The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs (MOCA) released new comprehensive
statistics for 2006, including the numbers of civil society organizations, villager and residents committees, and recipients
of welfare programs in a May 23 post on their website.
The official numbers show a steady increase in the numbers
of registered Chinese civil society organizations, including 192,000 social
organizations (SOs), 161,000 non-governmental, non-commercial enterprises
(NGNCE's), and 1144 foundations. (These
numbers differ slightly from those released in January.)
They also reveal an interesting decline in the total numbers of villager committees and residents committees over the past ten years, and a plateau over the past four years in the number of urban residents who are receiving welfare assistance.
The post also includes a chart (translated below)
showing the numbers of SOs and NGNCE’s for each year since 1999, as well as the
percentage increase in the number of SOs over the prior year.
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1999
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2000
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2001
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2002
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2003
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2004
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2005
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2006
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SOs
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137,000
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131,000
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129,000
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133,000
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142,000
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153,000
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171,000
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192,000
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NGNCEs
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6,000
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23,000
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82,000
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111,000
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124,000
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135,000
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148,000
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161,000
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SO
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-9.0
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-4.6
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-1.6
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3.1
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6.8
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7.7
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11.8
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12.3
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The MOCA post also contains two other charts (unable to be reproduced here) with particularly intriguing statistics. One chart shows the total number of villager and residents committees for each year since 1997. It reveals a sharp decline in the total numbers of both, from some 900,000 VCs in 1997 to roughly 600,000 in 2006, and from 120,000 RCs in 1997 to roughly 80,000 RCs in 2006. Although I'm able to think of possible explanations for part of the decline (experiments to merge RCs into larger units), I'm somewhat mystified by the scale, particularly with regard to VCs. Comments or suggestions would be welcome.
The other chart (translated below) shows the total numbers of recipients of China's minimum standard of living for urban residents, a social welfare program begun in the late 1990s. [The national program currently does not apply to rural residents, although some provinces have launched experimental programs that do. National Chinese officials announced on May 24 that they intend to expand these experiments nationwide] The chart shows that total number of urbanites who receive minimum standard of living payments have essentially leveled off since 2003.
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2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
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Urban recipients (millions) |
11.7 |
20.6 |
22.5 |
22.1 |
22.3 |
22.4 |
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Annual % Increase |
190.8 |
76.4 |
8.8 |
-1.9 |
1.3 |
0.3 |
Again, this is intriguing. China's cities are certainly growing – the national urbanization rate is increasing at 1 to 1.5 percent a year. Several possible explanations come to mind: MOCA might face a hard budget constraint in terms of how much money they actually have to spend on the program, rapid urban economic development might be limiting the growth of urban poverty, or the fact that recipient status is linked to household registration (hukou) status may effectively be depressing the numbers by excluding large numbers of rural migrants to urban areas from eligibility. Again, comments would be welcome.