Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies Seminar Series
Prof Mark Sidel, University of Wisconsin
Managing the Foreign: The PRC draft Law on Overseas NGO Management and recent developments in China
5.30pm, Thursday 17 December 2015
Room 321, Level 3, Sidney Myer Asia Centre, University of Melbourne
Following on a number of years of increasing concern about the activities of foreign NGOs in China, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security formally proposed the Overseas NGO Management Law of the PRC 中华人民共和国境外非政府组织管理 in December 2014 and released a second draft for public comments in April of this year. The securitization of the regulatory regime for non-mainland NGOs, and arguably other non-mainland organizations, has caused deep concern among NGOs, foundations, universities, trade associations and a range of other groups, as well as among some groups in China. Over a thousand comments were filed with the National People’s Congress on the draft Law by June 4, when the comment period ended. This presentation will outline the steps that led to the drafting of this new regulatory regime, some of the thinking within the Chinese security intellectual establishment on it, and developments this year on the management of foreign NGOs and other foreign organizations in China.
Mark Sidel is Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin and consultant for Asia at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL). In 2015-16 he will also serve as the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation Visiting Chair in Community Foundations at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University. Other recent advising and consulting assignments have included the Ford, Gates and Asia foundations, SIDA/Indevelop, DANIDA, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, UNDP, and other international and donor organizations. Professor Sidel’s most recent books include Regulatory Waves: Comparative Perspectives on State Regulation and Self-Regulation in the Nonprofit Sector (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2016, ed. with Breen and Dunn); and Central-Local Relations in Asian Constitutional Systems (Bloomsbury/Hart, forthcoming 2015, ed. with Harding). Earlier Sidel worked at the Ford Foundation, serving on the team that established the Foundation’s office in China in 1987 and as the Foundation’s first program officer for law, legal reform, and nonprofit organizations based in Beijing. Later he developed and managed Ford’s programs in Vietnam, and then developed and managed a regional program on philanthropy and the nonprofit sector for Ford in South Asia (New Delhi).