CPC do not meddle in daily operations
The ongoing campaign to establish Communist Party of China (CPC) branches at non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across China is part of the authorities' efforts to root out shady or illegal entities, experts said.
This will encourage genuine groups to play a bigger role in providing public services that used to be partly shouldered by the government.
NGOs that have started to form Party organizations according to government policies said their daily operations are as smooth as before, and that foreign media claims about the Party's "attempt to strengthen its control over the NGOs" are not true.
The General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council General Office on Monday jointly issued a guideline to "reform social organizations' management systems and boost their healthy and orderly development."
Besides vowing to provide preferential financial and taxation incentives to encourage NGOs to take over many government agencies' previous functions in providing public services, the guidelines also emphasized the Party's role in ensuring the political correctness of NGO operations.
"Party organizations in NGOs should unite the masses and ensure the NGOs' correct political directions," the guidelines read, adding that Party organizations should raise questions over important NGO decisions, large expenditures and activities involving overseas organizations.
The guideline is a more complete reform plan after the authorities issued a trial guideline over Party construction work at NGOs in September last year. This said if an NGO has three or more Party members, it should establish branch Party organizations. NGOs with fewer Party members can establish joint Party organizations across similar NGOs, the document said.
This corresponds with the country's ongoing campaign to revitalize the Party's role in State-owned and private companies in order to unite more people around the Party and reduce corruption and malpractice.
In a report on Monday, Radio Free Asia accused the NGO management reform of twisting the roles of NGOs.
However, Zheng Gongcheng, a professor on social welfare studies at the Renmin University of China said the reform is mainly aimed at dealing with problems of shady NGOs.
"Some NGOs are nothing but knockoff organizations that make money or other gains under the guise of a public-interest entity," Zheng told the Global Times on Thursday.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs on August 16 published a list of the 11th batch of "knockoff NGOs," adding to the more than 1,000 self-claimed public-interest organizations it has exposed before.
These groups, which have flashy names, such as the "Chinese Healthy Food Association" and the "Global Federation of Chinese Entrepreneurs," were often forged to make money from their target members, previous reports said.
Zheng said the latest reform guideline also emphasized the separation of government and NGO affairs, because in the past some NGOs, especially industrial or trade associations that had official connections, had become tools to collect money from member companies.
By the end of the first quarter of 2016, there were 664,800 NGOs registered with civil affairs authorities nationwide, the People's Daily reported Tuesday.
Party presence
Narada Foundation, a Beijing-based charity foundation, established a Party branch in May.
The NGO has 11 employees in its Beijing office, three of whom are Party members.
"As required by authorities, we established a Party branch," Huang Qingwei, a deputy project director who heads the branch, told the Global Times on Thursday.
He said the authorities did not ask the Party branch to interfere with the foundations' daily operations.
"The basic role of the Party branch here is to make sure our foundation's political directions are right, and we work to improve the relations between non-Party members and the Party," Huang said.
Smaller NGOs, such as Beijing-based Vibrant Community that focuses on children's rights, said they have not heard about instructions from authorities that require them to establish Party organizations.
Shen You, director general of Chengdu Birdwatching Society, a 12-year-old NGO based in southwestern China's Chengdu, Sichuan Province, said he has not received any instructions about establishing a Party branch, probably because the NGO is mainly composed of volunteers, and only has one permanent staffer. The society claims more than 300 members.
He said he has no problem if his organization is required to have a Party branch, as it can actually help the birdwatching society get in touch with authorities and avoid political mistakes.
"The members of our society are so diversified, including foreigners or those from Hong Kong and Taiwan, and I'm not sure if any of them have different purposes by joining us," he said. "We used to get in trouble with the authorities after some of our members got close to forbidden government facilities in the name of birdwatching."
