Officials blunt activism set off by China quake

updated 11:58 a.m. ET May 11, 2009

CHENGDU, China - When a powerful earthquake flattened Sichuan province a year ago, community organizer Zhang Guoyuan seized the moment.

Within days, he was running an aid center and warehouse, coordinating 700 volunteers and taking in $1.6 million in donated food, medicines, supplies and cash.

Then the police told him to stop.

The catastrophic earthquake last May 12 set off an unprecedented surge of volunteerism in China. But the government, always wary of groups beyond its control, has since sought to restrain it — with considerable success.

'They're worried'
"From the government's point of view, they're worried. They're afraid we'll do something," said Zhang, a fast-talking 29-year-old who dresses more like the ex-minor official he is than a grass-roots campaigner. "Really all we're trying to do is make society better."

The Chinese leadership has long restricted private activist groups, known as non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. After watching popular movements oust autocratic governments in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere earlier this decade, the government redoubled efforts to prevent such groups from becoming a social force that could challenge its authority.

Activists had hoped the quake would change that, opening up more space for private efforts to flourish.

Instead, the magnitude-7.9 quake unnerved the government. It killed large numbers of students among the 90,000 dead and missing, sparking national outrage about badly built schools and raising the prospect of protests.

Still 'authoritarian'
Now, a year after the disaster, hard-to-navigate rules and official suspicion have left groups underfunded and reliant on the government for survival. The wave of volunteerism has largely dissipated.

"It's still an authoritarian political system," said Shawn Shieh, a politics professor at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., who is living in Beijing and writing a book on social activism. "The government is not going to cede much ground."

The worst natural disaster in a generation, the quake roiled a society grown comfortable with steadily increasing prosperity. Many, especially younger, Chinese long caught up with making money and used to leaving social problems to the government saw it as a defining moment — their chance to give back.

They poured into the Belgium-sized earthquake zone by the tens of thousands and sent an estimated $8 billion to $10 billion in donations. Some piled their cars with instant noodles and bottled water, driving cross-country to deliver relief and dig for survivors in the rubble.

"When the earthquake came, it was an opportunity," Zhang said. "I thought, 'China's NGOs ought to take real action.' I knew doing so was risky."

Donors shoveled money and supplies at Zhang's NGO Disaster Relief Joint Office, formed by 40 activists a day after the quake. Soon they were running a network of hundreds of volunteers and dozens of trucks. But the group ran afoul of tightened restrictions on accepting donations and dissolved.

Zhang shrugged off the setback, forming a smaller group that builds community centers for displaced families living in camps of aluminum-sided huts.

Some groups forced out
Others left or were forced out. Local officials ran about two dozen volunteers out of the destroyed town of Beichuan, accusing them of stirring up protests by families whose children died in the disaster. Perhaps 10,000 volunteers still work in the area, probably a tenth or less than last summer, said Gao Wazi, a retired official who runs a liaison office for volunteer groups.

Andy Wong / AP A worker looks at a school building project designed by U.S.-trained architect Liu Xiaodu at a construction site in Weizigou village, Gansu province.

"The government is still pretty strict in managing the disaster area. We civil groups have limited resources, our level of organization isn't high, the disaster area is large and information isn't easy to get," said Gao.

His three-person Sichuan 512 Civil Relief Assistance Services Center operates from two third-floor offices on a $14,000 grant that's supposed to last a year. "We haven't been able to get funding for an SUV we really need," Gao said.

Activists are eking out some gains in the quake's aftermath, Shieh said. Beijing is allowing the state-backed Chinese Red Cross Foundation to provide a few, better-established groups with funding for the first time.

Overall, however, Beijing has monopolized the reconstruction, allowing the government to claim credit and ensuring that the quake was not the game-changing event activists hoped for.

A key control mechanism is the NGO registration requirements. Groups must find government sponsors, which weeds out any straying into politically sensitive fields. Without registration, groups are prohibited from receiving donations.

With donations flooding in, Beijing further tightened rules for quake-related donations, naming only five state-backed groups eligible to receive them.

The net effect of all these rules, activists said, is to reinforce government control.

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