Changing Spaces for Civil Society Organisations in China

Concerns about shrinking spaces for civil society organisations have risen in China over the past years, in particular among international nonprofit organisations. The third sector in China, however, continued its growth in numbers, diversity and activities of organisations, accounting for more than 700,000 registered organisations. Government’s financial support to nonprofits significantly increased through contracting out of services. The new Charity Law contains provisions for public fundraising activities, including for online platforms. International activities of Chinese nonprofits took off in the context of participation in global conferences. Chinese NGOs also started to engage in delivering humanitarian aid to communities in other countries. Assessments on shrinking or changing spaces for civil society in China much depend on the type of organisations in focus. This paper pays attention to discourses related to NGO development in China and sheds light on changing spaces for different types of nonprofits in China, those that are negatively affected by new regulations and different kinds of restrictions and those benefiting from emerging opportunities in the context of growing cooperation with the government or the business sector. Analysis based on interviews and talks with experts in China and abroad shows that advocacy-oriented organisations and those receiving foreign funding tend to face more difficulties. Larger international nonprofits with a long track-record in China, however, are seen to continuing or even expanding their activities.

textualise civil society activities in China against the backdrop of both growing opportunities and shrinking spaces for nonprofits. On the one hand many international civil society analysts refer to politically motivated restrictions and seriously curtailed space in China-the monitor of CIVICUS (2017a, 2017b) that tracks conditions for citizen action puts China in the country category of "closed space for civil society". On the other hand we see a continued strong commitment of many Chinese organisations and individuals that engage in mutual and public benefit activities.
The evaluation of restrictions and opportunities for civil society organisations much depends on the type of organisations in focus and the definition of civil society applied to the research agenda. The term "civil society" has been subject to a series of strenuous definitional efforts by academics across the globe (Anheier et al., 2001;Hildermeier, Kocka et al., 2000;Kuhn, 2005Kuhn, /2009Salomon et al., 1999;Wang, 2011). The normative dimension of the term civil society-in particular the reference to public benefit, policy dialogue and also human rights-has a strong tradition in political and social science research, in particular in Europe. Such normative dimension is usually particularly pronounced when it comes to translate the concept of civil society into the practice of dialogue with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) or project-based support to non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
The normative dimension of civil society makes the term, however, controversial as any normatively charged definition risks to be viewed as an ideological or politically biased approach to a term. This is a major challenge to the term civil society in the context of international cooperation and explains some of the reservations to it, in particular in countries ruled by ideologically driven one-party regimes like China.
In the context of this research civil society would be defined as.
"A sphere of social organisations and initiatives, separate from the state, the market and the family, that brings people together for diverse forms of social action and interaction, ideally for public or mutual benefit." The use of the term civil society has further declined though not ceased to exist in China. 1 Today, nonprofits or social organisations or more specific terms like philanthropy, charity or social enterprise are predominantly used in China.
With regard to legal issues and the work of international nonprofits, the term NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisation) is mostly used.
After more than a decade of growth and expansion of civil society organisations from the 1990s onwards and flourishing academic debates on civil society in China 2 , the term Gongmin shehui (公民社会), or "civil society", has almost disappeared in discourses in China from 2011 onwards. Such development took place in the context of rising criticism on Western ideas and values that would infiltrate and allegedly harm Chinese society. The concept of civil society is one of seven ideas mentioned in the Document Nr. 9. 3 However, activities of nonprofits were not stalled as a consequence of the rising criticism on civil society discourses. Instead, the discourse focused more on 1 The term civil society still figures as research areas of institutes and researchers in China, see Institute of Civil Society, Sun Yat-sen University (http://www.chinacsrmap.org/Org_Show_EN.asp?ID=560) and research profile of Prof. WANG Ming of Tsinghua University (http://www.sppm.tsinghua.edu.cn/english/faculty/fulltime/26efe4891f406f6b011f644d4d2d0093.ht ml). 2 Ma (1994) concluded in an article in The China Quarterly in 1994 that "Since 1986, there has been a theoretical discourse of civil society in China". 3 Document Number 9 is a confidential internal document drafted in 2012 and widely circulated within the Communist Party of China by the General Office of the Communist Party of China. The document was not made available to public by the Chinese government, but in July 2013 was allegedly leaked by Chinese dissident journalist Gao Yu. Open Journal of Political Science specific terms and types of organisations, such as social enterprises, charities and philanthropy. For some nonprofits, regulations for registration have even been eased in 2013 and cooperation and funding opportunities with government agencies at different levels have been substantially increased. Others, in particular advocacy-oriented organisations with a rights-based approach and those relying on foreign funding have come under stronger scrutiny with the purpose to limiting their scope of action and their access to international funding support.
