How Chinese NGO’s can contribute to social harmony:
a critical analysis
--With a Case study; Elion Company and Elion Foundation
Master Thesis for the Erasmus Mundus Master of Arts in Humanitarian Action (NOHA)
The Faculty of Arts, University of Groningen, the Netherlands
Author: Bowen Du (杜博闻)
Student number: S2592460
Preface:
This dissertation is written in order to complete my Master degree in Humanitarian Action (NOHA) at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The original purpose of this master thesis is to find out how to deal with the social problems in China in a specific Chinese way.
China now has faced plenty of social problems which can be regarded as the matter of life or death. I will elaborate more details in thesis. Meanwhile, as is known to all, it may be clear to figure out the NGO development is relatively new in China. Compared with the Europe, China is lack of experiences in developing civil society.
How to manage the NGOs and how to make the best use of their functions in China should be another challenge for all stakeholders in China. And how the individuals can contribute to the topic makes the problem more complicated.
According to my studying experiences during four-year bachelor and the whole NOHA programme, no matter the theologies or methodologies are in a western way, or the majority of the ideas, viewpoints or the knowledge does not root in China. There is a Chinese proverb saying that ‘One log cannot prop up a tottering building. And it is difficult for a person to do much single-handed.’
Thus, if bonded my personal advantages, which are the western education background, with the familiar with Chinese culture, finding a Chinese culture-based
theory or a way to combine the Chinese culture, knowledge with the western theories may be possible to deal with problems in China. The thesis has
Chinese and western ideas, theories and methodologies, the solution may seem ready to come out.
Besides, during the research, I considered a lot on my career path and my future. There is no doubt that after graduation from the master program, finding a job should be the next priority for me. Compared with the other part of NOHA students who are elder and more experienced than me, I used to work in the business fields and have less experiences on NGOs fields. The process of thesis research provided me a deeper and broader overview on how NGOs work and whether I should choose it as my first job.
My internship in a NGO-related consulting company had provided me a whole sight on the Chinese NGO development and the status of industry at the same time. These kinds of knowledge and experiences are my most valuable treasure because it provides me a closer opportunity to contact with the first frontier practitioners and it may decide my career path and future in the nearest five years. Also, during the research, I have met a few NGO practitioners in China who are the native or come abroad. Their living standards, mental situations and the confidence for the Chinese future inspired me with considering whether I should contribute my youth to the field. I gained a lot.
Table of content:
Preface: ... 2
List of Abbreviations: ... 5
Research Question and Conceptual Framework: ... 6
Methodology: ... 10
Background: The social contradictions under the flourishing age in China 12 Chapter 1: Social Harmony and the role of NGO ... 17
Chapter 2: NGOs in China ... 38
Chapter 3: The case study from the Elion Group and Elion Foundation ... 59
Chapter 4：The learning outcome of case study and the conclusion ... 78
Reference: ... 96
List of Abbreviations:
IMF International Monetary Fund
NBSC National Bureau of Statistics of China LED Local Economic Development
UN United Nations
PRC People's Republic of China CSR Cooperate Social Responsibility WWF World Wildlife Fund
CPPCC Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference RMB Ren Minbi (Chinese Currency)
Research Question and Conceptual Framework:
China is overcoming a crucial social transformation, facing the historical challenge—how to build the social harmony. Nowadays, all kinds of problems come
one after another, how to ensure China’s peaceful rising, no matter inside or outside, has become a vital issue. Social harmony, which consists of economic, political as well as environmental aspects, is the good will that the majority of stakeholders in China look forward to (following chapter will describe what social harmony in details is).
However, compared with other hot topics, such as the economics, related to the enterprises or the governments, the researches on NGOs are relatively rare.
How and what can Chinese NGOs do to ensure the social harmony is what I am interested in and I hope to find a ‘combination’ way to provide an explanation on this answer.
How can Chinese NGO’s contribute to social harmony in China? This will be worked out in three parts:
1. What are Chinese NGO and the situation of them, and how do they differ from the theories on NGO
2. How to build Chinese social harmony under the guidance of Chinese culture on Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism as well as Western theories on Corporate Philanthropy’ theory.
3. How Chinese NGOs can do it.
First and foremost, in the first chapter, the definition of concept of ‘NGO’ and Civil Society’ will be applied which may pave the way to provide a basic and brief introduction of NGO and society situation in China. Explaining the situation of Chinese NGOs now, because in China the law system is particularly different from that in Europe -- it refers to Chapter one. The clarification of the basic concept of NGO becomes the priority of the research. The idea of ‘NGO’ came from the creation of United Nations in 1945. Although the explanations of NGO are not easy to define, ‘NGO’ are used to represent a term that is neither a part of a government nor a conventional for-profit business. According to these, the definition of ‘NGO’ cannot eliminate the ‘Western’ color.
While, it may not fit for the Chinese situation and that is why I use quotation marks in front of the work: NGO. It comes to define and figure out:
What is ‘NGOs’ and ‘Civil Society’ in China?
In this part, the characteristics of Chinese ‘NGOs’ will be explained followed by the opportunity and the threaten they have. It will describe the challenges and characteristics of Chinese NGOs into details.
What kind of situation they have
When it comes to how to build social harmony, only western idea may not fit for Chinese situation. In order to understand the specific characteristics which the Chinese NGOs have, it should trace to the original resource. The clearly finding of Chinese ‘NGOs’ cannot ignore the Chinese history which may represent the Chinese philanthropy work. Through combing historical and literature materials by
ideology. This guiding ideology is rooted in Chinese traditional culture rather than the
Western ‘Separation of the Three Powers’ which may suit the Chinese society better. Then, the next part should become:
Cultural foundation of the developing NGO from Chinese traditional culture
In this part, the culture foundation and traditions will be analyzed into details, which may provide a Chinese vision on the development of NGOs and civil society. The better understanding of these kinds of contents may not only contribute to understand the case but also for the future understanding of Chinese events.
Next, the western theories and modules will be hot on the heels which may provide a theoretical basis on explained the case. The model of multiple levels and the theory of Corporate Philanthropy will be used.
The reason to introduce the theories and models into this thesis is because China
is lack of these kinds of theories to scientifically explain the case as well as in Chinese law, NGOs cannot exist independently unless it has relationship with state-owned company or official agency.
