Methodology and Sample

The study focuses on the cases of Beijing and Shanghai by drawing upon fieldwork conducted there between late 2011 and mid-2012. The underlying speculation is that Beijing, as the capital, may present unique challenges to local officials in their collaboration (or lack thereof) with NGOs. The municipal government of Shanghai, on the other hand, has cultivated networks with selected NGOs. In addition, Shanghai's municipal government has become a stronger voice in Shanghai's development policy in comparison to Beijing, where the top-down model of governance continues to prevail thereby leaving little room for local innovation or experimentation.Footnote ¹⁰ The more innovative form of policymaking within Shanghai's government ranks is reflected at the community level where local NGOs are given greater leeway to experiment and encourage citizen participation in community projects.

Using a random purposeful sampling technique, 28 NGOs were interviewed – 15 in Beijing and 13 in Shanghai. The overall sample represents a good cross section of NGOs' material power (e.g. their size, budget and ability to acquire more resources), symbolic power (e.g. their ability to have legitimacy in their statements), interpretive power (e.g. their ability to bring expertise to the forum and interpret “social facts”), and geographical power (e.g. whether they are local, regional or national-based). The NGOs interviewed have annual budgets ranging between US$1,590 and US$6.35 million, with the average NGO interviewed having a budget of US$78,283 per annum. Most NGOs interviewed have secured their financial resources with the aid of a mix of domestic and international funding support. One NGO, Peace for Humanity, remains entirely self-funded by its founder. The NGOs in the sample have an arithmetic mean of 8.5 years of operation in China, with a range between 2 to 19 years. Nearly half of these NGOs are registered with an accompanying government sponsoring agency, and the rest are registered as businesses.Footnote ¹¹ The majority of the NGOs interviewed are engaged in service delivery work to marginalized populations – from migrant workers to children and the elderly – and community development. There are three NGOs in our sample that assisted the development of smaller and newer NGOs by providing training and workshops. In sum, the primary sectors of operation for our sample include (number of NGOs in parentheses): education (18), health (8), migrants (8), environment (8), gender (7), welfare (6), media (2), culture (1), connecting charities (1), fundraising (1) and training (1).Footnote ¹² While the interviews do not offer a national sample, they do provide a depiction of the increasing involvement of the local state in the work of NGOs in two of China's most important cities.

Neo-Institutional Theory and Isomorphic Pressures

The degree of isomorphic pressure on NGOs is contingent upon the environment in which they operate.Footnote ¹³ According to neo-institutional theorists, organizations that occupy a shared sector will eventually begin to copy one another as a result of coercive, mimetic and normative pressures. A key element of institutional theory is the belief “that organizations sharing the same environment will employ similar practices and thus, become isomorphic with each other.”Footnote ¹⁴ In the classic formulation of isomorphic pressures, DiMaggio and Powell posit that: “(1) coercive isomorphism stems from political influence and the problem of legitimacy; (2) mimetic isomorphism [results] from standard responses to uncertainty; and (3) normative isomorphism is associated with professionalization.”Footnote ¹⁵ Isomorphism in the context of NGOs thus refers to the different factors that mould the development of organizations to a similar shape, structure or form.

Put differently, coercive pressures can be displayed by examining the impact of state regulation on the behaviour of an NGO. For example, regulations in China forbid NGOs from conducting public fundraising. This ultimately forces NGOs to rely largely on private and institutional donations, which often come with certain stipulations that alter NGOs' behaviour.Footnote ¹⁶

Mimetic isomorphism has a tendency to occur in an uncertain environment, where organizations will begin to copy successful models as a way of coping with changeable conditions.Footnote ¹⁷ By copying, NGOs are able to establish legitimacy quickly without having to build a repertoire of practices which can be time-consuming and not necessarily lead to any tangible outcomes. This is particularly pronounced in the case of China where the environment for NGOs can oscillate depending on state behaviour.Footnote ¹⁸ NGOs' acquiescence is also a likely strategy that can lead to an economic gain,Footnote ¹⁹ as well as legitimacy.Footnote ²⁰