We currently witness controversial discussions on the state and freedom of civil society in China, in and outside the country. Questions related to shrinking, enlarging or changing space for civil society and nonprofits in China were discussed at sessions of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) conference in Amsterdam in July 2018. Shen (2018) with reference to data analysis from the China Central Finance Project-the project covers 1626 nonprofits that received project funding from government sources-pointed out that increased government funding to those nonprofits had a crowding-in effect for private sector support to those organisations.  emphasised the role of non-profit support organisations (NSO) in promoting local nonprofits and their cooperation with local government. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that local government policies would vary greatly across locations. Gasemyr (2018) referred to the lack of public trust on nonprofits in China due to still very limited exposure to modern nonprofits but also related to a series of smaller and bigger scandals, such as the Guo Mei Mei scandal that struck the Chinese Red Cross in 2011. However, the 2014 China national survey on inequality and distributive justice also showed that younger and well educated people were more open to value the role of nonprofits. Gasemyr further emphasised the relevance of the evolution of the welfare state for nonprofit development in China and pointed to elderly care as an area where nonprofit activities would be largely welcomed by the government. Levy (2018) referred to the allegedly vague and unclear regulations and the far reaching supervisory functions of public authorities in the context of new legislation in China, in particular to the Ministry of Public Security in the case of the Law on the Administration of Overseas NGOs and the Ministry of Civil Affairs in the case of the Charity Law. Approaching the issue from a different angle, Jia (2018) forwarded the argument that legal legitimacy could create trust and space for nonprofits. Sidel (2018) stressed upon the guo jia an wei (国家安危, national security) debate in China that would mirror the worries of security intellectuals and their concern about unregulated activities of private organisations, in particular those receiving foreign funding. He concluded, however, that referring to "closing spaces" for civil society in China would be overstating and simplifying. Sophisticated governments such as the Chinese government would "mould" third sector governance rather than "closing space across the board." The purpose of this paper is to engage in reflections on current discourses re- ing opportunities for civil society and nonprofits in mainland China. More specifically, this paper will seek to answer two questions: 1) What type of organisations, thematic areas, issues and work methods are most affected by restrictions that were imposed in the past years? 2) What type of organisations, thematic areas, issues and work methods benefit most from emerging opportunities? International scholars largely agree that the take-over of Xi Jinping led to a more pronounced authoritarian rule in China (Heilmann & Stepan, 2016) and tightened supervision of academics. However, this research will deliberately not simply equate the take-over of the Xi-Li administration in the year 2013 with more restrictive policies towards nonprofits. Unlike in electoral democracies with pronounced party political rivalry-in particular in the United States-Chinese leadership stresses continuity rather than radical change in policy-making.
With regard to the freedom of civil society, some developments in the area of nonprofit supervision and administration in the last years of the Hu-Wen administration (2002-2012, in particular at the subnational level and most pronounced in Shenzhen, might have suggested some significant ease of restrictions for certain types of nonprofits. However, other developments at the international and national level before the take-over of the Xi-Li administration already indicated a stricter government response to advocacy type of nonprofit activities while the trend of growing government funding for service delivery by nonprofits already started years before Xi and Li took over. In her profound analysis of the legal framework for civil society in China, Simon (2013) calls the year 2011, a "remarkable year!" and dedicated one chapter to the political developments in China and at international level, and more specifically to the fund-raising scandals and government responses that affected the nonprofit sector in China in 2011 and the implications of the Arab spring movement with its revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests and riots that started on 18 December 2010 in Tunisia.