And in the situation, only the state-owned ‘NGOs’ can raise money to the public. Foreign NGOs can only raise money from the enterprise, therefore, for NGOs
development, clarifying how corporate and NGO may assist each other to achieve social tasks efficiency should be important.
Case study and experiences learning
involved into local economic development under the Chinese unique political as well as social environment.
Of course, the case can reflect the theories and modules with Chinese philanthropy which has been explained in the first two parts.
Methodology:
Even though, it should be recognized that the research must be benefit from triangulation of information. In order to increase the validity and reliability of findings, the real situation do not allowed me to achieve such a methodological method.
As a result, the research questions which have already mentioned would like to use a literature-based study with the material and cases from Elion. The research materials come from variety of sources which do not include the modern resources and literature in both Chinese and English, but also from different decades.
In order to explain the situation of Chinese NGOs and clarify the situation of them, the characteristics of them, the challenges and the opportunity they get, the literature from management has been thoroughly examined.
Aiming at linking these resources with Chinese history, a few Chinese ancient resources will be used. The use of these resources may result in a little bit harder to explain in proper words but it may help the readers to feel the original meaning of Chinese traditional culture. Moreover, in addition to achieve an actual result and make the conclusion and suggestion can make real contribution to improve the situation of Chinese NGOs, plenty of data come from the Chinese official government, International Organizations and the Chinese study from other universities.
Besides, the information and data of the case came from the internship research. The internship company, Syntao, is a top consulting company in NGO as well as CSR fields. More than four months working related to Chinese top companies as well as NGOs allows collecting the data.
Background: The social contradictions under the flourishing age in China
China does have advantages that other countries did not, starting with its size population and followed by its long history. These resources provide enough physical and spiritual treasure for the future generation to overcome the challenges we may meet.
With the China’s reforming and opening up in almost thirty years, China has caught up with Japan and become the second biggest economic entity in the world (2010, IMF). During 30 years, China has already transforming from one of the poorest agriculture countries which 70% of the population were in poverty to a modern country in where the McDonald and Starbucks can see everywhere.
According to, at least, one estimate from Goldman Sachs, China's economy will surpass that of the U.S. by 2021 to 2025. Chinese government has achieved great success and gained plenty of resources to enhance Chinese influence in the world. Meanwhile, it successfully attracted worldwide attention followed by Beijing Olympic Games (2008), Shanghai World Expo (2010), Guangzhou the Asia Games (2010) as well as Nanjing Youth Olympic Games (2014). For many, the razzmatazz lit up the ‘China model’ for the entire world to admire. But as much as reforms and economic policies have paved the way for a Chinese entering way to become a great power and playing host to the events mentioned above, reforms have done less to solve a whole range of problems that have followed alongside development.
Economic Threats
Like, the booming economic development cannot cover the facts that the unbalanced developed situation, unfair distribution models and gradually increased huge income inequity are becoming one of the major threaten which may contribute to increase the number of social contradictions in China. Due to the database from International Monetary Fund (IMF) and National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBSC) (2012), the database is shown that GDP of eastern provinces are much higher than the middle and western areas. The average GDP of coastal provinces, like Zhejiang Province, is 63,125 RMB which is four times higher than remote provinces like Xizang Province, which are merely 18,000 RMB. When looking through the annual database form Compared Per Capita Annual Disposable Income of Urban Households with rural ones (Chart 1), the urban one are twice times higher than the rural one in 2008 and increased to three times higher in 2013 which illustrate that the gap between two areas are still irreparable. Besides, Gini coefficient can also reflect the Chinese society’s situation compared with other countries. The Income Gini Coefficient World Map may provide the visual impression of China. The international level of developing countries’ Gini Coefficient is 0.35 and for European areas is among 0.25. NBSC shows the official Gini’s Coefficient in China from 2003-2013 are over 0.40 and the Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs) provide much higher data which is 0.73 (The University of Beijing, 2013).
database, the huge income gap cannot be ignored and will result plenty of the social problems.
Political Threats
Besides, according to official statistics (NBSC, 2013), there were 127, 000 so-called unexpected ‘mass incident’ happened in 2010 alone - an average of over 340 per day. It is also hard to figure out the real number of unexpected mass incident from 2010 to now due to the information limitation for the ordinary people and strict security policy from the government. But as known by everyday news, no matter international or local ones, events and internet, the number of unexpected mass incidents are increasing dramatically. The contradictions between the rich and the poor, the urban areas and the rural areas are becoming poignant. The poor are suffer a lot especially when the unpleased issues happened, such as critical illness and disaster. The lack of safety and unhappiness feeling rising up among the whole society which may restrained the further development of China to some extent (Xin-Hua net, 2013). These events illustrate the unstable factors which China still have a lot part need to improve otherwise may stimulate to social events.
the politically difficult, disrespect of human rights, corruptions as well as the liberty of media come one after another. The socio-political space between state and society is such limited.
While the rapid evaluation of new media products have led to commercialization, academic research, in which have covered a wide range of sensitive topics (Zhao, 2004), and political liberalization to some extent, the absolute liberty have not achieved. Internet control, restriction and sanction are common which have not led to political satisfaction among the grassroots. The accumulation of social discontent and social unrest could cause all kinds of social problems.
Environmental Threats
(2013) has suggested that pollution spend7-10% of GDP per annual of the Chinese economy.
Therefore, China, this huge machine, need lubricant to deal with the income equality problems and the caring for the vulnerable groups, have to set up with mechanism
to solve the political, environmental and economic threats partly, which may create the social harmony . The time is calling for the solution to deal with this
Chapter 1: Social Harmony and the role of NGO
1.1 Does Social Harmony in China equals to Civil society? 1.1.1 Social Harmony in New era
Building a harmonious socialist society and achieving social harmony are the greatest task which have been put forward by the overall arrangements for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics and maintaining a well-off society in an all-round way by Chinese Party under the important instruction guidance of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and ‘Three Represents’ and comprehensively implement of the scientific concept of development.
It reflects the prosperous democratic, civilized and harmonious modern socialist country intrinsic request, embodies the common aspiration of the party of the Chinese people of all ethnic groups. Therefore, in order to realize social harmony, the
developments of Chinese NGOs need to be in line with both the Chinese Party’s ruling policy and the ordinary people’s welfare.
philanthropy from only focusing on the economic growth to overall societal balance (2006).
