14th Five-Year Plan for Social Organization Development: China’s Nonprofit Sector in Transition

Abstract

Abstract This article analyzes the recent 14th Five-Year Plan for Social Organization Development, which signifies the Chinese party-state’s comprehensive planning for NGOs in the years 2021–2025. By clarifying the guiding ideology, basic principles, goals, targets, and tasks, the Plan stresses a dual political–regulatory mechanism that drives China’s nonprofit sector further in transitioning from an emerging organizational field to a manufactured civil society and shifts nonprofit policy fragmentation toward institutionalization. The Plan manifests centralized means to corral NGOs into a disciplined and capable nonprofit sector that subordinates itself to and enhances the authoritarian regime. Implications drawn from this article update policy analysts on state-NGO relations and the trajectory of the nonprofit sector in China.