China’s NGO Law: Countering Western Soft Power and Subversion
(Originally appearing in New Eastern Outlook NEO)
China
has recently taken an important step in more tightly regulating foreign
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) inside the country. Despite
condemnation from so called human rights groups in the West, China’s
move should be understood as a critical decision to assert sovereignty
over its own political space. Naturally, the shrill cries of
“repression” and “hostility toward civil society” from western NGOs have
done little to shake the resolve of Beijing as the government has
recognized the critical importance of cutting off all avenues for
political and social destabilization.
The predictable argument, once again being made against China’s Overseas NGO Management Law,
is that it is a restriction on freedom of association and expression,
and a means of stifling the burgeoning civil society sector in China.
The NGO advocates portray this proposed legislation as another example
of the violation of human rights in China, and further evidence of
Beijing’s lack of commitment to them. They posit that China is moving to
further entrench an authoritarian government by closing off the
democratic space which has emerged in recent years.
However, amid all the hand-wringing
about human rights and democracy, what is conveniently left out of the
narrative is the simple fact that foreign NGOs, and domestic ones funded
by foreign money, are, to a large extent, agents of foreign interests,
and are quite used as soft power weapons for destabilization. And this
is no mere conspiracy theory as the documented record of the role of
NGOs in recent political unrest in China is voluminous. It would not be a
stretch to say that Beijing has finally recognized, just as Russia has
before it, that in order to maintain political stability and true
sovereignty, it must be able to control the civil society space
otherwise manipulated by the US and its allies.
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