Changing role

On the ground

It is not only the government which is benefiting from the participation of international NGOs. The grassroots NGOs, which are practically nurtured by international NGOs, also benefit.

Grassroots NGOs have been increasing steadily in China, especially since the 1990s, through the resources brought in by foreign donors and the paid work from large international operational NGOs' China projects.

But with external funding shrinking, experts feel that the operational models and best practices from the abroad are more important for grassroots groups in China.

Gradoville, who had earlier worked for Motorola in his first seven years in China, says through working with local NGOs, his organization, which marked its 50th anniversary in 2011, can also improve its capability of showing others a new way of doing things.

He says Motorola was the first 100 percent wholly owned foreign company in China, with part of that premise being it would hire and train local people. So after learning business skills from Motorola, these people leave, transfer the know-how to other companies or set up their own companies to influence more people.

"The same philosophy holds true for NGOs. Some of those who work on our projects now will eventually move on to others," Gradoville says.

Sun Shan, a leading environmentalist in China, is an ideal example. Sun had earlier worked as a senior program officer in China since 2002 with the Virginia-based Conservation International, a nonprofit environmental organization. In 2007, she set up the Shan Shui Conservation Center, a Beijing-based NGO, which has turned out to be a leading organization in biodiversity protection in China.

Li Bo, the executive director of Friend of Nature, another leading Chinese NGO in environmental protection, also held various positions in numerous international foundations and operational NGOs before joining the Beijing-based organization in 2009.

Li says it is clear that international NGOs have well-developed systems for running projects, gauging demand, monitoring, evaluation and the accountability of its financial systems.

"Most of the Chinese NGOs are still in the early stages of development. They don't have a systematic way of running projects and are incapable of handling large-scale projects," says Li, who is worried that the tension between premature grassroots NGOs in China and international NGOs will intensify as they jostle for funds.

Fitzgerald, the China representative of the Ford Foundation, says that it is a transitional time for NGOs in China, especially for those small grassroots groups with shrinking foreign support. The inflows of Chinese domestic foundations has not matched the outflows of international donations, what Fitzgerald means by "transitional time".