Chinese activists looking to Africa
As its economic role in Africa expands, China's budding civil society takes cautious steps to hold its government to account.
from the May 21, 2007 edition
Page 4 of 4
Striving for a louder voice
Chinese NGOs trying to monitor the choices on offer, though, must take their political circumstances into account.
Even if an NGO did find a way to galvanize Chinese public opinion about the social impact of a dam in Sudan, for example, it would not dare attempt to mobilize a mass movement, as a Western NGO might try. But other avenues are open, argues Ge Yun, director of the Xinjiang Conservation Fund.
"China wants to be a responsible member of the international community," she says. "The government cares about losing face in the international arena. This is the perspective from which we can appeal to the government."
Already some local NGOs are adopting some of the tactics their Western counterparts have refined, such as pressuring banks not to lend to companies that abuse the environment or their workforce.
Yu Xiaogang, an environmental activist from the southWestern province of Yunnan, hopes to take that further.
"Chinese NGOs must develop good knowledge of Chinese financial institutions' international policies and their impact," he says.
"Our hope," he adds, is that within three to five years, we NGOs can join in large project policymaking" by institutions such as China Eximbank, which funds billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure projects in Africa.
Will Chinese activists help in Sudan?
Ali Askouri is trying to stop a dam. He came to the Shanghai NGO meeting looking for allies in China. He wants to publicize the fate of 70,000 of his fellow Nile villagers in Sudan, who are being displaced by a dam funded by China Eximbank.
But he had little success in reaching the ears of China's top brass.
As president of the Leadership Office of Hamdab Dam Affected People, his campaign has linked up with a global NGO, the International Rivers Network, with the goal of shaming ABB, the Swiss engineering giant, into withdrawing from Sudan. His group is also trying to put pressure on Alstom, a French company that is also involved in the project. But Mr. Askouri will be leaving with little expectation, at the moment, of Chinese activists joining his cause.
"NGOs here have too little experience and too little [political] space," says Askouri. "I'd love to see them put a lot of pressure on Eximbank, but it is hard to know how they might do it. And they might put themselves at risk. It's a hard issue for Chinese NGOs to get into at this stage."
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