Social Welfare for Marginal Ethnic Groups: Chinese NGOs in Southwest China

Abstract

This paper discusses the origin and operations of a dozen indigenous Chinese NGOs working to promote social welfare of the marginalized ethnic groups in southwest China’s hilly regions bordering Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces. Even though they have different specific goals—including poverty reduction, post-disaster reconstruction, community development, environmental conservation, cultural preservation, and so on—these NGOs exhibit several shared characteristics. They were all initiated by community elites with broad based information networks and connections. Most of them also received initial inputs in the forms of funding, operation space, technical training, and advisory supervision from international NGOs. Findings in this study confirm the argument that in spite of the unique governance systems in China, Chinese NGOs in the Mainland are more akin to global NGOs owing to their shared charitable and altruistic concerns. Data from this report is based on the author’s fieldwork in that region over the past decade (circa 2008-2017).