Finally, normative isomorphism emerges when similar attitudes and approaches lead to homogeneity – often the result of hiring practices that stress like-educational achievements, or inter-hiring between existing organizations. Normative pressures are often brought about by the desire to professionalize.Footnote ²¹

The strength in utilizing neo-institutional theory to understand NGO behaviour lies in the fact that it is able to explain why organizations adopt certain practices – mundane or complex – in environments where they have little influence to reject said practices.Footnote ²² Chinese NGOs generally operate in a relatively singular institutional environment, whereby competing logics do not cause contestation, and thus, much variation in institutional designs.Footnote ²³ Organizational change with regards to NGOs in China is particularly dependent on the political environment and the power of institutional actors in their support or opposition to change. We argue that the political environment and power exerted by the state can have different effects on the NGO sector: they can lead to coercive, mimetic and normative isomorphic pressures. We believe that the puzzle is not only the nature of the state per se (strong/weak) but also the institutional environment that is created by the power of the state in which NGOs must navigate. Thus, we seek to build upon organizational theory as it applies to NGOs to comprehend the present and future development of the Chinese NGO sector.

The Institutional Environment and Collaborative Measures

Notwithstanding the increasing size and diversity of the NGO sector in Beijing and Shanghai, coercive pressures are prevalent owing to the existing regulatory environment that manages NGOs. Officially, all NGOs are required to be registered with the MCA, in addition to having a willing department or leading unit to sponsor them.Footnote ²⁴ Given that there are minimal incentives for government departments or units to take on the extra administrative work that is required to sponsor an NGO, and the strong disincentive of being liable in the event an NGO becomes troublesome, it is not surprising that government sponsorship is difficult to secure.Footnote ²⁵ This is such the case that many NGOs are prevented from completing registration at this step. In the situation where an NGO has complied with the dual registration process, all NGO decisions are technically required to be approved by the sponsoring agency. Furthermore, NGOs must provide annual financial reports to the MCA. This effectively means that the autonomy of the organization is eroded and, in the long term, will incentivize the NGO sector to forge practices in a homogenized fashion to ensure a high degree of predictability for the state.

Many organizations avoid this lengthy bureaucratic process by registering as a for-profit commercial or business entity with the Bureau of Industry and Commerce. Since the 2004 Regulations on the Administration of Foundations, organizations can also be formed through private initiatives and still undertake tasks that were once considered public. Such for-profit organizations cannot officially establish regional or branch offices, which in effect reduces the chances for an organization to scale up their services and establish geographic power.Footnote ²⁶ Moreover, only one type of each organization may be established in any given region. Despite this situation, such organizations essentially operate and present themselves as NGOs.Footnote ²⁷ This suggests that coercive pressures prevail irrespective of whether organizations are officially registered as an NGO, commercial/business entity or foundation. That is to say, the state's management system will direct some NGOs to channel their efforts “into areas the state finds most acceptable” in any case.Footnote ²⁸ The regulatory environment for NGOs in China contributes to maintaining social stability by keeping out those organizations that the government perceives as a threat, and minimizing the size and strength of the NGO sector, which in turn, may limit NGOs' collaborative efforts with the local state.

Suffice to say, efforts to launch collaborative projects between the local state and NGOs in Beijing and Shanghai are limited. Although collaboration offers both parties – the state and NGO – an opportunity to pool material, symbolic, interpretive and geographical resources, the local state rarely engages in voluntary collaborative efforts except when it is familiar with and knowledgeable about a specific, individual NGO project. For instance, Beijing NGOs such as Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, Facilitators, Tongyu, and Shining Stone Community Action have been established at least since the early 2000s (1993 for Beijing Cultural Heritage). Their continued existence and operation in Beijing suggests that their longevity has made some impact in garnering opportunities to work with local authorities. All four NGOs have managed to maintain their collaborative projects with Beijing's local authorities, rather than operate in an on-again, off-again manner which often characterizes the local state–NGO experience. The case in Shanghai is also similar in that it is the older NGOs (Lequn and Grassroots Community) that have managed to carry out projects with the involvement of local authorities.

