Regulating Public Fundraising in China: The Charity Law and Its Predecessor

Abstract

The promulgation of Chinese Charity Law in March 2016 was expected to break the long-term monopoly of governmental charities in public fundraising in China. However, governments’ regulating practices on fundraising seem to be still quite ambivalent during the post-legislation era, indicating endogenous contradictions of the Charity Law. In order to explore the legislative logic of Chinese Charity Law on public fundraising regulation, this paper, employing an analytical framework of state-society relations, historically examines all relevant laws and policies of China that deal with the fundraising regulation issue since the reform and opening-up. It is revealed that a “control thinking” of the Chinese state towards civic fundraising has been dominating the field all the way, and that the recent loosening of state control was compelled by bottom-up social dynamics. The paper argues that, under the constant influence of state control thinking, the institutional adjustments of Chinese Charity Law on opening spaces for civic fundraising tend to be quite passive and endogenously contradictory, leading to both validity and limitations of the law in practice.