Moreover, the concept of scientific development aims at achieving sustainable growth in long run which has emphasized on scientific discovery and technological advance in macroeconomic. Besides, after the early 2011 when President Hu visited U.S., the idea has been developed not only to focus on the problems inside China, but also to achieve the internal cooperation and peace. Here introduced the idea of ‘Social Harmony’ is willing to explain Chinese governmental philanthropy which demonstrates the necessity and urgency to focus on these areas. The concept of ‘local community harmony’ born from the concept of ‘Social Harmony’, which represents all the stakeholders in micro fields are willing to deal with the problems and achieve the sustainable development. Because in the macro level, the topic such as how to achieve ‘Social Harmony’ is too broad to focus on, local community harmony which may aim at realizing the social, economic and environment sustainable development in local community is easy to analysis that in specific case and environment.
1.2 Cultural foundation of the developing NGO from Chinese traditional culture
When explain why the society should develop NGO, researchers mostly focus on the perspective of politics, economic reasons or legal basis, but rarely interested on cultural foundations which support the development of NGOs in China. Especially, it believes that if wants to solve the Chinese problems, the solution should root in the
understanding of Chinese culture.
of ‘Public Affairs’, more theoretical basis is brought directly from the west. The localization of the theoretical basis is also calling for learning the Chinese culture. China has gradually achieved its own special, complicated and abundant cultural expressions through thousands of years. These diverse expressions root in the Chinese traditional culture and also enrich progressively because of the culture is advancing with the times. However, for the pursuit of happy life is an enduring topic through Chinese history. ‘Social Harmony’ can be summarized as the epitome of what the Chinese pursuit for thousand years, and has been developed as ‘future guide’ at present.
Moreover, the Chinese traditional culture consists of plenty of aspects, just like a hundred flowers in bloom, like ten thousand horses galloping ahead. While the Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism should be regarded as the most influential ideological roots for philanthropy field. Accordingly, as the one of important parts of socialist or communist development for modern Chinese society, several of problems have been put forward, such as how to guarantee the harmonious development among the economic, political and environment and how to solve these problems should be taken into consideration. The thesis is looking forward to solve these problems by
tracing back to the Chinese traditional culture in order to fit the Chinese situation.
1.2.1 Confucianism
of Chinese feudalism. And three representative ideas which born from Confucianism can contribute to enrich the charity thought and give theoretical basis to implement the Chinese NGOs’ works (Weber, 1953).
Confucianism may help to deal
with the relationships among different stakeholders, especially for the political purpose. To sum up, these three ideas are 1. The Mercy; 2. The Cosmopolitism; 3. The
Righteousness
The ‘Mercy’ (‘Ren’)
The ‘Mercy’ should be regarded as the fatal part of Confucianism and the idea of ‘Mercy’ has become the fundamental idea of the whole Confucianism frameworks. What is ‘Mercy’ in Confucianism? The first definition of ‘Mercy’ is described as a kind of relationship among people. Confucius developed this kind of idea and defined ‘Mercy’ as kindness, as loving people and also considered ‘Mercy’ as the human nature.
The fundamental assumption of Confucianism is that it believes in the goodness of human. It can be reflected on several of aspects, such as the love between father and
The Cosmopolitism (The ‘Da Tong’ World)
The thought of People-oriented and the cosmopolitism are derived by benevolence thought and the mercy which may fill the treasure-house that contains the charitable consciousness. Thus, laying a foundation for the people-oriented thoughts of the Confucian benevolent governance enforcement, promoting the ancient charity, especially the development of official charitable affairs can reflect the idea. Confucianism based on the theory of ‘benevolence’ and the mercy, which develops the caring objects from not only relatives to the normal people as well, gradually completed the cosmopolitism idea in Confucian. It advocated monarch to implement policy, which caring more on people and taking actions to ensure the basic needs of the public.
The Righteousness
The Confucian’s thought of ‘valuing loyalty over money’ directly promotes the development of the charitable consciousness. Confucius believed that gentleman should be headed by righteousness and valued loyalty over. Mencius advocated handling interpersonal relationships on the basis of the ‘righteousness’. He suggests people to divide into gentleman or villain by whether they believe in righteousness or benefit. In Confucianism, the gentle man should have to stand for the righteousness rather than the benefit. Even though, when the gentleman faces the situation that the righteousness and the benefit clash, he should sacrifice himself in order to stick to his righteousness. Under the influence of this kind of combination, in the face of righteousness and benefit trade-offs, Confucius teaches people to take righteousness and involved in dealing with poverty alleviation and trapped, caring for the weak.
1.2.2Buddhism
The main contribution of Buddhism may reflect on how to deal with social conflicts among the public. It suggest the public treat others with ‘Mercy’ .
which influences more on Tibet region.
‘Mercy’ as the core of Buddhist awareness and culture in its secularization, life of the process, the generation and development charity awareness had a significant impact. The definition of ‘Mercy’ in Buddhism can be explained in ‘the love to all living creatures and the sympathy to all suffering’. According to the Great Treatise on the Perfection of Wisdom (Da Du Zhi Lun, AC700), ‘Mercy’ means that being happy because of the happiness from all the living creatures and putting out all the pain from the sufferings. Buddhism advocates on donation and regarded donation as one of the most important path to become a true Buddhist.
Besides, Buddhism believes in all the living creatures are sharing the same living energy and regards as an integral whole. Furthermore, Buddhist enlightenments the public by persuading them followed the self-discipline introspective and urging the people overcome their desires to help others in their everyday life. These urgent can make for the social harmony which the public will decrease the conflicts inside and reduce the dependency on material. On the foundation of ‘Mercy’, the holistic idea
as well as the reduce desire of material, helping others is the basic actions under the influence of Buddhism.
1.2.3 The Taoist
Meanwhile, Taoist may be one of the thought, which explained clearly how human being can coexist with nature.
the founders of Taoism ideology, they believe that people should be ascetic in order to break away from the suffering reality and to receive the happiness forever. Taoism also believes all the subjects have their own objective developing and changing rules which has been regarded as the ‘Road’ (Qiyong, 2008). Human beings should follow the objective ‘Road’ and should not intervene. Taoism also suggests to create the harmony relationship between the human beings and the environment, the human being should have to listen to the ‘voice’ from the environment and follow the rules of the nature. Moreover, Taoism believes in the human being is one of the parts of the nature and the whole world. The best situation of human beings, especially on spiritual sides, is ‘syncretism between heaven and man’. Therefore, the Taoism may have better impact on the relationship between the human being and the nature.
