Foreign-funded nonprofits under investigation in China

BEIJING -- The Chinese government has launched intensive financial and security probes of many foreign-funded nonprofit groups, according to the organizations.

Critics of the audits say the government apparently fears the organizations could destabilize China by mobilizing public opinion against the government's human rights and environmental policies.

Yu Xiaogang, director of Green Watershed, an environmental nonprofit in southern Yunnan Province that receives grants from the Ford Foundation and other US donors and that opposes China's construction of large-scale dams, said the investigations greatly hampered his organization's work.

``We experienced investigations through almost the whole of last year, and we met with a lot of pressure," Yu said. ``Some of our actions were limited by some orders from the government, [ and] for several months we could not legally operate" because the group's official registration license was not renewed by authorities.

Others say the investigations are a reaction to concerns in Beijing that the United States, Europe, and some wealthy individuals have been using the nonprofit groups as fronts to push for greater democracy, and even regime change, in authoritarian states around the world.

``I think what's happening is very clearly connected with the `color' revolutions in Central Asia," said Nick Young, editor of China Development Brief, a Beijing-based journal focused on China's aid and nonprofit community.

The Orange revolution in Ukraine, the Rose revolution in Georgia, and the Lemon revolution in Kyrgyzstan were supported by local nonprofits funded by prodemocracy organizations, such as the Open Society Institute -- a New York-based operation funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros -- and the US Institute of Peace, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

After Kyrgyz strongman and China ally Askar Akayev was toppled in March, Beijing asked security officials to study the dynamics of the revolutions, an Asian diplomat in China said on the condition of anonymity.

The following month, the Chinese Communist Party used the state- and party-run media to amplify concerns that the West is using nonprofits such as the International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy to orchestrate a heping yanbian, or peaceful evolution, toward democracy in China.

Thousands of Chinese nongovernmental organizations receiving funds from overseas have been investigated by the government over the past year, activists said.

Among the groups raided and closed down was the Empowerment and Rights Institute in Beijing. It had attracted the ire of authorities for its attempts to get Chinese human rights groups to work together and was funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which describes itself as a ``a private, nonprofit, grant-making organization created to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts."

In most cases the audits are being conducted by such agencies as the Public Security Bureau, in conjunction with government-affiliated think tanks, such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The think tanks evaluate the goals and objectives of the nonprofit groups' projects, and security agencies investigate their financial and political links to prodemocracy organizations and foreign intelligence services.

``They've gone around asking: `What is your real purpose? Are you trying to overthrow the government?' " said Young, the nonprofit analyst.

It was only in 1994 that China's first nongovernmental organization, or NGO, an environmental group called Friends of Nature, was allowed to open. As some reformers in government have championed the cause of allowing society to develop in China, the number of nonprofits has soared.

Young said many in the Communist Party are ``looking for ways to believe these NGOs are antistate -- capable of coalescing and presenting a threat to their authority." Last year more than 87,000 public protests swept China, and many were jointly organized by nonprofit groups .

But while China's once disparate, underfunded, untrained, and poorly equipped nonprofit groups are learning to organize and empower themselves, their defenders said there is little evidence to show they are antistate.

Yu, of Green Watershed, said the recent audits might not be bad if they end up convincing the government that most nonprofits have no ulterior political motives.

``Things improved after a conference of NGOs the government organized in Beijing in November," he said.