For the aforementioned NGOs, one main method of maintaining contact and collaboration with local municipal authorities is to mobilize their material power and market their services to the city. After nearly ten years of working with migrant communities in Beijing, Facilitators and Tongyu have managed to secure municipal commitment to purchase services since 2010. While these two NGOs have collaborated with local authorities in the past on specific projects (for example, Facilitators worked with the Centre for Disease Control in 2003 during SARS), it is support from local authorities for their ad hoc programmes and the ability to build up an organizational and work history that has enabled such NGOs to continue their collaboration with the local government to the present day. Similarly, Lequn, which focuses on providing services to youth and migrant communities, has found success in maintaining its collaboration with municipal authorities through contract-based work.

Whether or not the above strategy translates to projecting a higher level of mimetic pressure is another narrative. The evidence suggests that while the four NGOs have copied a successful model to market their services, they have done so without awareness of each other's tactics. Granted, the modelled organization may be unaware of their mimetic activity in this respect, or the models of “success” may be diffused unintentionally through employee transfer/turnover or via trade associations.Footnote ²⁹ However, this is not a possibility that can be entertained given that, to reiterate, (1) they have no direct awareness of each other's work and have self-reported little or no awareness of other NGOs' activities; (2) they are working in completely different sectors of operation, and as such, have little chance of unintentional contact that may lead to copying; and (3) they rarely experience employee transfers from other NGOs. Uncertainties in the institutional environment and their relationships with local government have led the NGOs to develop an independently derived, pragmatic approach to marketing their material power to local authorities. Interestingly, this tactic becomes difficult to execute given that local governments often have not gained sufficient knowledge or epistemic awareness of the potential capacity of the NGOs, as the next section suggests. Seemingly, such findings may appear to challenge a neo-institutional framework. Our findings from Beijing and Shanghai suggest that while NGOs still operate within a particular institutional environment – which may be corporatist in natureFootnote ³⁰ – they have yet to be creative and innovative to the extent that they can mitigate the impacts of their environment.

Even when epistemic awareness has been achieved by local government, some NGOs have experienced “competition” from authorities when delivering social welfare services. A representative for a Shanghai-based NGO explained that it is not unusual for the government to “steal” the ideas and programmes of small successful NGOs.Footnote ³¹ For example, Shan Tao, a successful NGO that sells goods over the internet for charities, has faced competition from Shan Pin, a government-organized NGO (GONGO). Shan Pin has benefited from government backing and contacts, and as a result, has managed to secure the financial support of large corporations such as KPMG. Shan Tao's representative believes that the poaching of such ideas may be detrimental to smaller NGOs unable to compete against the bigger NGOs and GONGOs with greater material and geographic powers. The interview with Shan Tao's representative confirms a degree of wariness towards government officials:

According to the representative for Shan Tao, interactions with government officials can be hazardous not only for individual NGOs but also for the sector as a whole. Fear of having ideas poached reduces the incentives to be innovative and ultimately diminishes the NGOs' potential interpretive power. From a different lens, although the borrowing of successful practices or ideas may be a positive example of organizational or policy-based learning, what is challenging for the NGOs in this study is the possibility of being squeezed out by larger and better-funded government-backed NGOs. This competition can strangle any future innovations on the part of smaller, grassroots NGOs.

Alongside the threat of competition from the local government, NGOs also have to contend with the possibility of absorption. In its early years, the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center had to stave off government attempts to co-opt and absorb it into existing government structures that work in the area of cultural heritage. It has been approached by local officials to “become part of their government branch, like a GONGO, which we refused.”Footnote ³³ Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center has managed to maintain its independence and, perhaps owing to these previous experiences of being subject to co-optation, the representative emphasized that the NGO does not collaborate (hezuo 合作) with local authorities. Instead, it works beside them. Some NGOs have not been so fortunate. A representative of Les+ recounted the experience of the “Free Lunch Programme” created by journalist Deng Fei. Deng was able to attract substantial donations from the public via the internet in order to provide free lunches to needy school children across the nation. Deng's success attracted the attention of the government and, according to the representative of Les + , Deng's initiative was “eaten up [sic] by one of the branches of the government and turned into a government programme.”Footnote ³⁴ Small and potentially successful NGOs are vulnerable to government incorporation.