To conclude, the culture foundation in China calls for the no matter the ruling class but the ordinary people to put their efforts to build a harmony society.
However, it should be stressed that the government have to take the much more responsibility according to both the ethical and relational reasons which may strengthen its ruling legitimacy. And it is obvious that the different three cultures all talking about things related with the relationship between individuals and the society. The difference
is that the Confucianism looking more on the ‘human being’ in which they discuss more about the behavior and relationships for the one involved in society. Besides, for the Buddhism, it focuses more on how to achieve a non-suffering situation and to be mercy participating in the charity work. When comes to the Daoism, it provides a systemically theory and methodology to suggest how human being be accompanied with nature and achieve sustainable.
beings, society and the nature to create the harmony society in modern times.
1.2 Multiple level and multiple actors model: How NGOs contribute to local economic development (LED)
It used to be too complicated if we want to explain how different actors contribute to LED in different levels. Therefore, it will explain that social harmony must be studied at the local level and that in that process how NGO’s could be relevant.
While, the regional economic develop model from Stimson (2009), the develop Helix model from Pennink (2012) and International Value Chain make it possible and clear. The Helix Model can be regarded as a good model to explain how different actors contribute to the local economic growth and how NGOs contribute to LED as well as social harmony. Moreover, learning from the studies from Pennink (2012) whose cases and research in Indonesia and Tanzania, the specific Chinese model is built to explain the methodology.
Stimson et al. (2009) created a model for achieving regional economic development with the focus on endogenous variables. The module explained the NGOs can involve in not only the local level economics but also much more actors and levels can be involved to create both LED and social harmony.
perform. The leadership and entrepreneurship comes to the second and the third variables. They are closely related but not that synonymous. It may suggest that effective leadership encompasses entrepreneurship. Leadership can be acted on the individual level while in the case of regional economic development; it is more likely to be the expression of the collective action of a society or a group of people. The NGOs, where is the fourth variable, come relevant. The NGOs can show not only their leadership in dealing with the local issues but also their familiarities with the local community. The leadership and personal charisma from the NGOs’ leaders can also contribute to the local economic development. Because the NGO leaders may improve the local situations and environments, such as the human rights situations in local communities. And always, institutions enhance the soft powers like education can improve the level of resource utilization, which can indirectly influence the market.
Figure 1 Achieving regional economic development with the focus on endogenous variables ( Source: Stimson, Stough& Roberts, 2006) Source : Stimson ea….
significant findings from the researches and studies are proved the combination of actors no matter on the local level or national levels may function as a motor for local economic development. In these combinations, Pennink (2014) suggested that ‘the local government was involved as an active partner in almost all of the cases, but it was also clear that it was never the local government alone.’
Besides, when looking into the function of the Helix model, all of the three actors cannot be ignored. The Figure showed how Pennink (2014) explained the relations among government, business and Universities on National Level.
Figure 2 The development of LED module
For the development of the module, the institutions can be divided into government institutions and non-government institutions. And part of the leadership and majority of the entrepreneurship can be merged into business flied as well as versa the non-government flied, which can be shown on the figure 3 as below.
and how to realize a meaningful cooperation? Then, it moves to why and how enterprise needs to cooperate with NGOs and the benefit of it.
1.4 What is ‘Corporate Philanthropy’ and how does this contribute to social harmony
1.4.1The definition of ‘Corporate Philanthropy’
According to Porter, the definition of ‘Corporate Philanthropy’ is:
Figure 3 The overlap of Social and Economic Benefits
In form of using cooperate facilities or volunteer time offered by company’s employees can also be regarded as a term of corporate philanthropy, which becomes the other main methods followed by corporate cash donation. The attribute of corporate philanthropy is obvious compared with standard philanthropy. Although, corporate philanthropy focuses on the treating the cause of a problem or issue instead of the symptom which is the same as the standard one, corporate philanthropy should have to do its activities by corporation directly or a corporation’s own non-profit entity. The majority funding of corporate philanthropy is from the corporate contributions and are treated as a business expense always.
opportunities from the reality. The core idea of Corporate Philanthropy is to create shared value among the all the social subjects, especially the company and the rescued objects. However, the understanding of how to manage corporate philanthropy is not that sufficient.
On the one hand, several managers believe that the corporate philanthropy is only ‘the right things need to do’ and refuse linked with business. The limitation of this kind of view is that it inevitably reduces the social impact of the giving from the companies. If ‘doing the right things’ is the only motivation to do the philanthropy, why companies should cut a lot of checks to a lot of charities.
Therefore, the priority of Corporate Philanthropy is to maximize the social value created which include the both economic achievements but also social benefits, such as environmental protection, and these social benefits can benefit to social harmony as well. Porter suggested that: ‘if philanthropy is really for marketing
enhancement of reputation from corporate philanthropy. Therefore, the corporate philanthropy has become the public-relation matters here; the branding development may not result immediately such as the advertisement but can have a long-run impact on customers which will result as a buying preference when the customers do the decision. To conclude, the philanthropy actions should have to link together a lot with their economic purpose and these actions cannot only improve their economic situation, but enhance their social statues.
Corporate Philanthropy can be regarded as another efficient way to manage the corporate resources on social welfares, which will contribute to social harmony as well. The resources contain with both the hardware and software. The hardware is
not only for the money but like the factory buildings. Meanwhile, the software is much more complicated and significant. Such as intellectual property rights, special technologies, human resources or even the brand value. Corporate foundation or corporate-owned NGO are good ways to combine these software and hardware resources together. They are also the other ways of business sector to participate in NGO field, compared with direct donation. Before, we look into the how corporate philanthropy contribute to local economic development or social harmony, the difference between corporate social responsibilities (CSR) and create shared value should be deeply analyzed. It suggests a transparency from a single duty or public relation matter to corporate strategy.
It may be obvious that corporate social responsibilities (CSR) have getting great deal of attention these days which results the concept always overshadow the other concept: create shared value (CSV). The reason why improved CSR to CSV is because if all the stakeholders can take an agreement on social welfare, it will help to achieve social harmony.
