ABSTRACT
In May 2007, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) signed an agreement with the Chinese government to support a large-scale initiative to strengthen the rule of law and civil society participation in China. The initiative, Governance for Equitable Development, will contribute US$10.5 million over a four-year period to support reforms in the lawmaking and judicial process and in civil society participation. About half of the program’s US$10.5 million budget will be devoted to strengthening the legal framework for civil society organizations (CSOs) and improving communication and coordination between CSOs, the government and other social actors. In explaining the need for such an initiative, Khalid Malik, the UNDP’s Resident Representative in China, noted a shift in the Chinese government’s attitude toward CSOs: “Increasingly, the government recognizes the strengths of CSOs or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in reaching out to disadvantaged groups, especially in areas such as reducing poverty, addressing environmental challenges, and preventing and building awareness on HIV/AIDS” (UNDP-China website). The above initiative and Mr. Malik’s remarks are reminders of the substantial changes that have taken place in China’s political landscape over the past decade as the state increasingly acknowledges and welcomes the role of social organizations in addressing China’s social problems. This volume explores the rapidly changing relationship between the state and social organizations, with an emphasis on NGOs as they work, sometimes together and at other times at cross purposes, in addressing the country’s social welfare needs.1 It looks at the extent to which this relationship has changed during the reform period, the varied interactions that take place between state and social organizations in addressing China’s social welfare needs, and the implications this evolving relationship has for state-society relations and social welfare provision in China. Each contributor explores the evolution of state-society relationships in different areas of social service provision. An important distinction of the volume, and one that we explore later in the chapter, is the difference in the nature of social welfare provision in crisis and non-crisis situations.
