HONG KONG - When China’s Ministry of Education suggested recently that the Hong
Kong arm of Oxfam International is a subversive organization and warned
university students against volunteering for its poverty-relief programs,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) around world heard the message loud and
clear: no matter how big or internationally recognized, when in China, play by
Chinese rules.
It is a lesson that has also not been lost on Google. The Internet giant In
January threatened to close its Chinese website if it continued to be subject
to censorship. Beijing gave the threat a cold shoulder, and the hiring of 40
new staff - including engineers, sales managers and research scientists - in
Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou indicates the US company may have had a
change of heart about pulling out of the world's biggest Internet market.
The Oxfam controversy started with a notice posted last month on the student
recruitment webpage for Minzu University in Beijing calling the NGO an
"ill-intentioned" organization with "ulterior motives".
The notice, attributed to the Education Ministry, accused Oxfam of "trying hard
to infiltrate China", adding: "All education departments and institutions of
higher education must raise their guard and together recognize and take
precautions against the unfriendly intentions of Oxfam Hong Kong's recruitment
of college volunteers."
It also referred to the Hong Kong head of Oxfam, Lo Chi-kin, a member of the
city’s Democratic Party, as "a key member of the opposition camp". The party,
considered moderate in Hong Kong, nevertheless continues to push for greater
democracy 12 years after the city’s handover from British to Chinese rule.
In response to the notice, Oxfam Hong Kong suspended a program aimed at helping
impoverished migrant farmers on the mainland.
It's still not clear what offense Oxfam, which has operated in China for 24
years and which is active in 27 provinces, has committed to warrant central
government disapproval. So far, there has been no official comment.
It could be that the notice, which Minzu has since removed and most other
university websites ignored, was a mistake. In the absence of any official
word, however, speculation is rife that Oxfam ran afoul when it arranged
training programs for university volunteers with organizations that promote
workers’ rights.
Oxfam may also have attracted negative attention simply because of its growing
size and the popularity of its intern programs among university students.
Chinese officials are wary of any large organization - especially a popular one
- that is not under the direct control of the Communist Party.
The writing was perhaps on the wall for Oxfam and other NGOs last year when the
Gong Meng Open Government Initiative, a legal-aid program intended to help
families whose children were poisoned in China’s tainted milk scandal in 2008,
was unceremoniously scuttled.
Generally, analysts say, NGOs are now more welcome than ever before - as long
as they do nothing that might undermine the authority of the central
government.
Traditionally, Oxfam, which was founded in the English town of Oxford in 1942
and which now operates in 100 countries, has tried to remain above politics.
But any organization whose mission is to alleviate poverty and injustice is
bound to run into trouble - in China and elsewhere.
Over the past several years, Oxfam has done battle with Starbucks, accusing the
American coffee chain of trying to cheat its Ethiopian suppliers, and its
Belgian branch waded into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when it produced a
poster of a blood-drenched orange that urged people to boycott fruits and
vegetables grown in Israel as a way of expressing condemnation for the
country’s treatment of Palestinians. The poster campaign incited a storm of
protest, prompting a letter of apology from Oxfam International chairman Ian
Anderson.
With that background in mind, it is easy to speculate about what went wrong for
Oxfam in China. Absolute silence from the central government is possibly an
indication of internal disagreement about the case among officials, and the
removal of the notice from the Minzu website could be seen as correction of an
error.
Then again, all this could be yet another example of bureaucratic incompetence
within the Communist Party. Given the opacity of Chinese politics, is it
difficult to know.
Whatever the case, uncertainty surrounding Oxfam’s China operations underscores
the fine line that all NGOs - most technically illegal because of impossibly
difficult registration requirements - must walk in the country.
While their legality is in question, there are nevertheless at least 2,000
unregistered NGOs in China. As their tentacles spread, authorities are growing
increasingly wary of their influence on social stability. NGOs associated with
human and civil rights are particularly suspect.
There has certainly been no shortage of recent examples that the Chinese
leadership, emboldened by continuing economic success, is taking a harder line
on civil disobedience. Predictions by Western pundits that China’s economic
miracle would be accompanied by political reform have proved stunningly wrong.
Indeed, with the West still climbing out of its worst economic hole since the
Great Depression, Beijing appears to be growing increasingly confident in its
authoritarian one-party system.
In 2008, the last year for which government statistics are available, 1,700
people were arrested on charges related to "endangering state security" - the
catch-all phrase for anyone who goes too far in challenging the central
government. That compares to 742 arrests in 2007 and 296 in 2005. Those figures
don't include the quashing of hundreds of so-called "mass incidents" -
protests, often violent, that occur across China for reasons ranging from petty
pay disputes to massive land grabs by corrupt local officials.
The trend continues with the recent rash of jailings of, among others,
political dissident Liu Xiaobo, the chief author of the Charter 08 manifesto
that called for democratic reform of China’s political system, and activist Tan
Zuoren, an advocate for parents of children who died in shoddily built schools
that collapsed like tofu in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Tan was sentenced last
month to five years in prison for his perceived crime, and, in a Christmas day
announcement, Liu was given an 11-year sentence.
Protests from Western governments over China’s hard line have received the same
cold shoulder offered to Google. Clearly, the leadership is no mood to
compromise over its human-rights record.
It is in this atmosphere that NGOs, generally advocates for the poor and
downtrodden, operate. Inevitably, organizations such as Oxfam, Save the
Children, the Carter Center and International Bridges to Justice - if they
continue to work in line with their stated principles - are going to cross
swords with Chinese authorities.
Former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalist reforms to China as
"socialism with Chinese characteristics". Today’s leadership may be offering a
new formula: “NGOs with Chinese characteristics.”
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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