CSR can be a confusing term, but can also be summarized into three aspects: First and foremost t, it should have to obey the spirit of the law – being ethical, transparent, fair, and having integrity. It should be mentioned that is not philanthropy but might be vital for all companies at the same time. It is just fulfilling the basic conditions of operating as a business within society (Porter, 2006). Secondly, the other aspect of CSR is aimed at mitigating or remedying the harm which the companies do, especially the environmental harm. Those actions can show the responsibility of the company but clearly, those cannot be regarded as philanthropy as well. It is a basic condition of being a good business. Then, the notion of sustainable development should come into the end as the third part of CSR which related to mitigating harm. Although the notion of this term have not been well defined, the general idea is that a company should make good use of natural resources that cannot deplete or at least deplete them in necessary situation.
philanthropy happened. The corporates cannot work in isolation from their surroundings. The competition among companies has gradually transformed from efficiency-based into knowledge-based competition. Recently, the competitiveness relies on the productivity whether the labor, capital and natural resources can be well used or not. Companies cannot operate isolated without social connections. Productivity depends on the situation of the workers who are healthy, safe, educated, decently housed, and motivated by a sense of opportunity. To be honest, the capacity of the companies depends more on the environment or the circumstances where the companies has located. Taken education as the example, it should always be recognized as the social problems while the education level of the indigent workforce may affect the corporate’s competitive advantages in a long term. It can be illustrated that the relations between social improvement and economic benefits is positive correlations. If the business wants to achieve more economic benefits, the more social improvement related to the company should carry out.
To conclude, Companies can take CSR into an admirable aim but should clearly recognize it is not corporate philanthropy. Compared with the introduction of ‘Corporate Philanthropy’ and ‘Create Shared Value’, even though they shared a few ideas like ‘Doing well by doing good’, Mark Kramer (2006) suggested that the major difference between two sides is that CSR focused more about the responsibility while CSV is to create value. The exhibit ‘Distinguishing Corporate Social Responsibility from Philanthropy’ below can show the clear summarized distinction. Just like Porter said:
‘As practiced today, much of corporate social responsibility is defensive. It is about preventing abuses or mitigating harm. Corporate philanthropy in contrast, is essentially affirmative. It is about using corporate money and their resources to create social value.’
1.4.3 Created Shared value: NGOs & Corporation
As mentioned before, social and economic objects cannot be separated or distinct. Although shared value may focus more on the business field, the discussion of it gradually penetrate to unconventional source: NGOs. Non-profits are seeking for an important role in the shared value system, which result that part of them transform their operating model from grantee to business partner. Then, the question has been put forwards that: how can companies and NGOs partnered each other to come up with sustainable, modified solutions to deal with complex problems?
market failures. However, the idea of ‘Create Share Value’ provides more possibility for both ends corporate together.
On the NGOs’ side, NGOs can provide tremendous shared value partnership opportunities to companies, such as these organizations can figure out the unexploited market segments and untagged suppliers. Shared value helps NGOs to create its innovative business models in order to achieve a more sustainable development than the traditional approaches. Moreover, NGO partners assist the companies to gain insight into the diverse, complex communities. And the partnerships between NGO-Corp. which may create shared value can be achieved by three different methods. The three ways have been mentioned before but the corporation can enrich the connotations. Both Enterprises and NGOs can benefit from it.
corporations can have the good partners like NGOs, they can remove the barriers and operate under a better environment.
To conclude, the interaction between the NGOs and the companies to find a sharing value can both benefit from each other. The sharing value and these benefits may contribute to social harmony. The companies can receive the local data,
the market feedback and find a partner together with them to enter the tough market. Meanwhile, together with NGOs may contribute to the reputation of the company as well. When the company can run well, they may have more energy as well as attention on social welfare. For NGOs, they can get the resources and also donation from companies to develop themselves. The more resources they receive, the more social welfare they may create.
Chapter 2: NGOs in China
1.1What is NGOs, Civil society
NGOs are widely used to describe a whole range of different organizations which do not belong to either government or profit-orientation organizations. According to the definition from UN, the term represents all organizations that are not governments or were not created by intergovernmental decision in UN system (UN 2004, p. 13). Lester M. Salamon (2006, p. 12-13) also provide a more precise definition suggesting that NGOs are civil society organizations. He suggested that
‘Civil society organizations to be formally organized (but not necessarily registered), private and not belonging to state or government (but possibly receiving government support), not-for-profit in character (but may be generating profits for organizational development), and are self-governed and based on voluntary participation’
assumption of ‘Separation of Three Powers1’. The three parts cooperate with each other
but they also have clear borderline among them. The government, civil society and business parts should take their own responsibilities and at the meantime, restricted or balanced the power of the other parties. There is no doubt that NGOs is a part of civil society. And this idea born from 1990s when Edwards (2005, p.2 and 13) regarded NGOs as the center of international political discourses. However, Willetts (2002, online version) also believed that there is still imbued with contradictory and contested meanings.
Historically, the notion of a civil society is often traced back to the rise of a capitalist economy, separation of state and church, and the establishment of bureaucratic systems in the forming of modern Europe (Brook and Frolic 1997, p. 8-9, and Frolic 1997, p. 53). Therefore, it represents that the core idea of civil society is where the individuals and the groups can achieve their social shared benefits and interests. It is not primarily as part of state or government, or as part of family or private business which is always understood as something separate from and often in opposition to the state (Brook and Frolic 1997, p 9).
1 The separation of three powers: The idea comes from the separation of powers which is both a
The brief model of government, business part and civil society can be found in chart 1 blow.
And it illustrates the normal relationships between three parties. Outsider the government and business part is the room for civil activities. While, there are spaces where both of them or three of them need to cooperate as well as intertwined with each other.
1.2 Chinese NGOs and Civil Society in China
As known to all, China, as an authoritarian state, ruled by China’s Communist Party in a one- party-system. As a centralism country for thousand years, the civil society and NGOs have not achieved a very fatal functions of China’s socio-political history. The government tends to have more powers rather than the other two sectors.
From the historical respective, the relief works have closely associated with superstructure and the government, or can be regarded as the ruling class, grasped the majority of powers in planning and managing the resources. Still now, the Chinese government-led charitable work hold the dominating place in China. Compared with
Government(State)
Business Part(Market) Civil Society
Europe in where the government power used to be challenged by religions and central governments’ political power in each country always be limited by the local government, Chinese central government gained much more political power which ensure the relief works can get the absolutely supported from the central government. The example from the two period time of Han dynasty (AC 206-AC220) can explain the situation. During that period, Deng Yunte, who is a scholar in the period of the Republic of China has stated in his book ‘A history of disaster relief in China’ that there were more than three hundred and seventy-five time of disaster happened which included eight one times of drought, seventy-six times of the flood and sixty-eight times of earthquake (Rothschild, 2012).
business part and civil society in China is showed in Chart 2.The development of NGOs in China is not going smoothly and it has experienced several historical periods.
