Guangdong Further Lowers the Threshold for Registration of Social Organizations

The Guangdong Civil Affairs department announced a Guangdong Province Program to Further Develop and Standardize Management of Social Organizations that would loosen restrictions on registration for a range of social organizations. Liu Hong, the Civil Affairs department head noted that as of July 1, 2012, social organizations would be able to register directly with the Civil Affairs department. They would no longer have to get approval from a professional supervising unit (yewu zhuguan danwei) in order to register. Instead social organizations would have professional guidance units (yewu zhidao danwei). The Program would also allow more than one trade association (hangye xiehui) for each sector, instead of the monopolistic “one association per sector” situation of the past. The Program also calls for changing the function of government departments and promoting the purchasing of services from social organizations, and establishing consulting organizations to assist social organizations seeking to contract with government departments. For the full article in Chinese, see