The Role of NGOs in Promoting Rural Education in China - Research Proposal Example

THE ROLE OF NGOs IN PROMOTING RURAL EDUCATION IN CHINA by Sur 18 March Discipline area of proposed study: Sociology Title: The Role of NGOs in Promoting Rural Education in China Background and literature review: A considerable development of NGOs in China resulted into many positive results of the country’s life. The NGOs themselves, however, due to the Chinese NGO legislation and their governmental control may be considered as governmentally organized ones, moreover taking into account the fact that they have to look for governmental or party sponsors. The best understanding of the issue is received through analysis of the original Chinese literature: research of Chinese Hong Kong University professor Zhou (Zhou, M., 2013), research article of Liu X. about NGOs in China in general (Liu, X., 2002), and discussion paper of Lu, Y. about governmental influence on the NGOs. (Lu, Y., 2007). These sources prove that the NGOs in China have become a serious instrument of the society. They address actual social problems and offer solutions for them, that is, they play an important role in modern Chinese life. (Liu X., 2002, 1). Aims of the research: to define and NGO and to investigate into the essence of NGOs in China; to study local Chinese conditions of NGOs activity; to define the role of NGOs in promoting rural education. Research Questions: what NGOs are, how and if the generally accepted definition of NGO can be applied to those in China, what the problems of Chinese education are, what the difference between the rural and urban aspects of Chinese education, what results of the NGOs activity are and which services they provide in the sphere fo rural education promotion. Hypothesis: NGOs in China help promoting rural education by means of providing services and material aid to the participants of educational process in Chinese rural areas. Objectives: to answer the research questions and to prove or deny the hypothesis. Research Methods: This paper is composed by means of use of such methods: analysis of Chinese reference sources about educational issues, comparative analysis of Chinese governmental and non-governmental activity in the sphere of rural education. Research Design: research aims (definition on NGO and their peculiarities in China, definition of local conditions of activity, definition of the role on NGOs in promoting Chinese rural education); literature search (recent publications and articles, researches with the focus on those written by Chinese authors); key references (Liu, X., 2002; Zhou, M., 2013; Edele, A., 2005); hypothesis of the research (NGOs in China help promoting rural education by means of providing services and material aid to the participants of educational process in Chinese rural areas); the research stages (general NGO definition and description, local conditions of their activity in China, role of NGOs in rural education promotion); research and conclusions. Research samples: example of experiment in reducing of school dropping by students by means of material aid to them. Research procedures: analysis of Chinese literature, comparison of the governmental and non-governmental efforts in the sphere of rural education. Framework for analysis: general problems of rural education in China, description of services provided with their per cent rate. Theoretical framework: Chinese legislation on NGOs and NPOs. Ethical concerns: the results of low-quality and uneasy availability of education. Strategies for overcoming possible problems: the best strategy is for the government to modify NGO legislation and facilitate their legalization; joining both governmental and non-governmental efforts. Introduction China’s fast development resulted in huge economic and cultural rise, as well as significant growth in the world diplomatic arena. These positive features of such a fast success, however, had their negative effects, which the national government either is unable or is unwilling to challenge. They are, consequently, now tackled by the NGOs – non-governmental organizations, which are trusted publicly and successfully draw the attention of society to acute problems. One of these problems is rural education, where NGOs activity helps indeed in promotion education to public. The general outline of NGOs. To understand the role of NGOs in Chinese society is it is necessary to clarify this definition. A non-governmental organization is the one which is neither part of a government nor a business for making profit. It is difficult to define an organization as a non-governmental one, and there may be different classifications of use of this word. Most commonly it is focused on its orientation and level of operation. Orientation means activities an NGO takes on, such as: human rights, environmental or development work. Level of operation stands for the scale of organization’s work, for example: local, regional, national or international. (Vakil A., 1997, 2057-2070). The NGOs are not hindered by short-term financial goals, which proves their financial non-profit purpose. Not being focused on income gaining, they devote themselves to long-term and actual issues, for example, malaria prevention, climate change. Due to this, the NGOs possess a high degree of public trust, which makes them effective in turning the societies’ attention to the acute problems. (IISD, 2013). Development and current situation of the NGOs in China. It is reported that there are about 500000 non-governmental organizations in China (Xinhua, 2012). It is logical that such a big number is a result of previous