In modern time, the period of the republic of China is the time when the NGOs had achieved a short-time booming development and it was result from the weak of the central government political power, Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the World War
Two. After the reestablishments of PRC, especially during the Mao regime, the Great Cultural Revolution2 led the society separated into two parts. All the people were crazy
on ‘Class Struggle’ which resulted that the civil society was withered and all the
2 The Great Cultural Revolution: The Great Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China was a
period of widespread social and political upheaval which had result in national chaos disarray on politic, education and economy. It had swept the whole Chinese society during 1966 to 1976. The effects of Cultural Revolution is immeasurable. During the Cultural Revolution, the majority of the Economic activity was halted and the railway system was in turmoil. Moreover, during that ten years, the whole education system was brought to be halt. All the people in China had to learn the thought of Mao Zedong, and his thought had become the central operative guide to all things in China at that time. The Cultural Revolution also brought to the forefront numerous internal power struggles within the Communist party.
Chinese
Government(State)
Business
Part(Market)
Chines
Civil
Society
activities were under the strictly circumscribed (He 2003, p. 116).
Fortunately, Xiaoping Deng who proclaimed the opening-up policies in the late 1970s not only provided huge opportunities to business part but also faced the spring of associational growth and emergence of non-government sectors. However, the Tiananmen demonstration restrained the development of the non-government organizations because after that event, the more restrictive regulations were settled in order to ensure the legitimacy of Communist party as well as the dominate power of central government(Wang Ming 2007b, p. 97-98, and He 2003, p. 121-122). Then, the World Conference for Women that Beijing host in 1995 is another turning point which had stimulated the development of NGOs. At that time, the conference firstly allowed Chinese political leaders understand the idea of NGOs and recognized their existence.
Gradually, the academia devoted to NGO and civil society related research in the following years. The data of the number of NGOs in China from 1949 to 1987 is not that available for the public. While, if analyzing the data which is available from 1988-2013, as seen the data from NBSC, there was only 4,446 NGOs in 1988 with the booming developed to 180,583 in 1995. In 8 years the number of NGOs successfully achieved quadruple improvement.
After that, Falun Gong movement3 made the Chinese political leaders looked
through and reconsidered the social activities and organizations. Followed by other international events, like color revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, Chinese government alerted the activism from NGOs and put more surveillance, sanctions into forward as well as closing several NGOs in the end (Ma 2006, p. 87, Wang Ming 2007b, p. 98-99, and Saich 2006c, p. 40). Even further, in order to ensure
the social harmony and reduce the social uncertainty during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, BBC News and USA Today both widely reported ‘restrictions and sanctions against NGOs and a whole range of civil society activities.’ (USA Today 2008.07.12, and BBC News 2008.04.02). These all add up to a picture of enduring limitations and restrictions to general freedom and human rights in China.
The CIVICUS State of Civil Society Report is ‘written by civil society, for civil society’ which aims at bring attention to the state of global governance. From 2004, the report affirmed the success of Chinese economic development and at the meantime, it stated that that ‘freedom of assembly and association is severely restricted’ (CIVICUS Report 2006, p. 37 and 40) and ‘have weak human rights and social accountability standards, being more permissive of repressive states than current lenders’ (CIVICUS Report 2014, P 48).
As for provide more descriptions and details about how civil society in China, Chinese scholars has provided several modifying labels to illuminate constitute civil society in China. ‘State- led’, ‘semi-civil’, ‘embedded’, ‘incorporated’, ‘contained’, ‘nascent’ and ‘limited’ are becoming the most popular adjective to describe the characteristic of Chinese NGOs. (Frolic 1997, p. 48 and 56, Kang and Feng 2006, p. 132, Ma 2006, p. 202, Unger and Chan 1995, and Ho and Edmonds 2007, p. 334). What all these labels try to catch are the ample signs of non-governmental activity in a setting that still poses many restrictions. Many China-scholars have simply refrained from applying one definition or framework on civil society and state-society relations in China, arguing this is ‘a country where multiple models of state-society relations may be operating at the same time’ (Saich 2000, p. 138). Although labels such as ‘state-led’, ‘semi-civil’, ‘embedded’ and ‘corporatist’ work well as descriptions of the authoritarian characteristics of civil society in China, they do less to describe the many socio-political activities taking place outside the immediate control of government or without interference from it (Saich 2000, p. 138 and 139, and Howell 2004, p 164) But like many studies of Chinese NGOs, NGOs exist in China but that we still know rather little about them (Morton 2005, p. 521, Ma 2006, p. 3, and Deng 2007, unpaged).
civil society are growing into a remarkable political power and also have real influence on society issues.
Such as Green Peace in China, it appeals Chinese government to achieve Annul-environment report transparency and exercise the power of criticism and supervision. After 3 years’ efforts, Chinese government final started to appeal what they have done on environment issues. Successfully, Greenpeace has become one of the most influential environmental non-government organizations in China.
Compared with the two conclusions，it seem to be different, Chinese government controlled too much on a few sensitive topics which is not related to the human rights, political revolutions or ideological problems.
1.3 The characteristics of Chinese NGOs and civil society
The most notable characteristic of Chinese civil society is the government-led social affairs happened frequently in China. According to the discussion above, the
point is not to make questions about independence and autonomy from state and government less relevant, but rather to acknowledge that the political space open to non-governmental activities is restricted, but not non-existent. However, the borderlines of three realms which is showed in paragraph 2 suggested that the governmental influence is hard to ignore although in the non-governmental fields. Conceptualization of society and civil society as operating fully separable and independent from the state or the economy makes little practical sense in China.
have to protect the people. Therefore, he appointed a central office called ‘Si Tu’ which specially focus on philanthropy (Lin,2003). He also suggested to apply six policies to protect the citizens. The main idea of the six policies are caring for the vulnerable people included the child, the old, the poor, the illness, the disabled and let the rich live in peace as well. These intellectual traditional policies have constituted the fundamental framework of Chinese traditional charity system. Moreover, just like the Book of Rites explained that the traditional charity culture aims to
“create a society in where the old can spend the rest of life by comfort, the adult can make best use of their talents and the youth can receive the education at the same time the widower, the widow, the orphan, the childless, the disabled and the illness will be provided the reasonable care.”
