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Politics of China

[New section] Foreign aid
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, China joined the international community in providing foreign aid. In the past few decades, the international community has seen an increase in Chinese foreign aid. Specifically, a recent example is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an infrastructure project that was launched in 2013 by President Xi Jinping. The goal of the program is to expand maritime routes and land infrastructure networks connecting China with Asia, Africa, and Europe, boosting trade and economic growth. As the program claims, the five main targets are “policy coordination, facilitating connectivity, unimpeded trade, financial integration and establishing new bonds between people”. More specifically, it involves a massive development of trade routes that will create a large expansion of land transportation infrastructure and new ports in the Pacific and Indian oceans to facilitate regional and intercontinental trade flow and increase oil and gas supply.

BRI is also a controversial policy in the development industry. On the one hand, some believe the economic benefits from BRI will be extraordinary. For instance, several independent World Bank analyses and reports have demonstrated that the BRI would be largely beneficial. The Belt and Road Initiative: Economic, Poverty and Environmental Impacts working paper found that the BRI will increase global income by 0.7% by 2030, which is almost half a trillion dollars. The study also found that the program will “..lifting 7.6 million people from extreme poverty and 32 million from moderate poverty”. Similarly, another study that examined the 71 countries potentially involved in the BRI highlights that the program increases trade flow by up to 4.1%; and with international cooperations, an increase in trade flow will be three times more on average. In terms of economic growth measure by GDP, a quantitative trade model study, The Growth and Welfare Effects of the Belt and Road Initiative on East Asia Pacific Countries, indicates that the BRI will increase GDP between 2.6% and 3.9% for East Asia Pacific developing countries, “which is higher than the expected gains for the world as a whole”. Lastly, according to another study that examined the completed and planned BRI projects on trade efficiency, BRI economies' shipment and trade costs will decrease by 1.5% and 2.8%; for the world, costs will decrease by 1.1% and 2.2%; for countries located most closely to the corridors where the projects are built, shipments and trade costs will decrease by 11.9% and 10.2%.

On the other hand, BRI has also gotten immense economic and political criticisms due to the belief that the projects is a way for China to gain socioeconomic and geopolitical influence. For instance, BRI will lead to border openings with Central Asia, which in turn bring economic development to the west of China. Not only will China benefit from economic development in the west, but the BRI also could serve as a long-term strategy for political stability by the Chinese government. The Western region of China Xinjiang Province, “...where separatist violence has been on the upswing...”, is a crucial security region. Through securing economic stability and growth, the government could also further control the western region of China. In 2019, protests against Chinese factories construction work swept through Kazakhstan due to the concern over the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs in the Western region of China. In addition, many countries have publicly criticized the BRI projects. For example, India has strongly opposed some of the BRI’s projects because they feel threatened by the activities in Pakistan. New Delhi feels BRI could lead to the possibility that the geopolitical influence “...will undermine the Indian claims in the contested Kashmir region”. Indian government sees the Chinese expansion in the region as a de-facto hostile act that must be controlled. Lastly, critics of BRI has also suggested that the projects may be creating a debt trap. For example, China is Tajikistan’s single largest creditor, in which from 2007 to 2016, debt to China accounts for almost 80% of Tajikistan's total increase in international debt. Specifically, China and Tajikistan have had a long-term territorial dispute, which in 2012, “Tajikistan handed over approximately 1000 square kilometers of land to China in exchange for certain economic benefits”.

[Rename section as] International organizations
Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, China has a long history of participation with international organizations. China officially entered the global community on October 26th, 1971 when the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2758 to transfer the seat from the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan to the People's Republic of China (PRC). The period prior to 1990, China experienced tremendous instability, such as the Cultural Revolution; however, after Deng Xiaoping's economic reform, China's economy rapidly developed which allowed China to emerge as a country now that is highly influential in the international arena.

