Mark Sidel, China and its Regulation of Overseas NGOs, Foundations, and Think Tanks: Four Years of Implementation of a New Securitised Policy and Legal Framework, 26 Third Sec. Rev. 129 (2020).
Abstract
Four years ago, China adopted a sharply focused, comprehensive and restrictive regulatory framework for the control and monitoring of overseas nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), foundations, think tanks, trade associations and other nonprofits working in China, including those from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This report from the field discusses the origins and development of this new framework, which is centered in the Overseas NGO Law (2016, eff. 2017); analyses China’s goals for this framework and methods of achieving the control it seeks; reviews the first four years of implementation of these new restrictions on overseas NGOs, foundations and other entities; and discusses some of the few formal enforcement actions taken by Chinese security forces to implement the Overseas NGO Law framework – and how much enforcement falls outside of formal sanctions.
The result of this multi-year process is comprehensive control and monitoring of the activities and grant-making by overseas NGOs, foundations and other nonprofits in China, including now increasingly in Hong Kong as well. Despite earlier hopes in China and beyond that the constraints of this new framework might be slightly loosened once China’s political and security apparatus perceived full control over the overseas nonprofit sector working in China (and now Hong Kong), there is no current sign of any relaxation in these measures, even in minor forms.
