The Crackdown on Rights-advocacy NGOs in Xi’s China: Politicizing the Law and Legalizing the Repression

Neither Withdrawal nor Resistance: Adapting to Increased Repression in China

“…Life for Chinese NGOs has become more difficult in recent years. 18 In 2009 the authorities issued new foreign exchange regulations and intensified tax checks (Zhu and Jun, 2022). By 2013, the CCP’s “Document No.…”

“…19 Although the 2016 Charity Law eased registration requirements and opened a path to public fundraising, it raised questions about whether advocacy counted as charity work, warned that organizations should not “violate social morality,” and did little for grassroots NGOs faced with local authorities who would not recognize that they were a charity or used registration as a pretext to control or suppress them (Spires, 2020; see also Li, 2021). 20 A few months later, a law on managing overseas NGOs curtailed access to foreign funding for both international and domestic NGOs, and in so doing criminalized an important aspect of capacity building (Franceschini and Nesossi, 2018; Zhu and Jun, 2022). By the early 2020s, observers were comparing the two laws to “tools of repression” (Spires, 2020: 584) in other authoritarian states “that are emblematic of a wider trend of shrinking or closing space for NGO activities worldwide” (see a review of the relevant literature in Holbig and Lang, 2021: 3).…”

“…As with activist lawyers, the winter of 2015–2016 was a particularly trying time for Chinese NGO practitioners, with Guangdong authorities rounding up two dozen labor activists and charging five with gathering a crowd to disrupt public order or embezzlement (Franceschini and Nesossi, 2018). Since then, NGOs that operate near the advocacy end of the spectrum have experienced heightened pressure, and even those who push for change in less political areas such as disability rights, animal rights, and access to rural education have been arrested and detained for “picking quarrels,” illegal business operations, or subverting state power (Zhu and Jun, 2022). A number of NGOs that focused on constitutional protection or collective bargaining have been shut down.…”

“…A number of NGOs that focused on constitutional protection or collective bargaining have been shut down. Repression of NGOs in the Xi era has generally become more legalistic, systematic, and consistent: it is based less on threats and violence and more on combining a measure of intimidation with more nuanced instruments like legal pressure, administrative burdens, and funding restrictions (Franceschini and Nesossi, 2018; Zhu and Jun, 2022).…”

“…Hard and soft repression have “raised the costs of collective action” (Tilly, 1978: 100) for Chinese NGOs and NGO leaders. This has led some activists, in the labor field for example, to leave the sector or exile themselves, and has slowed recruitment efforts (Zhu and Jun, 2022). Other grassroots NGOs, however, have learned how to play the hand they have been dealt and to function in an increasingly repressive environment.…”