development. Emergence of the first non-commercial organizations coincided in time with the overall modernization and reformation of China, when it shifted from planned model of economy to the market one, and business boom resulted into economic growth and increase of life standards. (Liu X., 2002, 1). The main reason for emergence of the first NGOs is inability of government and people in power to solve acute and important problems of society. The problems of China, which gave a considerable impulse to NGOs originating, can be named as follows: environmental degradation, as coal is the cheapest and due to this widely spread energy source in China, poverty and inequality – the reforms policy of “let a few people get rich first” led to polarization of incomes, and many people are now beyond poverty limits, while other have millions and billions dollars, low financing of education – reforms caused fast development of this sphere of activity of modern China, but the gap between the demand for education and the resources is still huge. (Liu X., 2002, 2). The educational problem seems to be the most urgent and acute one in modern Chinese society, it will be investigated into in this work in the following chapters after clarifying the role of NGOs in life of China. Today there are two kinds of legally defined organizations: social organizations and private non-enterprise ones. Social organizations usually imply associations, federations, foundations, academies, research societies and others, while private non-enterprise ones include private schools, hospitals, research institute, welfare facilities and so on. This division into two parts coincides with the generally accepted internationally one. (Liu X., 2002, 3). The Chinese NGOs, however, have one feature peculiar to organizations of such type observed in China only and which differs much from the Western concept of a non-governmental organization. This is their relationships with the Chinese government, and there are more and more questions nowadays whether they should at all be referred to as the NGOs. It s necessary to mention, though, that Western criteria of definition of an NGO cannot be universally applied as all the countries have different economic, social and political conditions. (Edele A., 2005, 3). In China, this reflects in NGOs’ legal obligations to find a “government or Party sponsor for registration” (Liu X., 2002, 1). Recent research, however, indicates that NGOs activity in China is being limited, even though otherwise is constantly stated by the officials. Result of governmental policy in relation to NGOs, though the government has recognized their importance and huge role they play in tackling up-to-date problems, “many NGOs operate informally, either registering as business enterprises, or existing unofficially, without a separate legal identity. Without being officially registered, an NGO is ineligible for tax exemptions, nor are donations deductible from the donator’s income tax. This severely restricts the NGO’s ability to raise funds.” (China Briefing, 2015). Whereas the government announces reforms, it is difficult to run a NGO in China. (ibid). It is stated also that the government “wants to prevent any NGO from growing too big and powerful by developing an extended organizational network”. (Lu Y., 2007, 4). There were cases of prosecution of certain NGOs for nebulous reasons, for example, the Falun Gong case. (Lu Y., 2007, 3). Despite the unfavorable atmosphere and sometimes pressure, the NGOs in China continue their activities. They act in the sphere of rural education in China very well, as this is the weakest point of national educating system. Rural Education in China and the NGOs Activities in Its Promoting. It is believed that education in China followed the same development model as any sphere of activity after the beginning of the reforms in 1978. This led to improvement of education in big cities, where new universities were originated, while rural regions were nit subjected to overall positive changes and are still a matter of concern. (Liu X., 2002, 3). The news that is coming from China regarding its education even nowadays is not quite positive. “In the past three decades China has made impressive gains in sending rural children to school. This has helped fuel its rise as a low-end manufacturing power. But the easy gains have been achieved. If the country is to create the “knowledge economy” it says it wants, the government will have to change the way rural teenagers are educated and schools in the countryside are funded.” (The Economist, 2014). Due to well-off difference in the rural and urban areas of China, education expenditures vary: if the city has higher salaries and better academic and career opportunities on offer, and it is relatively tolerable for an average Chinese family, the salaries and labor offer at all, as well as budgets and financing of rural areas are traditionally low. (Liu X., 2002, 3). This makes many pupils quit school education because of its high cost, and schools, trying to optimize their budgets and gain at least minimal incomes, have to involve parents to formulating of the school balance sheets. Trying to resolve this problem, the country’s government attempted decrease of education costs, and in 2006 cancellations of tuitions and book charges for primary and junior middle schools started. This effect is considered to be doubtful, as rural and urban schools budgets are still divided by a serious gap: one rural school can have bigger budget than even the education budget of a whole county. Such unfavorable events as illnesses of the parents often make