Fostering Civil Society Through Community Empowerment: An Extended Case of the Sichuan Earthquake in China
| DOI | 10.1177/0095399720910508 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2020
Article
Administration & Society
2021, Vol. 53(1) 13 –35
Fostering Civil Society
© The Author(s) 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399720910508
DOI: 10.1177/0095399720910508
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Empowerment: An
Extended Case of the
Sichuan Earthquake in
China
Ming Hu1 and Jiangang Zhu2
Abstract
How nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) enhance civil society develop-
ment in China is underresearched while the extant literature centers on
the government–NGO relationship. Applying the extended case method,
this study explores how an NGO-facilitated community reconstruction
program followed the community empowerment approach to foster local
civil society in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. We argue that
community reconstruction opened space for NGOs to nurture public
spheres and residents’ civic engagement, foster community organizing, and
support community participation in local governance. The dynamics reveals
the functioning and limitations of the community empowerment approach
for civil society development in contemporary China.
Keywords
civil society, community empowerment, community reconstruction,
nongovernmental organization, Sichuan Earthquake
1Nanjing University, China
2Nankai University, Tianjin, China
Corresponding Author:
Jiangang Zhu, Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, 38 Tongyan Road,
Haihe Education Park, Tianjin, China, 300350.
Email: zhujiangang@nankai.edu.cn
14
Administration & Society 53(1)
When the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake devastated West China, some nonprofit
researchers (e.g., Gao & Yuan, 2008; Shieh & Deng, 2011; Zhu & Chen,
2009) optimistically expected a rise of civil society in China, claiming that
the huge disaster would expand space for nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) to improve their capacity and legitimacy and even prompt the gov-
ernment to lift institutional restrictions on NGO development. Despite the
striking participation of NGOs and other voluntary actions in response to the
earthquake emergency relief, however, the pendulum of NGO development
seemed to have soon swung to the other end in the following years. The state
has gradually established a “social management” regime characteristic of
state-controlled public participation and ideological disciplining, where ser-
vice-oriented NGOs have been incorporated into the government-funded
social service system and politically bridled while rights-based NGOs and
campaigns have suffered harsh crackdowns (C. Hsu & Teets, 2016; Kang,
2018; Teets, 2015; Zhao et al., 2016). The promulgation of the 2016 Charity
Law, the 2017 Overseas NGO Management Law, and a series of other NGO
regulation policies concerning political disciplining and resource distribution
has made the civil society environment so chilling in recent years that Kang
(2018) warns of an approaching “neo-totalitarianism” in China when the
state places the society under comprehensive yet adaptable control. So, is it
still possible to build a healthy civil society in China? If yes, how could
NGOs contribute to it in the current sociopolitical environment?
The concept of civil society has since the late 1980s caught Chinese intel-
lectuals’ imagination about how to build an ideal state–society relationship,
though its meaning is never clear-cut and has remained fluid (Béja, 2006;
Deng & Alexander, 2006; Yu, 2006). The striking rise of NGOs in China after
the mid-1990s has vitalized this imagination: The upsurge of autonomous
and for-public-interest organizations should be able to reorganize the atom-
ized society left by the collapse of totalitarian politics and thus help create a
more capable, civilized, and democratic China. The ensuing emphasis on
NGOs has resulted in a tendency in scholarly work that treats NGOs highly
representative of, if not exactly the same as, the whole civil society (Ho,
2001; J. Y. Hsu, 2014; Spires, 2011; White, 1993; Zhang & Baum, 2004). But
how NGOs contribute to the development of Chinese civil society has yet to
be scrutinized, given that (a) NGOs are merely one, though critical, part of
civil society (Anheier, 2004) and (b) not all NGOs are conducive to civil
society (Foley & Edwards, 1996; Tvedt, 1998).