Guan Zhong take the Shan Dynasty as the example to criticized how charitable works influence the politics. He suggested his empire Qi Huangong that the charitable works like providing the basic needs when the people are suffering will decide the public relationship between the ruling class and the people. If the public relationship continuously become tensely, the unrest will appear and the legitimacy of the ruling class will be challenged. Therefore, during warring stated period, the government sufficiently looked into keep the charity offices and charitable works operating smoothly.
the Waring State times, there is no real NGO work and all the charitable works were done under the government.
When moving to Han dynasty, Buddhism became popular in East-Han and took the most responsibility in the charity works. Because the empire at that time believe in Buddhism, the government support the temple and the monk to do the charity works by donating plenty of lands and tax free policy. It is hard to say the government have few effects on Buddhism’s charity works because it is the main stakeholder and the government controlled the Buddhism through regarding it as the ‘State Region’. During the Han dynasty for hundred years, Buddhism podcasting several main idea such as ‘Mercy’, insisting on killing and encourage to disaster relief by donation. The Buddhist organization and how does this contribute to social harmony …..
Chinese NGO and civil society have been limited and restricted but mostly, there are still largely non-governmental and civil exist.
2.3.2 The International Character of Chinese NGOs
NGOs had achieved a significant success. Cheng Du, as the main city in South Eastern of China, had one Christen and two Catholicism charitable organizations which aimed at protecting the orphans during the war in 1939. The mixture of Chinese and western culture in Chinese NGOs contribute to deal with the challenging works happened in China.
Ultimately, the lack of developing NGOs start from 1949 to 1980 result in huge gap between the social needs and the level of development of Chinese NGO works. After the new China was founded, all the NGOs had been cancelled or absorbed in government-led charitable system. In 1950, the new stated that ‘The decision about dealing with the charitable organization in cultural education, relief agencies and religious groups by American allowance’ marked the coming of winter season for Chinese NGOs. Followed by several historical events, such as The Great Cultural Revolution4 and Cold-war, as the main part of the communism, China had abandoned
all the western ideas without selections. The existence of Chinese NGOs disappeared and the civil society became ‘silence’.
Fortunately, in the late seventies, China has carried economic system reform, political reform and social reform which has provided the development of China's non-profit the necessary conditions. With the idea of ‘market economy’ instead of ‘planned economy’ in the economic system reform, the government have made the society started to have free resources and gradually relax policies from top to bottom, which created
44 The Great Cultural Revolution: The Great Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China
some of pure spaces for Chinese NGOs. Because of the needs for communication between the government and the market intermediary, the government consciously cultivates many official NGOS.
Putting forward of the idea of ‘Small government, Big society’ by Chinese government can be seen as the symbol of the society took over the management responsibility from the government. To added, foreign investment came back and used to become the vital donors in Chinese NGOs these years. Before 2014, International foundation supported, experiences and networks from INGO in China are usually taken into the most important assistant to Chinese NGOs because latter mainly depended on foreign donors especially (CIVICUS Report, 2006). The media joked this kind information that the local NGOs had been feed by foreign ‘Wet Nurse’ (China Daily, 2007).
Then, it comes to other characteristics. The NGOs’ leader has much more importance rather than them in other countries. NGOs are regarded as the dependency of the famous NGO leaders because of leaders’ personal charisma and resources may be the matter of life or death for the NGO.NGO leaders should have to own considerable social capital which can be represented as the political prestige and social connections among the world.
Therefore, as Kang and etc., said that the NGO leaders have media background become the comment phenomena in China. (Kang and Feng 2006, p. 139, Ma 2006, p. 121-125, Saich 2000, p. 137-138, CIVICUS Report 2006, p. 29 and 69, Ho 2001, p. 914, and Yang 2005, p. 60). Even though, the charming and capable NGOs leaders do not change the situation that the majority of Chinese NGOs are still weak as well as fragile in which are reflected on Chinese NGOs are not only lack on the finance support, human resources but also standards for management, decision-making, reporting and auditing (Kang and Feng 2006, p. 129 and 136, and Ma 2006, p. 198)
.The leader may become the communication bridge to help no matter the government nor the public to understand each other, which may contribute to the social harmony as well
2.3.4 The emergency of Cooperate Foundation
the concept of cooperate foundation is new and needs much more explanation!
Guangdong, Shang Hai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Henan provinces. Besides, Shanghai has a larger number of corporate foundations, compared with Beijing in where has the most number of NGOs in China. The seven regional contained the majority number of corporate foundations (including national and local) and reached 200, accounting for about 70% of the total. And these places were mostly in eastern coastal provinces area, the more economically developed regions.
So as to the amount of funding and number of projects in various fields, it was found that the largest average investment in the children-related projects, reaching 8.616 million yuan, followed by public services, reaching 3.314 million yuan. Compared with public safety, arts and culture, which were least investment field, with an average of 10 million or less. and how does this contribute to social harmony …..
2.4 The challenges of Chinese NGOs hinder social harmony
2.4.1The tradition of paternalistic government-led style suppress the NGO development
The first official record of charitable work in Chinese history is dated from the warring stated period. Along with the Chinese history, each dynasty has developed the charitable works in order to assert its dominance as well as caring for the people which objectively advanced the development of charitable works.
charitable works result that there is less space for the public to develop civil society to respond for the social issues.
The government take too much responsibilities and the public is used to ‘waiting’ the government to deal with the problem. The public is lack of the ability to be independent and solve the problem by themselves. In the late federal period especially on the Qing dynasty, the ruling class treated the public organization strictly because the ruling class was come from a minority party and they had to prevent the Han nationality to overthrown its political status.
Only when on the ruling class liberal political which means it becomes wisdom or have more ‘mercy’ on the bottom class, the political system may help to social harmony. Otherwise, it will not.
