In his recent post, “The Challenges of Localization,” Swells in the Middle Kingdom says developments this year in China are pushing organizations like his own to hasten the process of turning their work over to local believers.
With only 12 day before the implementation of the new Foreign NGO Law, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has finally released a list of the professional supervisory units (PSU) for foreign NGOs seeking registration.
Implementation of China’s new Foreign NGO Management Law is now only two weeks away and much confusion remains.
On January 1, 2017, China’s new Foreign NGO Management Law will go into effect, changing the landscape for foreign individuals and organizations working in China. At ChinaSource we are working hard to monitor the situation and track new developments. While there is still much that is unknown about the implementation of the law, some new documents have been released that begin to address this question.
The website NGOs in China recently published a summary of a Q&A session between the European Chamber of Commerce and the Foreign NGO Management Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security. Seeking clarification on how the law will be implemented, the delegation from the European Chamber of Commerce posed 13 questions.
Article 11 of the new Foreign NGO Management Law that is due to go into effect on January 1, 2017, will require foreign NGOs operating in China to “obtain consent of a professional supervisory unit.” The list of the approved supervisory units has yet to be released.
In a recent Christianity Today article on the wave of laws hitting foreign NGOs globally, Morgan Lee refers specifically to China when she writes, “Nearly 20 percent of the world’s population could lose access to the ministry efforts of Western Christians next year.”
If you’re with a non-profit organization that has activities in China, the new law applies to you, regardless of whether you are actually located in China.
A look at possible responses to the new NGO law.
The Law on the Management of Foreign Non-Governmental Organizations' Activities within Mainland China was passed on April 28, 2016 and will take effect January 1, 2017.
Earlier this month a spokesman for China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) announced that the NPC Standing Committee is scheduled to review the draft law governing foreign NGOs operating in China.
Standing at the threshold of a new year, the perennial question comes to mind, “Whither China?” Since prognostications about China’s future more often than not prove to be off the mark—sometimes by a very wide margin—trying to anticipate with certainty what may happen in 2016 is somewhat of a fool’s errand.