Unveiling the rise of Chinese volunteering from a civil and political engagement perspective

Abstract

China, a country with a long history of government-coerced labour among commoners, has seen a striking rise of volunteering in the past three decades. At the same time, civil society in China has been rigorously constrained by the authoritarian state. This makes dubious the usually supposed linkage between volunteering and civil society development. Analysing a nationwide dataset, this study examines Chinese citizens’ volunteer participation from the civil and political engagement perspective. It finds that individuals’ engagement with the state, neighbourhood, and civil society all helped predict their decision to volunteer, but only a few factors concerning engagement in the neighbourhood and civil society were positively associated with volunteer hours when they decided to volunteer. The article concludes with discussion on the rise of volunteerism in contemporary China and its implication for civil society development.