Ministry of Civil Affairs Releases New Statistics for 2006

The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA) released new comprehensive statistics for 2006, including the numbers of civil society organizations, villager and residents committees, and recipients of welfare programs in a May 23 post on their website. 

The official numbers show a steady increase in the numbers of registered Chinese civil society organizations, including 192,000 social organizations (SOs), 161,000 non-governmental, non-commercial enterprises (NGNCE's), and 1144 foundations. (These numbers differ slightly from those released in January.) 

They also reveal an interesting decline in the total numbers of villager committees and residents committees over the past ten years, and a plateau over the past four years in the number of urban residents who are receiving welfare assistance. 

The post also includes a chart (translated below) showing the numbers of SOs and NGNCE’s for each year since 1999, as well as the percentage increase in the number of SOs over the prior year.

                                                                         

	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
SOs	137,000	131,000	129,000	133,000	142,000	153,000	171,000	192,000
NGNCEs	6,000	23,000	82,000	111,000	124,000	135,000	148,000	161,000
SO   % Increase	-9.0	-4.6	-1.6	3.1	6.8	7.7	11.8	12.3

The MOCA post also contains two other charts (unable to be reproduced here) with particularly intriguing statistics.  One chart shows the total number of villager and residents committees for each year since 1997.  It reveals a sharp decline in the total numbers of both, from some 900,000 VCs in 1997 to roughly 600,000 in 2006, and from 120,000 RCs in 1997 to roughly 80,000 RCs in 2006.  Although I'm able to think of possible explanations for part of the decline (experiments to merge RCs into larger units), I'm somewhat mystified by the scale, particularly with regard to VCs.  Comments or suggestions would be welcome.

The other chart (translated below) shows the total numbers of recipients of China's minimum standard of living for urban residents, a social welfare program begun in the late 1990s.  [The national program currently does not apply to rural residents, although some provinces have launched experimental programs that do.  National Chinese officials announced on May 24 that they intend to expand these experiments nationwide] The chart shows that total number of urbanites who receive minimum standard of living payments have essentially leveled off since 2003.

 

	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Urban recipients (millions)	11.7	20.6	22.5	22.1	22.3	22.4
Annual % Increase	190.8	76.4	8.8	-1.9	1.3	0.3

 

Again, this is intriguing.  China's cities are certainly growing - the national urbanization rate is increasing at 1 to 1.5 percent a year.  Several possible explanations come to mind: MOCA might face a hard budget constraint in terms of how much money they actually have to spend on the program, rapid urban economic development might be limiting the growth of urban poverty, or the fact that recipient status is linked to household registration (hukou) status may effectively be depressing the numbers by excluding large numbers of rural migrants to urban areas from eligibility. Again, comments would be welcome.

Comments

[WJ]

I agree that the declining number of VC's is difficult to understand. I have no conclusive proof to offer.

I have found that the initial optimism of the village democratic experiment in the 1990's has been replaced by pessimism as cadres remain the locus of power in many villages. Declining numbers may result from the dissolution of VC's due to their lack of utility While stats are hard to come by, in my own field research many villages routinely recalled their VC leaders after uncovering instances of mismanagement of resources, corruption, etc. Additionally, the post of VC leader can be thankless in some villages. Many villages (typically poor) reported that they abandoned the VC when nobody wanted to stand in the election and serve. The income of a VC leader of a poor village without substantial assets or industry is paltry and most consider it not worth the effort. A plan was raised by central gov't to send young cadres to such villages to serve as administrators but it is not clear how far this has progressed.

Contributing to this reasoning are the massive outflows of able adult males to urban centers, which makes a suitable village leader scarce in the eyes of villagers.

Yet another reason may stem from the VC election process. Some villages reported that a number of bad elements were taking advantage of the democratic system (e.g. mafia groups, corrupt cadres). Thus, villagers refused to hold an election for fear that village resources would fall under their control. In the absence of a functioning VC, township was providing administration. Of course, some villages simply use "door-to-door" balloting
or intimidation to manage the election outcome.

I have my own theory that central gov't may be purposely allowing VC's to wither and also exerting pressure to disband troublesome and independent VC's that seek to block township/county plans. A number of villages and VC members in two northeast provinces reported intense police pressure to drop plans to elect an independent VC head who pledged to combat corruption.

[Jamie Horsley]

I happened to notice your question about the decline of villagers committees and residents committees. A simple answer is that the number of villages is declining rapidly, as villages are swallowed by urbanization. When I started working on VC elections, there were a million villages, and now there are around or less than 700,000. For the cities, the former neighborhoods served by residents committees are being redrawn as much larger communities (shequ), which may also explain the decline in those numbers. The residents committees are now referred to as "community residents committees" or CRCs.

Jamie P. Horsley
Deputy Director, Senior Research Scholar & Lecturer in Law
The China Law Center, Yale Law School