Recently, Beijing demonstrated its “excellent” skill of solving political problems in a non-political way when it closed down the Open Consultation Initiative (OCI), a non-governmental organization, known as Gongmeng in Chinese.

Although OCI distances itself from politics and sets its target on the protection of public interest—such as representing appellants and publishing a few reports focused on problems in China—Beijing still found a non-existing “tax evasion” crime for the organization, forcing the property owner to cut its lease with OCI's office.

And the above is not an isolated case, another example is the recent shutdown of the community website, www.tecn.cn, which focused on training and education, and has the support of several hundred renowned Chinese scholars.

However, judging from its NGO policy, Beijing won't stop now, and there will be more NGOs victimized.

Beijing's Heavy Guard Against NGOs

Over the past ten years, Chinese governmental organizations, universities, and research institutes have received financial support from foreign countries. Because Beijing still had political confidence at the time, such collaborations were not considered as affecting “State Security.” For those foreign collaborators, if they want to enter China, there is no other way besides finding a Chinese partner.

However, since 2006, Beijing started to become worried about foreign NGOs in China, for two reasons: there were over 10,000 mass incidents in China every year; and fears of the “color revolutions” that happened in former Soviet Union countries. Beijing worries that the forces inside and outside China will cooperate together to lead a regime change, so its focus has shifted to the prevention of such an event.

Previously, NGOs in China only had space to work in environmental protection and AIDS prevention, but since the above policy shift, their space (this goes for foreign and local-based) had been further squeezed.

In August 2006, the Study Times, which belongs to the party school of the Central Committee of Chinese Communist Party, published an article to alienate foreign NGOs. Chinanews also published the article under the title, “Some foreign NGOs damage political stability.”

The article introduced, at the time, about 1,000 foreign NGOs who had already established foundations in China, and whose influence in the country could not be ignored. The article also summarized four “bad influences” foreign NGOs could have on China—threaten national security, damage China’s political stability, encourage corruption, and push foreign influences in China.

NGOs’ Misfortune in China

Although the article did not mention grass-roots organizations, it was not because the author ignored them. It was because NGOs from other countries are related to diplomacy, and diplomacy is no small matter.

As for our own country's grass-roots organizations' existence or non-existence, they are solely under the control of the government. There is no need to launch a separate media campaign prior to cracking down. On July 6, 2007, Civil Magazine was listed as an illegal publication by the Administration of Press, Publication, Radio and Television of Guangzhou Municipality, and the magazine was closed down, as a source revealed, just because it provided an information platform for NGOs. Almost at the same time, the China Development Brief (CDB), a Chinese publication based in Beijing under a foreign NGO, was also forced to close.

Because CDB had survived in China for 11 years, its publisher, Nick Young, had always claimed to be the “Chinese government’s good friend,” his surviving skills in China had also been viewed as treasured experience by many foreign NGOs. The closing down of CDB has sent a shock wave throughout the international community, especially other NGOs. Compared to CDB, the Civil Magazine’s death in silence created a strong contrast.

A Tool for the U.S. to Promote “Color Revolution” in Foreign Countries

How many NGOs stopped operations in the years that followed? Outsiders have no way of finding out. However, it has been gradually publicized that NGOs are prohibited from engaging in public service work. On May 16, 2008, more than 100 independent organizations in China jointly formed a NGO-based office to serve the Sichuan earthquake relief effort more efficiently. Its operation stopped 10 days later after being repeatedly questioned by police. On May 31, another earthquake relief service center established by domestic NGOs and international NGO’s also announced that it too had to stop its operations.

Up to now, Chinese NGOs’ nightmares have not yet ended. Just take a look at how Beijing views NGOs and you’ll know why. Former regime leader, Jiang Zemin’s proposal of “While persisting in economic reform and strengthening economic and cultural exchanges with foreign countries, we need to watch out and prevent opposition forces’ penetration and subversive activities” is still held as a motto now. Beijing considers any non-government organization that practices human rights concepts through public service work an important tool used by the U.S. to promote a “color revolution.”

Some articles were written based on the regime’s instructions, making bold and conspicuous statements. These articles stated that the U.S. NGOs promote “color revolutions” through the following three kinds of activities: 1. Funding NGOs in different countries to engage in anti-government activities. 2. Penetrating media and social study institutes to influence the government’s high level policy. 3. Inviting different kinds of people to visit foreign countries to build the pro-Western elite network in society.

The real reason that Beijing does not like NGOs is because of the desire for a power monopoly. Years ago the Chinese Communist Party took over power by taking advantage of all the possible loopholes of the National Party (Kuomintang). The regime is therefore well-experienced in preventing non-government organizations from emerging and becoming powerful, and has invested huge manpower and resources to nip any unstable elements in the bud.

In terms of a monopoly on power, the communist regime seems to have surpassed any other totalitarian regime. Nazi Germany used to have all the power in their hands, yet, at least they did not completely control religion. It is only in a communist regime that the government controls politics, economics, culture, and military; and that secular forces also control “God’s world” by setting up different government administration offices to monitor religious followers. We can say that the Communist Party’s culture simply cannot tolerate sharing power with any social forces.

At the beginning, the reason NGOs were able to set foot in China was because of the regime’s confidence in China’s “economic miracle.” Now with economic miracle fading, the unemployment rate climbing, social resistance growing, constant uprisings in Tibet and Xinjiang, and the regime’s income dramatically decreasing, the regime’s political confidence has also diminished, and it has become less tolerant of any NGO that has anything to do with human rights or public service work.

Originally published in BBC Chinese’s Commenting on China column.

He Qinglian is a well-known author and economist. She currently resides in the United States.