The complexity of the subject matter makes triangulation the method of choice. Triangulation refers to the application and combination of several research methods in the study of the same phenomenon, in our case the changing space for civil society organisations in China. Information was collected through literature review, participation in conferences, interviews and talks with experts, in and outside China. We can find a good number of journal articles and book chapters on civil society and nonprofits in China. However, the many changes that took place in the field of legislation and management of nonprofits in China in the past years, pose a challenge to academic publications on the subject matter, in particular for book publications and papers going through peer reviews that take up several months. Thus, talks with experts were important to understand the impact of the most recent policy changes and regulations. Internet based reports, in particular those published by the website China Development Open Journal of Political Science Brief (e.g. China Development Brief, 2015) and China File (e.g. China File, 2017), were another valuable source of information. Personal talks and semi-structured interviews with civil society organisations and academic experts during several stays in China in particular in September and October 2017 and in March 2018 and participation in the ISTR world conference in Amsterdam (July 9-12, 2018) complemented the gathering of information and analysis. This paper will embark on its analysis by first taking a closer look at the global debate on shrinking and changing spaces for civil society. It will refer to policy documents, publications and programmes of major drivers of the critical discourses on space for nonprofits in China, covering in particular institutions of the European Union and German political foundations that are among the frontrunners of the shrinking space discourse (Section 2). The paper will subsequently summarize and briefly discuss the current operating environment of civil society and nonprofits and the recent overhaul of China's legal and regulatory framework governing the work of nonprofits, in particular international NGOs (Section 3). The assessment of changing spaces for civil society in China (Section 4) will refer to overall observations in the context of talks with staff of nonprofits and academics in China in the past two years and specifically comment on types of organisations that might be negatively or positively affected by the legal and administrative overhaul of NGO supervision in China: Subsequently, the paper will present brief case studies of international NGOs based on individual interviews and talks (WWF, SCF and AF). The concluding section will discuss the case of civil society activism in mainland China against the backdrop of global discourses on shrinking or changing spaces and reduction of international aid to local civil society organisations. It will point out that there is plenty of evidence for continued engagement of Chinese organisations and citizens in public and mutual benefit activities, in particular outside the rights and advocacy based dimensions that shape the understanding of the concept of civil society in Western media and by Western think tanks but have never been key features of civil society in modern China. The involvement of civil society organisations in development cooperation and global summits has significantly grown in the past decades. The United Nations, the World Bank the European Commission and many donor agencies put a lot of emphasis on multi-stakeholder dialogues and involvement of nonprofits in programme implementation (Kuhn, 2005(Kuhn, /2009 The growing support to civil society development and nonprofits by international donors and, in some cases, wealthy business people, was met with enthusiasm by proponents of liberal democracy, in particular those in favour of regime change. Civil society uprising in Ukraine and the Arab spring movement nourished the hope that a growing and assertive civil society movement would ultimately prepare the ground for a transition to a Western-style democracy.

The
Regarding the case of China, Frolic (1997: p. 46) confessed that "our interest in civil society was heightened by two events: The first was Tiananmen… a second event was the end of communism in Eastern Europe". Frolic's statement-by highlighting political events and developments-supports the argument that Western scholars tend to have a strongly normatively charged and politically influenced concept of civil society which in turns explains the difficulties of China's political leadership and scholars to integrate the concept of civil society into national political discourses.

Rising Concerns on Shrinking Spaces
The global civil society community has become stronger over a prolonged period of time and has enjoyed high political and social attention as well as growing at-Open Journal of Political Science tention by researchers over many years. Participation in the global conferences of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR), founded in 1993/1993, has grown over the years and Voluntas, the International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organisations, has significantly expanded in terms of number of articles per annum. 4 The growing support and enthusiasm for civil society, in particular support to human rights and advocacy work of nonprofits, has increasingly been perceived as interference in internal affairs by many authoritarian regimes. Assertive and advocacy-oriented organisations had gained political influence and challenged policies and programmes designed by governments at different levels. When some governments responded with imposing restrictions on the further evolution of independent civil society, the international donor community, liberal media and research institutes responded swiftly. China's new authoritarian drive under Xi Jinping and the enactment of a series of security laws, including the one on administration of foreign NGOs in China, raised concerns on shrinking spaces for civil society in China. International media and human rights organisations but also diplomatic missions voiced their strong concern and criticism. Such concerns were amplified by developments in other countries and regions and reports highlighting. In the years 2014 and 2015 only, governments around the world adopted made 96 laws which in the opinion of CIVICUS (2017a) imposed additional restrictions and reduced space for the civil society. Such new restrictions in a significant number of countries included new security laws and regulations, burdensome administrative requirements for registration or re-registration and internal governance of nonprofits, bans or limitations on certain activities, restrictions or tight supervision of international or nation-wide networking, advocacy and campaign style activities, prohibition or strictly limited public fundraising regulations, unfavourable tax regulations, limitations on foreign funding, lengthy approval procedures for work plans or activities involving foreign partners, mandatory affiliations to government agencies or party units and burdensome reporting requirements by government agencies or departments.
