 |  |  | | October 17, 2005. World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz listens as Chinese civil society leaders talk about their activities and concerns. |
| |
BEIJING, CHINA, October 17, 2005 -- Beyond large-scale government poverty reduction projects, change in China is also being initiated by ordinary people. Local NGOs, community organizations, charities, and village-level groups work quietly but determinedly to help the neediest communities. They aren’t known for noise or fanfare. Unlike many countries, China has not had a long tradition of civil society organizations (CSOs) which are not affiliated with the government. In the last 20 years, there has been little precedent for how these types of groups would operate in the country. Yet current estimates put the number of civil society organizations working in China at anywhere between 300,000 and 700,000, delivering services from legal aid to environmental protection and at the village-level, building playgrounds for children and sharing technologies in smallholder agriculture. In a meeting with the leaders of Chinese civil society organizations, World Bank President Wolfowitz repeated his message from this year’s World Bank-IMF annual meetings—that "civil society is a critical part of successful development" because CSOs act as "an important bridge between citizens and governments" and enable "people to get together for common purposes and, sometimes in ways that are more creative and focused on people’s needs than anything government bureaucracies can produce." In addition, "CSOs are an important way of holding governments accountable" because "bureaucrats sometimes forget that their responsibility is to the people they serve rather than the bosses." China’s burgeoning civil society faces many challenges, including an uneasy relationship with the bureaucracy. But one feisty women’s rights activist is not put off by this. Wu Qing, the director for Practical Skills Training Center for Rural Women has taken it upon herself to invite the government to see for itself the way her organization has made a difference. "I tell them, ‘Hey, come and see what we’re doing.’ I don’t wait for them to come to me. I go out there and press the government," she said. "You have to reach out and show them what you are doing. When they’ve seen it, they’ve always been surprised and impressed with what we are doing," she added. Increasingly, government bodies have started to collaborate with local CSOs. As another civil society leader Song Qinghua relates, "They [government officials] used to order people about—telling them what to do. Now they ask people more. And they’ve started to come to us to help them since we have been working for so long at the grassroots." Although Qinghua estimates that over one million Chinese are working in this sector, this is a still small community in a population of over a billion. Chinese CSOs are still in the early stages of development but as their capacity grows, they will be a powerful partner in the country’s development.
|
RSS