Nevertheless, not all NGOs are so pessimistic with regards to the government. In rare cases, NGOs can be seen as a vehicle for government authorities to project certain images or messages to both domestic and international audiences. China Dialogue's representative believes that when the Chinese government needs to be heard and taken seriously by the international media, it taps into the potential symbolic power of the NGOs which can provide a “voice” for the government to get its message across.Footnote ³⁵ Consequently, local NGOs have lent legitimacy to the government when the situation demands it. The government's interactions with the international media and NGOs have also proved beneficial for smaller NGOs. For example, Tongyu has been able to source funding from the larger China AIDS Foundation, a GONGO which receives financial support from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on the condition that it involves local NGOs in its initiatives. According to Tongyu's representative, the situation would be “very different if they [the GONGO] didn't need to fill this quota.”Footnote ³⁶ Here, the involvement of the international community dictates changes to the institutional environment of the NGOs, and the government has little recourse but to respond. It is through the government's response that we see space opening up for local NGOs to conduct their projects. The institutional environment is evolving, and NGOs can benefit from or be thwarted by government incorporation. In the case of a changing institutional environment, interactions with government do not occur through the actions of NGOs, but as a result of external forces and the government proactively identifying the successes achieved by certain NGOs.

It is evident in the cases of Beijing and Shanghai that coercive isomorphism is dominant. However, mimetic isomorphism is also at play in instances where NGOs like Shan Tao have adopted similar organizational functions to establish legitimacy. While those in the NGO sector have accused Shan Pin of stealing ideas from its NGO counterpart, it is interesting to note that even government-backed NGOs require legitimacy beyond state support. In either case, it would appear that coercive and mimetic isomorphism occur almost in tandem with each other in the context of China.

The Epistemic Awareness of NGOs by the Local State

NGOs which have reported difficulties in establishing collaborative opportunities have portrayed local authorities as lacking trust and knowledge of the sector. Beijing's Green Earth Volunteers always invite local officials to their monthly talks. However, the majority of these invitations are declined. The representative for Green Earth Volunteers doubted that the local authorities had any incentive to use the symbolic or interpretive powers of NGOs other than to promote GDP growth, as career promotion in local government is often based on economic growth.Footnote ³⁷ Focusing on economic development often marginalizes other issues, such as the environment, and prevents local authorities from taking the time to realize the full potential of the NGO sector. Shanghai's Green Oasis, a conservation focused NGO, faces this situation. The Green Oasis representative recalled that: “There is not much collaboration with the local government. The only time was 2010 when the local government gave us some funds for an activity involving the elderly.”Footnote ³⁸ Having a programme aimed at helping the elderly seems incongruent with the general environmental conservation goals of Green Oasis; however, it does suggest that ad hoc programmes that attune to the priorities of the local state, and are pitched as such by the NGO, have a greater chance of securing the collaboration of the local state. Green Oasis' representative further noted that, “local officials know of the existence of the NGO, but their focus is elsewhere where the perceived needs are greater.”Footnote ³⁹

Less than half of our NGO interviewees believed that the knowledge levels of the local authorities in Beijing and Shanghai had improved with regards to the NGO sector, whereas more than half of the interviewees thought that there were low levels of trust and knowledge of NGOs. How can such a seemingly contradictory perspective be explained? Based on the collaborative interaction between NGOs and the local state, we can conclude that knowledge of individual NGOs has improved, but that this knowledge is difficult to extrapolate to the wider sector. Given that it is difficult and politically unwise for NGOs to form alliances, there are few opportunities for them to amass geographical power.Footnote ⁴⁰ Thus, smaller and newer NGOs will find it more challenging to gain the attention and support of local officials.Footnote ⁴¹ The well-established NGOs with relatively longer organizational histories will likely have a near monopoly on potential collaborative partnerships with the local state. Where there is collaboration between the smaller and newer NGOs, it tends to be on an ad hoc level and rarely lasts beyond a single project. The interviewees indicated that such circumstances usually occur in individual cases identified as “needy” by the local authorities. Thus, the knowledge level of the NGO sector is also dependent on the local authorities' awareness of certain social issues and the degree of importance that is assigned to these issues.

