“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Power”: A 25-year Strategic Advocacy Voyage of an Environmental NGO in China

• Author: Hao Zhuang,John A. Zinda,James P. Lassoie
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10704965221121743
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Journal of Environment &

Development

2022, Vol. 31(4) 331–351

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/10704965221121743

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“Crouching Tiger, Hidden

Power”: A 25-year

Strategic Advocacy

Voyage of an

Environmental NGO in

China

Hao Zhuang

1

, John A. Zinda

2

, and

James P. Lassoie

1

Abstract

Advocacy by civil society organizations such as non-governmental organizations

(NGOs) is especially challenging in a constraining political context. The Government of

China has invited such organizations to assist in addressing emergent environmental

problems while also limiting political challenges from them. NGOs need to respond to

these political externalities strategically. This paper navigates a quarter-century ad-

vocacy voyage by an iconic Chinese environmental NGO—Friends of Nature—

discussing how the organization adapted to meet internal organization challenges

within a dynamic, restrictive political environment. We found two major strategic

pathways: f‌irst, diminishing dependency on inf‌luential individual leaders by building

institutional competence and reputation; second, strategic specialization in litigation

that anticipates opportunities that might emerge as state policies shift, and actively

shaping niches to exert impact. This study adds historical insights on an NGO’s

evolution in China that can benef‌it other civil society organizations that face signif‌icant

political, social, or legal challenges.

Keywords

environmental advocacy, civil society organization, state-society dynamic, history,

China

1

Department of Natural Resources & the Environment, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

2

Department of Global Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Hao Zhuang, Cornell University, 120 Fernow Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-0001, USA.

Email: hz64@cornell.edu

Introduction

During the last three decades, robust market forces and increasing expression of

grievances about social-environmental crises from the public have captured the at-

tention of state in China. In response, they began considering strategies to involve the

emerging momentum and resources arising from society to address ecological deg-

radation and environmental health issues. The state adopted the approach of “conscious

selection of intermediary actors between the state and society”(Bruun, 2020), which

facilitates civil society actions to obtain policy feedback, provides social services and

technical consultations in policy making, and even engages in environmental law

enforcement (Teets, 2013;Froissart, 2019;Rooij et al., 2016). At the same time,

however, the state limited political challenges by issuing policies that framed a

constraining political environment for civil society organizations (Feng, 2017;Shieh,

2018).

Environmental advocacy has been a particularly rich arena for civil society actions

in China (Deng & Menegazzi, 2018;Hsu & Jiang, 2015;Hsu & Hasmath, 2017;Liu,

2019;Teets, 2013;Teets & Almen, 2018). Civil society organizations try to mobilize

publics to pressure elite actors (state or corporate) to improve their environmental

policies and behaviors (Haddad, 2021), advocate to inf‌luence institutional decisions on

behalf of collective interests and build coalitions by engaging new actors within

domestic governance (Pekkanen et al., 2014). Apparently, this advocacy pathway is not

linear which presents a dynamic and everchanging picture.

This paper provides a historical review of the quarter-century advocacy voyage of an

iconic Chinese environmental civil society organization (henceforth, this term will also

be used to refer to non-governmental organizations [NGOs] as a subset of civil so-

ciety)—Friends of Nature (FoN). As the f‌irst off‌icially registered, the largest, and one of

the most inf‌luential environmental NGOs in China, FoN evolved from a well-

recognized environmental education organization to the country’s leading policy

advocacy and litigation organization. FoN adopted different advocacy strategies during

these years, including environmental education, public campaigns, civic actions,

writing policy motions, and eventually litigation. We navigate the evolution of the

organization by analyzing strategic transitions that happened at its different devel-

opment stages and the internal drivers behind them. The paper also ref‌lects on changing

external policy landscapes and political opportunities, recognizing that such political

externalities induced FoN’s organizational changes during its evolution. By examining

the FoN’s case, we explore the changing space in which environmental groups have

worked to advocate and develop a functional role in environmental governance.

To achieve a comprehensive understanding of FoN’s evolution, the f‌irst author

worked at FoN for four months in 2018. This allowed full access to organizational

documents and archives and supported formal and informal interactions with the

previous and current organizational leadership to conduct a collaborative inquiry into

FoN’s historical timeline. This insider’s view provided a lens through which we ex-

amine the advocacy voyage of FoN within the context of a continually changing

political environment and illustrate the unfolding of deliberate organizational decisions

332 The Journal of Environment & Development 31(4)