¹ The quotation in the title refers to a statement made by Ms Yen Baohua of Friends of Nature in Beijing, in describing the usefulness of China's environmental movement to apply diverse political pressures and contribute to the broader reform process.Google Scholar

² The south-west: Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou provinces.Google Scholar

³ See, Wang Ming, The 500 NGOs in China, ed. by Tsinghua University NGO Research Center, Beijing, UN Center for Regional Development, 2002 and Wang Ming, Zhongguo NGO Yanjiu, 2001, UNCRD Research Report 43, Beijing, Tsinghua University NGO Research Center, 2001.Google Scholar

⁴ ‘Zhongguo NGO Shengtai’ (‘The Life of China's NGOs’), Caijing, 5 July 2002, p. 23.Google Scholar

⁵ The People's Republic of China State Council, Regulations for the Registration and Management of Popular Non-Enterprise Work Units, Order No. 251, Beijing: The Eighth Session of the State Council, 25 September 1998.Google Scholar

⁶ The People's Republic of China State Council, Regulations for Registration and Management of Social Organizations, Order No. 250, Beijing: The Eighth Session of the State Council, 25 September 1998.Google Scholar

⁷ The Chinese 12 environmental NGOs are: The Pesticide Eco-Alternative Center (Yunnan Province), Nature Watch (Yunnan Province), The New Century Institute of Environmental Protection Science (Yunnan Province), Green Watershed (Yunnan Province), Ecology and Culture Organization (Yunnan Province), The Center for Community Development Studies (Yunnan Province), The Center for Biodiversity and Indigenous Knowledge (Yunnan Province), Green River (Sichuan Province), Ai Hua (Sichuan Province), The Integrated Rural Development Center (Guizhou Province), The Guizhou Participatory Rural Appraisal Network (Guizhou Province), The Community Based Conservation and Development Research Center (Guizhou Province).Google Scholar

⁸ The full findings of the research were produced as a mimeo for the Center for the Environment at Harvard University. A copy of this report can be obtained through the Center at Harvard's Lamont Library or by permission of the author.Google Scholar

⁹ See Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic (eds), Civil Society in China, Armonk, NY, M. E. Sharpe, 1997.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (first published 1832), New York, Westvaco, 1999, p. 197.Google Scholar

¹¹ Ibid., p. 191.Google Scholar

¹² Craig Calhoun (ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1992.Google Scholar

¹³ See Daniel I. Okimoto, ‘Japan, the Societal State’, in Daniel I. Okimoto and Thomas P. Rohlen (eds), Inside the Japanese System, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1998, pp. 211–15; Sheldon Garon, ‘From Meiji to Heisei: The State of Civil Society in Japan’, in Frank Schwartz and Susan J. Pharr (eds), Civil Society in Japan, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003; Jeffrey Broadbent, Environmental Politics in Japan: Networks of Power and Protest, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1998, Sang-Jin, Han, ‘The Public Sphere and Democracy in Korea: A Debate on Civil Society’, Korea Journal, 37: 4 (1997), pp. 78–97;Google Scholar

¹⁴ See: Oi, Jean C., ‘Fiscal Reform and the Economic Foundations of Local State Corporatism in China’, World Politics, 45: 1 (October 1992), p. 100.Google ScholarOthers have also sought to address and characterize state–society relations at the local level as they are shaping China's modern civil society. Mary Gallagher writes, ‘The state corporatist model and its variants better capture the nature of associational life in China … [and provides] a better fit for understanding how organized, associational life develops in late-industrializing, authoritarian states’, Mary Gallagher, ‘The Ties That Bind: Civil Society and the State in China’, paper prepared for presentation at the conference on ‘Civil Society and Political Change in Asia’, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 24–7 October 2002, p. 10. More directly addressing the tenor of state–society relations with regard to civil society, Frolic uses the term ‘state-led civil society’, see B. Michael Frolic, ‘State-Led Civil Society’, in Brook and Frolic, Civil Society in China, p. 22. The term local state associational model has been developed for this report, in response both to competing theoretical descriptions and new developments in the field.

¹⁵ Oi, ‘Fiscal Reform’, p. 100.Google Scholar

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¹⁹ Yangqi, ‘State, Society, and Political Change’, p. 334.Google Scholar

²⁰ Frank J. Schwartz and Susan J. Pharr (eds), The State and Civil Society in Japan, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 515.Google Scholar

²¹ Larry Diamond, (1999) Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation, Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar

²² Brook and Frolic, Civil Society in China.Google Scholar

²³ Weigel and Butterfield, ‘Civil Society in Reforming Communist Regimes’, p. 6.Google Scholar

²⁴ Ibid., p. 39.Google Scholar

²⁵ Wapner, Paul, ‘Politics Beyond the State: Environmental Activism and World Civic Politics’, World Politics, 311: 40 (April 1995), p. 314.Google Scholar

²⁶ Weigel and Butterfield, ‘Civil Society in Reforming Communist Regimes’, p. 12.Google Scholar

²⁷ Ibid., p. 6.Google Scholar

²⁸ Pickvance, Katy, ‘Social Movements in Hungary and Russia: The Case of Environmental Movements’, European Sociological Review, 13: 1 (May 1997), p. 39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁹ Ibid., p. 40.Google Scholar

³⁰ The People's Republic of China State Council, Regulations for Registration and Management of Social Organizations.Google Scholar

³¹ The People's Republic of China State Council, Regulations for the Registration and Management of Popular Non-Enterprise Work Units. Google Scholar

³² 250 Chinese NGOs: Civil Society in the Making, China Development Brief, August 2001.Google Scholar

³³ China Development Brief, 5: 2 (Autumn 2002).Google Scholar

³⁴ This is the NGO-type most featured in this paper: legally registered but markedly more independent.Google Scholar

³⁵ The ideas of participation in this sense are shaped as much from the influence of Robert Chambers and counselling from the Ford Foundation and related support agencies, as from what the organization feels to be appropriate and useful in the Chinese context (Ren Xiaodong, director of the Community Based Conservation and Development Research Center, personal interview, Guiyang, Guizhou Province, 20 January 2003).Google Scholar

³⁶ Mr Tan Jingzheng, director of Ai Hua, personal interview, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 17 January 2003.Google Scholar

³⁷ Change is measured either in terms of total policy adjustment or improved enforcement and monitoring of a policy in place.Google Scholar

³⁸ Mr Yi Wei, programme officer for Green River, personal interview, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 15 January 2003.Google Scholar

³⁹ Mr Liu Weijia, director of the Foreign Capital Project Management Center under the Sichuan Poverty Alleviation Office, personal interview Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 16 January 2003.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Oi, ‘Fiscal Reform’, p. 125.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Mr Yang Zaiyi, vice-governor of Dan Zai township, personal interview Guiyang, Guizhou Province, in the office of Mr Wu Xiangqian, director of the Guizhou Ethnic Area Poverty Alleviation Foundation, 22 January 2003.Google Scholar

⁴² See, for example, The PRC National Report on Sustainable Development, 2002, Beijing, China Environmental Science Press, 2002.Google Scholar

⁴³ Mr Li Zhaoyuan, director of Nature Watch, personal interview, Kunming, Yunnan Province, 11 January 2003.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Ms Li Wei of New Century of Environmental Protection Science, personal interview, Kunming, Yunnan Province, 8 January 2003.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Mr Tan Jingzheng, Ai Hua, personal interview, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 16 January 2003.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 189.Google Scholar