CDB is carrying out a brief survey of overseas NGOs that have successfully registered in China since the passing of the Overseas NGO Law, in order to find out what challenges they faced during registration and how they solved them, and how registering with the authorities has affected their work. We hope that their experiences can be of help to other organizations that are still going through the process of registration.
Among those that have already replied to our survey is the representative of an overseas NGO based in Yunnan. While answering the survey, he revealed that it took his organization five months to go through the whole process of registration. The biggest challenge came up when he learnt that the organization’s whole constitution had to be translated into Chinese in a relatively short period of time, since it consists of more than 100 pages. In the end the PSB accepted a translation of just some key pages. If the organization had not been able to register it would have had to withdraw from China, while this way it will be able to continue helping people in rural China.
When it came to providing suggestions for other organizations that are still in the process of registering, the respondent suggested that they should maintain a good relationship with their relevant government agencies which might be able to act as their supervisory units; and more strikingly that they consider moving their project activities to a province like Yunnan where there are government departments willing to help with registration, and the general environment is more relaxed for overseas NGOs.
If you would like to take the survey, please click here.