Research Institutes and media identified "a trend that is manifold and covers all world regions and regime types." (Wolff & Oppe/PRI, 2015). Carothers & Brechenmacher (2014) point out that the intro-duction of restrictive practices in one country could serve as models for other countries. The perceived shrinking spaces for civil society in many countries provoked strong reactions by international organisations, Embassies 5 , the media and such networks and institutions that are particularly concerned with freedom of expression and a favourable political environment for CSO activities.
Among the drivers of the shrinking or closing space discourses are not only 4 Voluntas was founded in 1990 with two issues per year than moving to three, then to four. Now Voluntas publishes six issues per year. Conference participation increased over the years (see International Society for Third Sector Research, https://www.istr.org/default.aspx). The March for Science was launched in 2016 and unites more than one million individual advocates, thousands of community organizers, and hundreds of partner organizations, in particular Universities. The case of Cambridge University press, discussed in this paper, was frequently quoted as an example of University action eventually upholding the principle of academic freedom. We Deal with the Rise of Authoritarian Practices?" and specifically referred to "civil society in authoritarian regimes such as Cambodia, China, Egypt, Russia, and Uganda" but also to authoritarian practices in formally democratic countries such as Ecuador, Hungary, and Israel. 8 The renowned civil society advocacy group CIVICUS published a Map on Spaces for Civil Society-the Civil Society Monitor Project 9 -in which space for civil society in China is labelled "closed" ranking even lower than Russia ("repressed"). The Heinrich Boell Foundation, affiliated to the Green Party in Germany, echoed the critical analysis in a conference publication (Unmuessig, 2016)  their normative bias in providing comparative country assessments on democracy and governance issues. However, they are still relatively widely used by academics, practitioners and media (Kuhn, 2011). Freedom House, a US American think tank, classifies China as "not free" and attributes the low ranking of 6.5 to it, the same as Russia. Only few countries rank lower.
"China's authoritarian regime has become increasingly repressive in recent BTI attributes 2 points to category "association and assembly rights" in 2018, maintaining the same level of assessment level since 2006. The section on civil society reads: "The number of registered civil society organizations in China has increased from 153,322 (2000) to 662,425 (2015), but these organizations are not allowed to operate independently; instead, they need to find a governmental host organization and then subject themselves to demanding procedures to obtain registration with the Ministry of Civil Affairs or its local counterparts. This severely restricts their autonomy" (BTI China 2018).
The Rule of Law Index produced by the World Justice Project (2018) also attributes very low scores to China in the category "fundamental rights" (factor score 0.31 and global rank 108 out of 113 countries) and the sub-category "freedom of association" (factor score 0.18).
The rights perspective is dominant in all of the above mentioned index projects. This could be explained by the fact that it is more difficult to capture opportunities than restrictions. Thus, evaluations of China on space for civil society are very critical even though the number, capacity and diversity of nonprofit organisations is still growing.

New Perspectives on Civil Society Discourses
The Maecenata Institute for Philanthropy and Civil Society in Berlin aimed at adopting a new perspective on the shrinking space debate and organised a symposium on "The Changing Space for Civil Society" 12 taking into consideration contrasting developments in a number of countries and regions (Strachwitz, 2017) 13 . Alscher & Priller (2017) stated that "the diagnosis of a "Shrinking Space" fails to consider the complete picture by concentrating mainly on legal changes, and thus perceiving civil society as a plaything at the hands of the state. This perspective neglects the autonomy of civil society as an independent and distinct 12 The symposium took place on October 17, 2017 in Berlin and marked the 20 anniversary of the Institute. For the report see: Hummel & Kreutzer (2017) Strachwitz (2017: p. 8) reminded us that "Finally, it seems necessary to look at the relationship between civil society and the arena of the market, a sphere of public life the importance and sheer size of which has grown beyond all expectations since the failure of the state-run economies." The European Foundation Centre shared this view. Civil Society is facing a number of challenges but also opportunities. The popular talk of a "Shrinking Space for Civil Society" is not the complete story (European Foundation Centre, 2017). 15 Furthermore, the changing space discourse may also better reflect developments in the context of aid reduction discussed in the Voluntas April 2018 issue (Appe & Pallas, 2018). In the case of China, we definitely see a reduction of foreign aid to nonprofits and such reduction is not only due to stricter regulations but also to changing donor policies in the context of China's middle income status.
