Interview with Huang Haoming,
Yuli Ismartono [time 29:30]
Yuli Ismartono: Professor Huang, thank you for taking time off from your busy schedule to be in The Leaders program.
Huang Haoming:
Thank you so much we finally have the chance for this dialogue.
YI: I would like to begin by asking you what is the China Association for Non-Governmental Organization Cooperation or Cango and which groups are its members?
Huang Haoming: Through Cango, our mission is to try to establish a Chinese NGO network to address poverty alleviation in our country, particularly we try to work together with a large number of NGOs and an opportunity to work with NGO overseas. Most of our members are rural and community development organizations and capacity building NGO, we also call on agenda issues, and on health care issues. Cango has 102 member organizations. Unfortunately, we have not yet established individual membership. In the future, we will be thinking about having individual members.
YI: How many NGOs are there in all of China and what is usually the focus of their interest?
Huang Haoming: In all of China, we have three kinds of NGOs, for example foundations. We separate them into public foundations, registered with the government, and non-public organizations. As of December 7, China has , 340 foundations. The second kind we normally call social organizations, up until last year, China has 240 of these social organizations. They have a specific Chinese name, something like private non-enterprise organizations. Overseas it would be like private schools, health centers like community-based. This kind in China we normally have 74,000. We also have many unregistered foundations. Unfortunately, we have no specific numbers. Normally in China, civil society organizations focus on poverty alleviation, legal aid, education, which we call keu, challenging the traditional feudal system, of hundreds more years of history. We also have host dialogue between government and enterprises and civil society.
YI: That is quite a number of organizations. Can you explain? I understand there are mainly two kinds of NGOs: one that is sponsored by the government, and one that is independent. What is the difference? Is there a difference in the scope of work or in the sources of funding?
Huang Haoming: With regards to the type of civil society organizations in China, as you know China opened up to outside. As you know, about 20 years ago, we had much less civil society organizations, but after Deng Xiao Ping wanted to change (and bring) a new image -to establish a market-oriented system, that brought about many grassroots, people-initiative, more independent organizations. The others are what we call government-initiated, and they are not as independent as the others. So we have these two kinds. So in terms of the funding sources, in China most get from many channels. For example, from government support, secondly, from individual donations and thirdly, from enterprise support. Then of course there is support from international organizations like the United Nations system and foreign foundations and social organizations.
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