bureaucrats built NGOs around alliances with party-state agencies. In contrast, NGO founders that had no party-state experience usually avoided the state and sought areas away from government control/attention, such as the internet or private business.

This article provides background information on public and non-profit sector innovation in the past thirty years in the West as well as in China. We summarized and commented on the articles in this issue, which document cases of public and non-profit sector innovation in China and theorize their significance. These cases tell vivid stones about how Chinese organizations innovate and also point out the importance of the role of government in initiating or constraining these innovations. We find, through the review of these studies, that China's public and non-profit sector organization innovation experiences carry some important messages about the unique features of China's public and non-profit organizations that should not be ignored while studying changes in China.