TY  - JOUR
A1  - Holbig, Heike
A1  - Lang, Bertram
T1  - China's overseas NGO law and the future of international civil society
T2  - Journal of contemporary Asia
N2  - China’s law to control international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) has sent shockwaves through international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), civil society and expert communities as the epitome of a worldwide trend of closing civic spaces. Since the Overseas NGO Management Law was enacted in January 2017, its implementation has seen mixed effects and diverging patterns of adaptation among Chinese party-state actors at the central and local levels and among domestic NGOs and INGOs. To capture the formal and informal dynamics underlying their mutual interactions in the longer term, this article employs a theory of institutional change inspired by Elinor Ostrom’s distinction between rules-in-form versus rules-in-use and identifies four scenarios for international civil society in China – “no change,” “restraining,” “recalibrating” and “reorienting.” Based on interviews, participant observation and Chinese policy documents and secondary literature, the respective driving forces, plausibility, likelihood and longer-term implications of each scenario are assessed. It is found that INGOs’ activities are increasingly affected by the international ambitions of the Chinese party-state, which enmeshes both domestic NGOs and INGOs as agents in its diplomatic efforts to redefine civil society participation on a global scale.
KW  - China
KW  - institutional change
KW  - non-governmental organisations
KW  - international civil society
KW  - Belt and Road Initiative
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/64740
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-647401
SN  - 1752-7554
N1  - Field research for this article was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of its German-Sino Alumni Network programme.
SP  - 1
EP  - 28
PB  - Routledge
CY  - Abingdon
ER  -