the pupils drop their lessons and make money for living, working hard to feed all the family. If the family has at least one sibling, its children are also more likely to drop the school because of high expenditures of the family budget. An experiment with financial aid to the students in need led to such results: 60% of them improved their drop rates, and 10% of the students of the last year of junior middle-high schools got a chance to stay in at least for another year. (The Economist, 2014). This is the problem where the NGOs can realize their public trust into a really helpful activity and facilitate rural education and its development. Professor Mary Zhou from Chinese University of Hong Kong reveals the role of the NPOs, nonprofit organizations, which can be related to the NGOs, in rural education sphere the following way. Initially, it is necessary to find out what an organization represents itself. All of them formally are non-profit and charity designed, but in fact some of them have business background and are founded by legal entities. It is necessary to investigate into suspicious organizations by means of analyzing their history, background, spheres of activity, services provided. Such studies of professor Zhou from Chinese University of Hong Kong have shown the following results: one-to-one financial aid is the most popular service provided, supported by 42 per cent of the organizations; libraries establishing in the rural schools makes 30,4 per cent; financial aid to rural students makes 28,9 per cent; rural schools in-kind donations constitute 27,8 per cent of the services provided. Legal NPOs with governmental background are more likely to be involved into expensive, large-scale and complex projects, while those without legal status are primarily concerned with home visits, short-term volunteer teaching. Aside material assistance, the rural education has demand for satisfaction of emotional needs of children and psychological needs of the teachers, and few organizations provide this. The most popular are the programs provided by these NPOs, but they are of low use if provided without qualified assistance. Rural libraries, for example, when they are built, may remain book storages for years as there will be no maintenance for them. It can also seem that the role of the NPOs and NGOs in the process of enhancement of rural education is lower than that of the government – governmental structures renewed and built more schools than non-governmental, and deployed more teachers, but it is obvious that the government has more power and, as it was mentioned before, controls development of the NGOs and does not let them become too powerful, thus, this does not mean that government is the only and the best facilitator of rural education. In some positions, the NPOs can offer such programs that are unique for them and are difficult to cover by governmental efforts. These are programs of personal nature addressing the emotional, physical, professional needs of the rural students and teachers. This may cause governmental desire to beat the rival in person of these organizations, and they tend to focus on those areas where they have competitive advantages. The best and, similarly, ideal way to facilitate rural education of China is for the governmental and non=governmental efforts to combine and act jointly in this sphere covering more education participants in need and helping make it more overwhelming and easily accessible and available for everyone. (Zhou M., 2013). Conclusion China’s fast development and rising power resulted in an enormous economic rise which resulted into both positive and negative effects. The problems which the government could not tackle had to be dealt with by the non-governmental organizations. One of this problems is poor quality and development of rural education, where these organizations put significant efforts and facilitate education among the students and teachers. This means that the hypothesis stated at the beginning of the paper, that the NGOs constitute a significant part of educational system in China and provide serious help to the educational process participants, is correct and has been proved. References China Briefing, 2015. NGO Activity in China Remains Limited, Despite Voiced Commitments to Reform [Online] (updated 1 Jan. 2015) Available at: [Accessed 18 Mar. 2015]. Edele, A., 2005. Non-Governmental Organizations in China. CASIN, 2-4. IISD, 2011. The Rise and Role on NGOs in Sustainable Development [Online] (updated 2013) Available at: < http://www.iisd.org/business/ngo/roles.aspx> [Accessed 18 Mar. 2015]. Liu, X., 2002. NGOs in China: An Overview. International Community Foundation, 1-3. Lu, Y., 2007. NGOs in China: Development Dynamics and Challenges. China Policy Institute, 3-4. Rural China Education Foundation, 2014. NGO Directory [Online] (updated 2014) Available at: [Accessed 18 Mar. 2015]. The Economist, 2014. Rural Schools: Down and Out in Rural China. [Online] (updated 23 Aug. 2014) Available at: < http://www.economist.com/news/china/21613293-many-teenagers-chinese-countryside-do-not-finish-secondary-school-bodes-ill> [Accessed 18 Mar. 2015] Vakil, A., 1997. Confronting the Classification Problem: Toward a Taxonomy of NGOs. World Development, 2057-2070. Xinhua, 2012. Number of NGOs in China Grows to Nearly 500,000. [Online] (updated 20 Mar. 2012) Available at: < http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-03/20/content_14875437.htm> [Accessed 18 Mar. 2015] Zhou, M., 2013. What Should China’s NPOs Do to Promote Rural Education? [Online] (updated 1 Feb. 2013) Available at: [Accessed 18 Mar. 2015] Read More