This paper examines the behavior of NGO activists in China who work on HIV-AIDS and the environment. It finds one major difference: AIDS activists sometimes use a rights-based discourse that upsets the party-state, while environmentalists focus on advancing the agenda of the central government. But the paper notes that activists in both camps tend to police their behavior. They operate in a civil society characterized by political hierarchy and legal uncertainty. They try to gain the benefits that flow from the top of the pyramidal structure in which they operate and avoid the unpredictable punishment heaped upon those who step out of line.

There was, for many years, a vigorous debate among scholars about the nature of civil society in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Is it robust and relatively autonomous? Or is it cowed and controlled by the communist party-state? Optimists argued that the party-state does not just tolerate but actually encourages civic engagement.¹ Specifically, they trumpeted the dramatic proliferation of organizations outside the established bureaucracy to promote and help carry out different policies. In 1988, the Chinese party-state reported that there were fewer than 4,500 ‘social organizations’ registered to operate in that country; nearly twoand- a-half decades later, in 2012, there were 492,000. This includes three subcategories: social groups (shehui tuanti, of which there were 268,000), civil non-enterprise institutions (minban fei qiye danwei; 221,000), and foundations (jijinhui; about 3,000); but it does not include the many NGOs that are legally registered as businesses, or the significant (but contested) number of unregistered, truly grassroots organizations.

Pessimists, on the other hand, focused on the fact that many of China’s NGOs are actually ‘GONGOs’, Governmentally Organized Non-Governmental Organizations under the thumb of state agencies and party officials.³ Although they are being relaxed in pilot programs in designated jurisdictions, the rules for civic activism generally remain quite restrictive. To operate legally, NGOs must not only register with the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA), they also must obtain a government-affiliated sponsor (guakao danwei), a so-called ‘mother-in-law’, which is then responsible for the NGO’s behavior. In addition, groups can only register with the local MCA bureau in the jurisdiction where they are based, thereby prohibiting affiliations across geographic regions.

International Relations Journal, Chinese Characteristics, Navigating the Sloping, Civil Society in China, People’s Republic of China (PRC), Governmentally Organized Non-Governmental Organizations (GONGOs), Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA).