With a growing distrust for foreign nonprofit groups, China has begun to deport foreigners associated with these groups. China is increasing its intolerance for activism and treating the people who work for these groups as security risks. Chinese officials believe that many of these nonprofit organizations have the ultimate goal of westernizing China, instigating the pro-democracy movement and weakening the Communist Regime.
Part of the problem is that these foreign non-profit organizations are unable to register as nonprofits within China and therefore legally employ people within the country. Many of these nonprofit groups have the goal of promoting human-rights, improving the health of the Chinese citizens, and protecting the environment. Many of these nonprofit firms are required to register themselves as for-profit business in order to gain access to visas. China also wants to register these foreign groups and monitor their activities, requiring the approval of annual budgets.
These anti nonprofit campaigns by the Chinese government are going to hurt the public’s opinion for the Communist Regime that already is seeing rapidly growing unpopularity. If the government is unable to address the social issues that these nonprofit organizations are trying to promote, then China is going to take a while to be a fully developed nation.
Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-cracks-down-on-foreign-nonprofits-1425694223
Why should China care about the opinions of human rights non-profits in the US and Europe? Is there any way they can possibly win that game?
It would be nice to have more details on non-profits: what types of work, what scale of operations? At least in the US there are lots of NPOs providing technical assistance, essentially consulting that’s willing to settle for small bucks in return for having a clear impact and not just providing cover of the rear ends of execs who want an outsider to bolster the case for their pet projects. So healthcare, education, this and that — without details, we’ve no way to tell if this is more than just a couple of small, politically-oriented groups catching the ear of a journalist.