The impact of policies targeting the operation of civil society organizations seems much more differentiated than one would probably presume when looking at restrictive laws and government regulations, in particular in China. Some legislative or regulatory provisions that would not meet certain criteria typically viewed as encouraging nonprofits might have positive effects. In China, the Regulation on Administration of Foundations was promulgated by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2004 and the foundation sector experienced rapid growth in China even though these regulations contained some clauses that were seen as not going very far in promoting the establishment of nation-wide operating foundations, e.g. requiring a high capital investment for national level foundations and also not being pronounced in protecting the will of the founder. However, today these regulations are regarded as a major break-through for the establishment of independent private foundations active in the field of education, cultural exchange, science, environmental protection and other areas. 16 In 2011, the number of private foundations already exceeded 1000 and climbed to over 6300 foundations by 2017 (Council on Foundations, 2017). The regulations are currently under revision but no one would expect that the revised regulations would seriously hinder the work of private independent foundations. Meanwhile, a significant number of foundations have been established in China, many by famous industrial groups or business people. Saich (2018) referred to new opportunities for nonprofits in China: "China is much more affluent now. And particularly a lot of young people begin to not only be interested in making money, making wealth, but they've also become much more interested in the environment in which they live. Not just the physical environment, but the social environment as well." Such a "changing space" perspective would also have to take a closer look at Looking at China, Hildebrandt (2016) argued that "we need to set aside problematic assumptions about the goal and intentions of CSOs… civil society literature predicts that the rise of the third sector will serve as an antagonistic and politically destabilizing force against authoritarian regimes (p. 125)." China recognizes the importance of a reliable legal system even though it shows concern over political assertion of lawyers. At the occasion of the "Hun-

Legal Basis and Key Regulations on Nonprof Its in China
China's legal and regulatory environment for civil society and nonprofits has been subject to scrutiny and analysis by many Chinese and foreign experts. The China is a civil law country. Nonprofits fall into four primary legal categories.
• Social Associations (SAs) (社会团体, shehui tuanti), which are the equivalent of membership associations. Nonprofits required a supervisory government agency prior to file their registration with the Ministry of Civil Affairs until at least 2013. This provision of finding a government agency-called "dual management" or "mother-in-law system" by some-was particularly challenging for smaller organisations as government agencies had seldom an incentive to engage with and supervise the activities of a private independent organisation. Therefore, a significant number of organisations choose to establish a business rather than to obtain a nonprofit status. This was seen to be a pragmatic way out Annual donations to charities in China grew from 10 billion to 100 billion yuan in the past decade, but at the same time a number of major scandals occurred in which managers of charities misused funds and the organizations' reputations suffered, causing the public to call for more transparency and tighter management of charities. 21

Recent Legislative and Regulatory Changes
With regards to the operating environment, two recent legislative changes are having a significant impact on the work of nonprofits in China. These are: • the passing of the Charity Law in March 2016, which provides certain nonprofits with tax benefits and fundraising opportunities and The Charity Law is widely seen as a positive law for the work of domestic NGOs. After more than ten years of discussions and reviews, it became effective on 1 September 2016. The Charity Law's provisions affect not only domestic and foreign non-profits, but also a wide range of companies and corporate social responsibility initiatives. It includes an expanded definition of "charitable activities," tax incentives for qualifying organizations, new registration procedures, and rules for donation and volunteer management (Ashwin & Stratford, 2016). A point of major concern related to both laws is the relatively vague definitions of organisations that would be covered by the new legislation. In early May 2017, the government announced plans to regulate private think tanks by placing them in the same category as not-for-profit social organizations. Previously, there had been no specific regulation for private think tanks and their legal status was unclear. Offices of foreign Universities facilitating exchange and research cooperation in China were not automatically exempted from registration and some need to find new administrative arrangements.