Through 4 years of community-based research within an NGO-led com-
munity reconstruction program after the Sichuan Earthquake, this extended
case study explores how NGOs may foster civil society by applying a com-
munity empowerment approach in an authoritarian state context and examines
Hu and Zhu
15
the boundaries of the approach. We argue that community reconstruction
opened space for NGOs to nurture public spheres and residents’ civic engage-
ment, foster community organizing, and support community participation in
local governance. The dynamics reveals the functioning and limits of the com-
munity empowerment approach for civil society development in China. But
NGOs may risk the loss of organizational independence and the maintenance
of unequal power relations due to its embeddedness in the state-dominated
community settings, which in turn can cripple the growth of civil society.
Literature Review
NGOs and Civil Society Development
Civil society is “the sphere of institutions, organizations, and individuals
located between the family, the state, and the market in which people associ-
ate voluntarily to advance common interests” (Anheier, 2004, p. 22). In the
past century, the concept of civil society has been adopted across societies to
reflect and support the pursuit of liberal democracy and sociocultural pros-
perity from a social reform perspective (Anheier, 2004; Diamond, 1994;
Foley & Edwards, 1996). The concept was introduced into China in the early
1990s when the nation was at the juncture of post-communist social transi-
tion and has since been enthusiastically espoused by Chinese intellectuals
(Deng & Alexander, 2006; J. Y. Hsu, 2014; Ma, 2005). Thus, the upsurge of
NGOs after the mid-1990s soon preoccupied scholarly attentions as NGOs
seem to perfectly represent the emergence of civil society: supposedly they
are formally organized and thus competent actors for social change, institu-
tionally separate from the government, self-governing, supportive of collec-
tive or public interests, and voluntary and free from coercion (Anheier, 2004;
Martens, 2002). Consequently, research on NGOs, especially the state–NGO
relationship, has been central in China’s civil society studies in the past
decades (J. Y. Hsu, 2014; Ma, 2005; Saich, 2000; Whiting, 1991), echoing the
rise of an “inadequate, explicitly normative interpretation of NGO ideology”
(Clarke, 1998, p. 40) for good governance and democracy development in the
developing world. However, the mechanisms of NGOs nurturing civil society
development are paid much less attention in the extant literature, though
NGOs have increasingly been cast doubt on concerning their hypothesized
association with civil society and democracy development (Edwards &
Hulme, 1996; J. Y. Hsu et al., 2017; Mercer, 2002).
Mercer (2002) proposes that NGOs enhance civil society in three fashions,
which sheds lights on the exploration of Chinese NGOs for building civil soci-
ety. First, the growth of NGOs, by virtue of their existence as autonomous
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Administration & Society 53(1)
organizations, can pluralize and strengthen the institutional arena. As Mercer
(2002) claims,
More civic actors means more opportunities for a wider range of interest groups
to have a “voice,” more autonomous organizations to act in a “watchdog” role
vis-à-vis the state, and more opportunities for networking and creating alliances
of civic actors to place pressure on the state. (p. 8)
Second, NGOs organize issue-based (and usually rights-oriented) advoca-
cies, litigations, and social movements to check state power and improve the
institutional environment. In the vanguard of civil society, NGOs are expected
to “check state power by challenging its autonomy at both national and local
scales, pressing for change and developing an alternative set of perspectives
and policies” (Mercer, 2002, p. 9). Third, by basing their work in the com-
munities, NGOs empower disadvantaged groups and represent their interests,
improve citizen participation, and transform power structure at the local level
so as to make social and political changes (Atack, 1999; Zimmerman, 2000).
However, in China the state’s differentiated control on NGOs based on
their capacity of challenging the state and the type of public goods they pro-
vide (Kang & Han, 2008) has largely compromised the pluralization effect of
NGO growth (e.g., C. Hsu & Teets, 2016; Teets, 2013; Zhao et al., 2016) and
made almost impossible any NGO efforts of holding the state accountable, as
often seen in the raids on rights-based organizations and activists in recent
years (e.g., Teets, 2015; Yuen, 2015). Consequently, researchers see the com-
munity as the very place of hope for building a healthy civil society in China
(He, 2009; Li, 2007), whereby NGOs supposedly can nurture residents’ civic
spirits and engagement, foster grassroots organizations, and create public
sphere for various social forces to participate in local governance. But few
previous China studies empirically examined how NGOs may practice the
community empowerment approach, which this study will address.
The Sichuan...
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