CHINA
The Asia Foundation's China program supports legal development, governance reform, non-profit sector growth, and women's empowerment.
China’s economic transformation presents new challenges for Chinese society, caught in the midst of rapid change, and for the government, which must effectively administer reforms to ensure a continued stable economic and social environment. Through financial support, professional training, and technical assistance, The Asia Foundation cooperates with a broad range of Chinese partners to support reforms and help manage the accompanying changes in Chinese society. Local partners include universities, think tanks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and government institutions. Specific program areas include legal development, governance reform, women’s empowerment, and labor law awareness and compliance.
LEGAL DEVELOPMENT
China’s opening up and reform has brought its citizens greater freedoms and an increase in the rule of law, but the development of the country’s legal system and its legal professionals still lags behind China’s economic strides. The Asia Foundation’s legal programs in China focus on the development of legal aid systems, administrative law reforms, and on labor law awareness and compliance.
The Foundation has provided operational, training, and legal education grants on a matching basis to legal aid centers in Guizhou, Shanxi, Yunnan, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang, which raised awareness of legal aid at both the official and grassroots levels. From September 2005 through April 2006, the legal aid centers in Inner Mongolia completed 167 cases, with 96 percent of outcomes favoring the centers’ legal aid recipients. Moreover, in a demonstration of local commitment to legal aid programs, the Chinese government has pledged funds to continue to support the centers beyond the duration of the program.
Law programs also include a workshop of legal scholars, organized by the National School of Administration (NSA), on the State Compensation Law to promote revision of the 1994 version, which does not adequately provide for victims’ damages resulting from unlawful state administrative acts or decisions. The revised draft of this law is expected to be passed by the National People’s Congress in early 2007. To support the revision process, the Foundation supported six Chinese legal scholars and officers of the Supreme People’s Court and the National People’s Congress to visit the United States in June 2006 for a series of seminars on state compensation law. The group examined specific U.S. cases for a comparative perspective and met with leading administrative law specialists, including academics and U.S. federal and state government lawyers and judges.
A network of scholars and officials led by the NSA also received support to research and draft an Administrative Procedure Law that would include basic procedures for holding public hearings. The network subsequently submitted this draft to the National People’s Congress for review.
In addition, the Foundation is working with key Chinese partners, primarily legal experts and lawyers, on a series of programs that aim to improve and expand the practice of public interest law in China.
GOVERNANCE REFORM
As China’s economic growth brings increased wealth to many citizens, it is creating new policy and management challenges for the government on how to address such critical problems as rising pollution, land seizures, and reform of the inefficient state enterprise system. Following China’s decentralization over the past several decades, more basic services are now the financial responsibility of locallevel government units, while others are provided on a scaled-back basis. As a result of the reduced government role, a non-government organization sector is emerging as service providers. In addition, the government is introducing modest reforms aimed at increasing transparency and public participation in official decisionmaking. While public participation remains largely at the policy stage, there are ongoing experiments and exploratory mechanisms in this area that engage NGOs, rural residents, and local governments.
The Asia Foundation’s governance reform programs support these trends by enhancing transparency and public participation in government policymaking; improving communication and constructive dialogue between community groups, NGOs, citizens and government; and supporting the development of farmer’s associations to protect farmer’s interests in the context of changing rural economic policies.
The Foundation supported an expansion and deepening of Chinese NGOs’ efforts to build networks, issue coalitions, and mechanisms to exchange information in remote areas of Ningxia, Shaanxi, Guizhou, Inner Mongolia, and Sichuan provinces. Through capacity-building training, seminars, forums, mini-grants and networking at all levels, the program has effectively reached more than 1,000 individuals from over 555 organizations. The Foundation works to increase NGOs’ capacity to implement sustainable development projects; form and maintain networks of grassroots organizations committed to poverty alleviation, rural development, women’s development, and environment protection. Under a new public participation initiative, the Foundation will launch a program to strengthen the capacity of NGOs to identify and address urgent development needs in their communities and enhance their ability to participate in local decisionmaking.
With the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences and local government partners, the Foundation is supporting a conflict resolution program to develop a dialogue mechanism for land use issues - such as wetland protection, transparency of community financial management, and farmland irrigation payments to officials.
The Foundation is also working with local partners on a pilot project to enhance the capacity of farmers’ associations to govern themselves democratically and promote their economic interests. Through this program in Qingxian County, Hebei, the local government responded to policy suggestions from our local partners and removed systematic obstacles and lowered the financial threshold to establish farmers’ cooperatives. Through the rural cooperatives, farmers improved their capacity for group negotiation and bargaining, thus increasing their income.
A program to include popular participation and community involvement in the improvement of the current disaster relief and mitigation system is now it its second year. With our partner, the Department of Disaster and Social Relief of Ministry of Civil Affairs, the program strengthens cooperation between NGOs and government agencies and aims to facilitate the legislation of disaster relief operations.
SUPPORTING MIGRANT WOMEN WORKERS AND
LABOR LAW AWARENESS
One of the major driving forces behind China’s economic rise is its workers. In Guangdong province, a hub of China’s manufacturing industry, more than half of its 30 million-strong migrant workforce are women. Most of these workers are between 18 and 25 years old, single, and have only primary or secondary-level education. They often work on assembly lines for up to 12 hours a day in labor-intensive export sectors such as toys, garments, footwear, or plastics. Over the last seven years, The Asia Foundation has focused on labor law compliance and providing new opportunities for working women in China.
Since 1999, with the support of the Levi Strauss Foundation, the Foundation developed distinctive and groundbreaking activities that have provided services to more than 300,000 migrant women workers in over 1,000 factories in Guangdong province. One of the major focuses is programming that engages local stakeholders to address community needs; builds social support networks for disadvantaged migrant women workers; helps to integrate them socially in their communities; and empowers them economically with skills to adapt to local communities. This program, which was the first direct-services program for migrant women workers in China, is providing a model for replication in other provinces.
Grants to local partners in the Pearl River Delta have brought women workers access to health, educational, personal counseling, and legal aid services on an expanded scale. More than 500 legal aid cases have been handled to protect workers’ rights and safety. Programs also support the development of new worker-friendly labor rights and labor law educational and awareness materials.
With additional corporate partners, the Foundation has built upon its existing model and networks from the direct service programs developed with the Levis Strauss Foundation. In 2005, with the support of May Department Stores Company, The Asia Foundation launched the first vocational school and university scholarship program for migrant women workers in China. Federated Department Stores, Inc. is currently supporting this program.
With the support of Microsoft, the Foundation developed a program to provide migrant women workers with Information Technology (IT) literacy, equipping them with necessary skills for better career opportunities in the future. The program established Communications Technology Learning Centers to teach basic computer skills to migrant women workers and to provide training opportunities for local community members, particularly those from disadvantaged groups. These centers were the first in Guangdong province to teach computer skills to migrant women workers. In the first year, 1,160 women workers learned IT skills and many learned how to become trainers themselves. Over the course of the two-year program, 2,500 migrant women workers will participate and nearly 600 other community members will receive basic IT skills training.
