In response to a proposal by Beijing City Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) members [Editor’s Note: the CPPCC is an advisory representative body, drawing from China’s eight “democratic parties” that meets alongside the People’s Congresses.], Beijing will explore ways to lower the registration threshold for social organizations by carrying out a document filing system (bei’an) which will allow grassroots organizations to file with designated “hub” (shuniu) social organizations.
Since 2009, 27 “hub” organizations were approved for various sectors such as labor, youth, women, law, etc. For example, the All China Federation of Trade Unions would be the hub organization for labor, the All China Youth Federation would be the hub for youth, and so on. The idea is have these “hub” organizations essentially serve as the “professional supervising units” for grassroots organizations, thereby making it easier for the latter to register at a later date. In reality, this experiment has been difficult to implement because “hub” organizations do not necessarily want to take on this additional responsibility, and because of coordination difficulties between these “hubs” and Civil Affairs offices.