Overall Observations
While it has been possible for Chinese researchers to embrace the term civil society for quite some time, the use of the term civil society (Chinese: gongmin shehui 公民社会) has become politically sensitive after the years 2011/2012. In China, it is now politically more correct to talk about social organisations (社会 组织) or the NGOs/NPO sector rather than referring to "civil society".
China has tightened supervision and control of nonprofits and cracked down on a number of political dissidents in the past years. However, it would be misleading to speak of a "closed space for civil society" in China as a CIVICUS (2017a) report and others would describe the current situation in China.
Assessments of shrinking or changing spaces for civil society in China much depend on the type of organisations in focus. Brook (1997: p. 25 Looking first at the different categories of nonprofits presented in Table 1, we would, however, con-clude that some, actually most categories of organisations tend to enjoy moderate freedom and growing opportunities. The above given figure with reference to the categories of Brook (1997)   Groups addressing common causes and public policy issues pollution monitoring, international friendship societies, policy advocacy work awareness raising, enlightening, networking, shaming, mobilising, public benefit purposes freedom and space depend on the focus of work and contacts to CCP and government, some enjoy growing opportunities, feminist action groups face shrinking spaces policies rule out the possibility to organise major political or social campaign without the consent of the authorities. Public security is a prime concern of the authorities at all levels of government in China. However, such concern is probably also shared by the majority of Chinese people, many of them still remembering the chaos created by the cultural revolution and deeply concerned about social anarchy. With regard to the work of international NGOs, one of the interviewed experts working for international NGOs in Beijing pointed out that restrictions for foreign NGOs were strongly motivated by nationalist perspectives aiming at reducing the influence of international organisations and developing a civil society with Chinese characteristics.
Tackling the issue of spaces and opportunities from a more political perspective, the selection of categories could be criticized for not assigning a specific category to media or political foundations. The proposed list only mentions "media" and "political foundations" as sub-categories of institutions addressing common causes. According to observations and collected expert opinion, media as well as groups focusing on rights-based issues, such as labour and migration issues, suffer the most from authoritarian policies that aim to censor discourses and curtail freedoms of civil society organisations in China.
With regard to censorship of social media content, in particular WeiBo and WeChat content, King-wa Fu (2018) would speak of "control 3.0 policies" that are characterised by a comprehensive set of censorships and control activities that impacts everyday life. In his analysis, he refers to the me-too campaign and content produced by feminist networks that was removed from social media Open Journal of Political Science

platforms. 23
Political foundations would also suffer from more rigorous scrutiny. Six German political foundations are well established in China. With the exception of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, they still significant time for re-registration of their offices in China. However, within a period of six month they managed to register the foundations.
Organisations working for the common cause of environmental or climate protection would mostly not suffer from restrictions but rather enjoy more opportunities for engagement, collaboration with government authorities and also receive support from the corporate sector. In sum, the picture of organisations and groups addressing common concerns and public benefit purposes does not look as gloomy as perhaps presented in some shrinking space reports that refer to the case of China as "closed space", such as the CIVICUS (2017a) report. Chinese authorities demonstrate a high level of sensitivity with regard to issues and activities that relate to global social movements. Blogs and accounts in China, including ATSH, which stands for anti-sexual harassment, and the Wei-Bo account of Feminist Voices that related to the anti-sexual harassment movement #Metoo that originated in the USA in the context of the allegations against movie producer Weinstein were soon blocked (The Guardian, 2018). 24 Given the serious criticism on the Chinese authorities for cracking down on political activists and closing spaces of civil society, there is usually little room to raise awareness on the many activities of civil society in China that address mutual and public benefit purposes in nonprofit structures that are operating largely independent from government or party interference, at least with regard to agenda setting and daily operations. The number of NGOs that have been founded without involvement of government or party authorities is hard to figure out but it is definitely a significant number of organisations and probably far more than half of the newly registered nonprofits according to estimates of interviewed Chinese experts. The number of companies founded without involvement of any government authority, however would be much higher. Government put a credit system for nonprofits in place and the interviewed expert agreed that party membership is definitely considered a plus point for nonprofits. There are also considerations to make party membership of governing body members mandatory for nonprofits. Still, direct influence of the party in agenda setting or decision-making should not be overestimated according to experts consulted in the process of this research.
