NGOs and Accountability in China by Jude Howell Xiaoyuan Shang & Karen R. Fisher

Author:Jude Howell, Xiaoyuan Shang & Karen R. Fisher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Despite these rebuffs Liming Family continued to put pressure on the government to provide them with funds of around RMB 2000–3000 per year, reminding and shaming them into meeting government responsibilities to take care of abandoned children .

Extracting Benefits to Secure Children ’s Rights

Though both the government and the church knew that Liming Family did not have the legal status to care for the orphaned children , the local government had no intention of shutting down or taking over this child welfare organisation. Instead, the local government provided as much support as possible in many areas of the organisation’s operations, demonstrating its recognition of the important service gap Liming Family filled. In this way, the local government added to the organisation’s stock of accountability capital through informal government approval of its work. Before 2000, for example, the children in Liming’s care could not be registered as permanent residents because Liming could not gain authority as a legal guardian and the government would not take that responsibility either. This meant that the children did not have legal rights to go to public schools. The local government conceded to the requests of Liming Family and allowed the children in their care to attend local schools without paying any extra fees for temporary schooling.

Indeed, after six years of persistent effort and using the 2000 population census as an opportunity to push harder on the rights of the children to citizenship registration , Liming Family managed to secure collective residential registration for all the children . However, this still did not entitle the children in their care to enjoy the then household-based social security benefits because the government would not appoint Liming Family as guardian. Another concession that the government made was that when Liming Family found adoptive parents for the children under its care in line with the requirements of the Adoption Law, the Civil Affairs Bureau would often treat these children as special cases. It would then let them go through adoption formalities and permit adopted children to acquire registration as permanent residents.

Through persistence, threats, and direct action , Liming Family was also able to secure other policy benefits for the children such as minimum living allowance, rural medical insurance , and a special guarantee of permanent residence for adopted children . The success in extracting such policy benefits could be traced back to the requested visit of a foreign priest who sponsored children at Liming Family and who was invited by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation to China for the 2008 Paralympic Games. The priest wished to visit Liming Family during his stay in China so the director lodged his request with the relevant government department, but was politely refused. The director argued that it was inappropriate to refuse him a visit given that he had sponsored the children , underlining at the same time that the government failed to provide proper support to the abandoned children . The government official conceded and allowed him to visit the county town but refused adamantly to permit any visit to Liming Family .

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