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May 29, 2008

Grass-Roots Chinese Groups Prove Crucial to Relief Effort

Informal networks of private citizens and grass-roots organizations are playing a crucial role in getting supplies to rescue workers and survivors of this month’s earthquake in China, reports The Washington Post.

While nonprofit organizations in China must register with the government, and the larger groups are usually tightly controlled, the earthquake seems to have brought about at least a temporary change in the government’s attitude.

With the help of the Internet and on-the-ground coordination centers, unregistered grass-roots organizations are functioning as earthquake-relief organizations, helping to manage a crisis whose death toll could soar above 80,000.

Yet while Chinese authorities seem pleased with the mobilization, some experts say the current situation is not indicative of a sea change in the government’s policies toward nongovernmental organizations.

In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, writer Leslie Hook asks
how long the Chinese Government will allow the informal organizations to continue growing as signs of unrest begin to materialize. Parents of children who died in poorly constructed school buildings, for example, have organized marches and clashed with police.

(Free registration is required to view the Washington Post article.)

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