Which organisations benefit most from emerging opportunities? Nonprofits with expertise in priority areas of government policies could best benefit from support and cooperation. Such areas currently include environmental education, 23 Fu (2018 Nonprofits reaching out to marginalised sections of society in the context of spreading awareness on issues of government concern would also be able to mobilise government support. The Chinese government realizes that building a welfare state and promoting ecological civilisation require collaborative efforts and the support of many social organisations with high levels of knowledge, motivation and good access to communities. Contracting out of social services to nonprofits has significantly increased over the past years. Teets & Jagusztyn (2016)   Save the Children emphasised its good cooperation with government at different levels. Government would appreciate the expertise of SCF and recognise its own limited capacities to reaching out to vulnerable children, in particular in poor provinces. In some provinces, e.g. Guizhou, there are only very few nonprofits working with children.

Comments on the Activities and Prospects of INGO Is China
Scandals of abuse of children in kindergardens and alternative care institutions were reported in the press and made the Chinese public concerned and sensitive about child protection issues. The government has become more alert on the subject and extends cooperation to organisations with good reputation.
SCF did not have to interrupt its activities in China in the context of the new legislation on the management on foreign NGOs and got its new registration.
Approval procedures were a bit cumbersome and SCF would have to cope with new reporting guidelines. The number of foreigners working for SCF in China would be more limited than before.
SCF emphasised the significant potential for fundraising in China, in particular in Beijing and Shanghai. SCF would look into opportunities to establishing a domestic foundation to strengthening its Chinese identity and to extending its fundraising activities in mainland China.

The Asia Foundation
The Asia Foundation (TAF) engages in policy dialogue and programme work on China's involvement and investment in Asia and at global scale but also addresses domestic issues. Civil society capacity building is one of the priority areas of TAF. It produced a manual for Chinese NGOs operating in Nepal in the field of humanitarian aid. Its support to local organisations extends to different The organisations see new opportunities in the field of monitoring China's engagement in regional and global structures and activities, such as Asia Investment and Infrastructure Bank, BRICS Bank and One Belt one Road Initiative (OBOR).

Conclusions: The China Case in the Context of Global Discourses
This paper underscored the academic as well as social and practical significance of civil society and the work of nonprofits in China. Discourses that merely focus on restrictions for civil society, such as the "closed space" or "shrinking space" discourses, tend to overshadow the high degree of prevalence and relevance of civil society activities in China. Nonetheless, such discourses have certainly their merits in the context of policies and legislation that curtail the freedoms of certain civil society organisations, including those working on civil and political rights issues.
In The Chinese government extends growing support to nonprofits that work on issues such as pollution monitoring, environmental and health education, child protection, support to disabled persons and elderly care. Fisher et al. (2018: p. 66) conclude in their case study on disability employment in China that "this decade has seen an increasing number of non-governmental actors such as NGOs, social entrepreneurs, digital start-ups, and e-commerce entrepreneurs by and for disabled people facilitating the expansion of disability employment.
While government administration steps up support for nonprofits and tends to recede from direct implementation of the growing number of social welfare activities and gives way to stronger involvement of nonprofits, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has expanded its supervision, control but also interaction with the still bourgeoning nonprofit sector.
Chinese nonprofits mobilise growing funding support from the corporate sector. Furthermore, major online charity platforms, e.g. Tencent Charity, and After a period of heightened concern of international NGOs in the context of new legislation, more pragmatic attitudes are setting in as most of the larger international NGOs managed to register under the new law on the Administration of Overseas NGOs. Many nonprofits in China, including some international NGOs, see their scope of action and influence expanded rather than shrunk, in particular in the context of China's ambitions for sustainable economic and social development and its fight against rural poverty, air and water pollution. The Chinese Government is contracting out more services to NGOs but also tightens political supervision and rewards affiliations to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Funding
The publication of this paper has been financially supported by the Open Access Publication Fund of Freie Universität Berlin.