United Nations
Today, not only is China apart of many UN organizations, it is also one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. A memo done by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission identified Chinese nationals serving in leadership position within international organizations signifies China's increasing involvement in the international arena. For instance, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and so on are all organizations that Chinese nationals are currently in position of (The memo is updated on a semi-annual basis).

NGOs
Although NGO development in China is relatively slow compared to other countries, a Harvard University academic study reveals that China did have NGOs as early as during the Dynasties. Specifically in the forms of American missionaries, which assisted in rural reconstruction programs and ideological reforms locally. After the establishment of The People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, Mao banned any NGOs that were related to counter revolutionary goals. During the reform era under Deng beginning the 1970s, NGOs although not completely banned, three laws were implemented to keep relatively tight control over them––the Regulations on the Registration and Management of Social Organizations, the Regulations on the Registration and Management of Foundations, and the Interim Provisions for the Administration of Foreign Chambers of Commerce in China. The latter two were implemented after the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, and the general tone of all the regulations emphasized government control. For instance, the regulations require a two-tiered management system, in which before being legally registered by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, a government agency must sponsor the organization; thus, two governmental agencies must be monitoring the day-to-day operations of the NGO. However, in the 1990s, NGOs began to regain momentum despite restrictions in place. Today, the number of registered organizations in China has grown to over 700,000, “... including many professional and friendship associations, foundations working in the fields of education, science, and culture, and a large number of nonprofits engaged in poverty alleviation, social work with people with disabilities, children, and the elderly. The number of nonprofits and environmental education and climate action groups has also significantly grown”.

A case study done by Jonathan Schwartz on “Environmental NGOs in China: Roles and Limits” examines the debate of the nature of state-civil society relations in authoritarian regimes through looking at environmental NGOs in China, in which two views are presented: 1. the relationship between NGOs and the state is zero-sum, in which the state comes out winning through control, and 2. the relationships between NGOs and the state is positive sum, in which both sides benefit from cooperation to achieve shared goals. By evaluating environmental NGOs’ influence, impact, and potential in China, Schwartz argues that “...the Chinese central government is caught between the goal of environmental protection and continued control over the activities of potentially independent organizations”.

Today, NGOs such as Give2Asia, the Asia Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and so on conduct work everywhere in China ranging from education to poverty alleviation. In 2017 a new policy, “Management of Overseas NGOs’ Activities in Mainland China Law” (FNGO Law), was enacted, which creates registration barriers that, for instance, require a Chinese partner organization to sign on. The reaction from the West has widely been that the space for NGOs to conduct work in may be shrinking.

Civil society in China
The idea of “civil society” has been a long tradition in western theoretical belief, in which it is usually defined as “a sphere of social organisations and initiatives, separate from the state, the market and the family, that brings people together for diverse forms of social action and interaction, ideally for public or mutual benefit”. Academic debates on whether China has a civil society is on going. The majority of research on Chinese civil society for the past two decades has been to examine “the organizational independence of civic associations from the state”. More recently, researchers has argued that the western driven definition of “civil society” is too narrowly fixed, which does not allow for a full understanding of Chinese civil society. Taru Salmenkari, an associate professor specializing in contemporary China and issues of democracy and civil society in East Asia at Tallinn University, has argued in her “Theoretical Poverty in the Research on Chinese Civil Society” that to understand Chinese civil society, one must “...go beyond the question of the degree of autonomy from the state. It must address the nature of horizontal contacts through which civil society is constituted”.

Advocacy
Chinese civil society has always had to “deal” with restricted spaces for advocacy. For instance, a study by Harvard University on “How Censorship in China Allows Government Criticism but Silences Collective Expression” demonstrates that while the censorship of information exists, the purpose of the censorship is not to silence all comments made about the state or any particular issues, but rather to prevent and reduce the probability of collective actions. As the study illustrates, allowing social media to flourish also has allowed negative and positive comments about the state and its leaders to exist. Civil society advocacy is relatively possible as long as it does not lead to collective action. Specifically, the development of technology and the internet has also allowed civil society advocacy to flourish.