NGOs: Past tense, future perfect?

Rising people's participation and better government policies have been helping the development of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in China in recent years. But since the administrative and legal systems still have some limits, NGOs cannot grow to their full potential.

In order to allow NGOs to play a bigger and more positive role in society, the government needs to establish an effective legal framework and help build a civil society, says Jia Xijin, deputy director of Tsinghua University's NGO Research Center.

The government has its own method of organizing volunteers and prefers it to volunteers organizing themselves, Jia says. Besides, to be considered legal, NGOs need to register with and essentially be run by the governments. Even though the governments cooperate with non-registered groups at times, they are prone to treating NGOs as sub-branches of government departments when it comes to providing social service.