2.4.2 Complex definition obscure the idea of ‘NGO’
The definition of NGOs in China is complex. Chinese scholar Jia Xijin (2014) suggests that it might be useful to conceptualize Chinese NGOs and relations between the state, the society and the marketplace in less rigid terms than the classical. Jia Xijin suggests that we take the definition of Lester M. Salamon described above and use it to study Chinese organizations that are largely non-governmental, formally organized, not for profit, public value oriented, self-governed and based on voluntary participation(Jia Xijin 2004, p. 7-13).
hui tuan ti ‘社会团体’) and private non-enterprise organizations. Social organizations generally include associations, federations, chambers of commerce, foundations, academies, research societies, friendship group, etc. With the exception of foundations, they usually only offer service for their members. Private non-enterprise units are composed of private schools, hospitals, welfare facilities, community service centres, research institutes, etc. They provide services for the public. These two kinds of organizations are analogous to NGOs generally accepted by the international society.
The misunderstanding of NGO may impede the development of NGOs in China. First and the foremost, The government will not know what kind of works the NGOs can do, and the government may not know how and when to cooperate with NGOs to achieve social benefits. Besides, the public may not know how to clarify what is real NGOs. The public can not involve in the proper social events and cannot contribute to social harmony. Moreover, the definition related to law issues as well. The complex definition may reflect the Chinese law has not pay more attention on NGOs fields. No matter local NGOs or International NGOs, the complex definition may result in fuzzy positioning and prevent NGOs to play their strength. And these drawbacks will bad for achieve social harmony.
2.4.3 The concept of Wealth is not conducive to the development of NGOs
their wealth by illegal way. Coupled with the idea of hating mentality, like ‘robbed the rich and help the poor’, the rich are afraid to show their wealth and do not want to participate in the donation activities. Besides, there is a kind of voice urged that the rich must contribute to charities and donate their money to the public, which force the rich bear the enormous pressure. Such immoral and illegal requirement confused the public, and result that everyone is afraid to invest becauseif investigation or donation happen, they may become the target. Moreover, donation is a rigid career, once invested, it is difficult to lower the standard or exit. On the other hand,the rich have not recognized how to deal with their wealth properly. The inappropriate actions like flaunting the considerable wealth are easy to figure out. These concepts and actions are subject to the stage of social development and have to wait.
Furthermore, NGO development in China is noted to be quite uneven, with a high concentration of organizations in a few active provinces (CIVICUS Report 2006, p. 27 and 32). General knowledge of NGOs in mainstream society is considered to be very limited. Another widely identified characteristic of Chinese NGOs is their carefulness and general modesty in choices of strategy and approach. Advocacy oriented NGOs are few (Wexler, Xu and Young 2006, p.124, and CIVIVUS Report 2006, p. 45). Most NGOs are typically known for going to great lengths to maintain good relations with government and are generally seen shying away from issues regarded as political or otherwise difficult to deal with (Ma 2006, p. 10, Ho 2007, p.193-195, and Yang 2005, p. 52).
International NGOs operating in China are also known for keeping relations with the Chinese government as good as they can possibly be, and therefore take very careful steps not to provoke and to stay within politically safe limits (Li Wenwen 2004, p. 302, and CIVICUS Report 2006, p. 52).
2.4.6 Legal barriers limited the development of NGOs
The legitimacy of Chinese NGO is also a problem. Until now, there is not a Charity Law in China to specifically clarify the NGOs rights and obligations in China. Furthermore, the registration of NGO in China has been strictly controlled. According to Corporate Registration Management Regulations of PRC (社团登记管理条例), Chinese government applies double system management in registration of NGOs. It means If NGOs want to have legal status in China, they need find a stated-own organization to become their competent authorities, which is just like to find a ‘mother-in-law’ to monitor. And then, the NGO can go to finish the registration.
Both of the Ministry of Civil Affairs of PRC on where the NGO registered and the competent authorities have to take the responsible of NGO they allowed. The much more workloads and the political risks prevent stated-own organization and ministry to support Chinese NGOs. Only the one who has closer relations with governments or have political background can registered successful which disguisedly become a way to control the NGOs and cannot help NGOs to become real independently. In order to avoid these legal barriers, a great number of real NGOs in China registered as business organizations under the Industrial and Commercial bureau.
2.4.7 The lack of talents in NGOs field restrained the development in China
The result comes from two main aspects. On the one hand, it is obvious that due to the late introduction of NGO to China, the education accompanied with the development of NGO is rare in China. The existence of Chinese NGO in current time is limited, therefore, it need time to cultivate the specific talents in NGO fields and let them gain the experience.
On the other hand, the low income standard should become the main barrier to the NGO fields. According to the Article twenty-ninth of Regulation on Foundation Administration of PRC, the wages and welfare of the staff of a foundation and the expenses of administration shall not exceed 10% of the total expenditure of the current year.
The low average income of NGOs cannot attract the proper amount of talents works for NGOs to create social benefits, which in the end is also bad for social harmony.
2.5 Conclusion:
harmony.
At the current stage of social development, the NGOs are suffering a lot and the difficulties may be summarized into three parts. First and foremost, the government and the Party may become the obstacle. They are not only under the surveillance of the government, but the legal status are limited by the law and hardly getting the allowance to start up. The Party are afraid of losing the dominate position and ensure the social stable therefore, it may not allow NGOs as the unpredicted power to exist. Secondly, the NGOs themselves also have plenty of problems. The main barrier, which may hinder their development, come from the lack of talent. The poor treatment, low social welfare cannot attract talents involved in NGO fields and increase the phenomena like brain drain. Moreover, the traditional Chinese culture lead the public misunderstand the modern NGOs’ function and the traditional social relation of kinship tie result that the indifference of the whole society. The challenges of Chinese NGOs cannot be overcome in short term.
Chapter 3: The case study from the Elion Group and Elion Foundation
The importance of NGOs will be widely recognized. With the booming emergency of middle class in China, the new government has gradually changed their intervener image and provide more space to the civil society as well as the international influence, the huge population in China will urge the NGOs to involve in the everyday life to the public and Chinese NGOs will face their spring in the future.With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, the shortage contradiction of the resource: land increasingly prominent. Reforming governance desert land and the development of sand industry will create new effective living space and should be encouraged. More companies also realized the importance of both harmony development on economic and environments. They are willing to do something to change the domestic environment, which will help them get more benefits in the end.
In recent years, international attention to the problems of desertification is also increasing. In May 2012, the secretariat of ‘The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’ called on the international community to achieve land degradation area of zero growth in 2030. The reality of degradation urged the public focus on the field and calling for the solutions.
Therefore, to find a proper case, which may involve in NGOs, company as well as government, to study and learn experience from it may be a good way to know how to achieve social harmony.
