Review and Assessment of China's Nonprofit Sector After Mao ─ Emerging Civil Society?

There has been substantial progress for the NPS and NPOs in China since Mao. The broader scope definition of civil society focuses on the general autonomy of the NPS in relation to the government, with functioning civil liberties, and on the ability of NPOs in general to influence significantly the government on various policy issues. In these terms, China has a comparatively weak but perhaps slowly emerging civil society. The party-state in China does not have either full associational freedom and civil liberties nor participatory or strong democracy as current, stated or operative goals. Indeed, the government has an ambivalent attitude and policies toward the NPS and NPOs. But such ambivalence is at least a huge improvement over Mao’s totalitarian repression of the NPS and NPOs.

David Horton Smith (PhD Harvard University, 1965) is Research and Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Boston College, USA. Founder (1971) of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action/ARNOVA (www.arnova.org) and NVSQ, he is founding Editor of this journal.