Excluded from Political Task: NGO s’ Marginalized Participation in China’s Accurate Poverty Alleviation Project

Abstract

The importance of NGO s’ participation in poverty alleviation has not only been well documented by extensive studies but also confirmed by rich experience both at the international and national levels. In China, the government officially opened its resources to NGO s in combating poverty in 2005, and NGO s are expected to work as important participants in China’s accurate poverty alleviation project, which is the largest anti-poverty campaign launched by the central government since the foundation of PRC. However, empirical data in the paper shows that NGO s’ participation in this ambitious project is at best very limited. Drawing from more than 30 interviews and some other sources of data, this paper argues that it is the nature of poverty alleviation in China, which can be defined as political task, that should account for the NGO’s limited participation. To be more specific, the excessive workload assumed by the local government deprives officials’ motivation to cooperate with NGO s, excluding NGO s out of the poverty alleviation project is also a rational behavior that can avoid risks for officials. Moreover, the over-supplied financial resource also makes the participation of NGO s unnecessary. This research adds more insights to the study on NGO s in China by arguing that the state-society interaction in China is still asymmetrical.