The interviews suggest that greater state collaboration and epistemic awareness of NGOs by the local state will be achieved through the professionalization of NGOs – a signifier of normative isomorphic change. Professionalization in the context of this study essentially refers to having established a respected organizational identity alongside a continuation and expansion of service provisions to relevant constituents. Seemingly, normative pressures to homogenize come from the similar attitudes and approaches gained through the process of professionalization. The representative for China Youth Climate Action Network noted that local authorities are more willing to collaborate with those NGOs that have developed a professional capacity and gained the approval of the wider community.Footnote ⁴² A number of NGOs further clarified the meaning of “professional capacity” as the capacity to provide services (fuwu 服务). A representative from Shanghai's New Citizen Life Center echoed this sentiment, and reported that opportunities to work with the local authorities will occur “[w]hen the NGO is seen to contribute a service to the population.”Footnote ⁴³

This may prove problematic for nearly half of the NGOs sampled, as they lacked the geographical power and financial resources (material power) to sustain momentum on the projects that they were engaged with. With 13 of the 28 NGOs interviewed operating on a budget of less than US$20,000 per annum, establishing trust and professionalization through service provision would be extremely difficult. The China Association for NGO Cooperation's representative reiterated this challenge: “Many of the local NGOs are very small and don't have a lot of capacity, or are not very professional.”Footnote ⁴⁴

It is interesting to observe that many NGO representatives equated service provision and the added value of the NGO as a determinant factor to potential collaborations with the local state: “on the local level, the government needs to see the added-value of an NGO.”Footnote ⁴⁵ This evaluation was echoed by Beijing's Facilitators: “What is very important is that an NGO has to be very professional and valuable [to society] so that the government can see its effect.”Footnote ⁴⁶ The representative for Shining Stone added further weight to the notion of NGOs needing to create “value” in order to be considered by the local authorities: “NGOs need to have the capacity to solve problems, the capacity to provide services. Otherwise the government would not trust your NGO to do work.”Footnote ⁴⁷

It would appear that those NGOs that have evolved from small localized organizations to city-wide service providers have done so through a process of sustained organizational momentum and perseverance despite an uncertain and fluctuating political environment.Footnote ⁴⁸ A representative of Facilitators attributed his organization's growth to the notion that, “the Beijing authorities have been paying increasing attention to the NGO sector.”Footnote ⁴⁹ The Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center detailed their commitment to their organization and programmes in the context of obtaining NGO registration: “For 5 years, every day, to meet every requirement we did everything the government wanted us to do. Even in the spring of 2003, through Beijing's SARs outbreak, we continued to work for the centre, which impressed local authorities. Finally, we satisfied all of their demands and received our NGO licence.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Such persistence engendered not only trust between the NGO and the local authorities, but also a greater degree of knowledge and epistemic awareness of the NGO in question.

In this vein, to build greater trust and knowledge, Lequn has implemented specific programmes as needed by the Shanghai authorities.Footnote ⁵¹ Lequn believes that the NGO sector in Shanghai is trusted by the authorities: “Local authorities (at least in Shanghai) have quite a good relationship with the NGO sector. There is quite an acceptable level of mutual understanding and collaboration.”Footnote ⁵² Following the local authorities' direction and meeting the objectives of the local state has worked well for Lequn and has generated a positive outlook on the part of the NGO's representative. The representative of New Citizen Life Center in Shanghai also suggested that good relations between NGOs and Shanghai authorities exist, since organizations are able to reach out to different sectors in society and fulfil their needs – something that is often problematic for the authorities to achieve.Footnote ⁵³ Thus, for Lequn and New Citizen Life Center, two organizations that target migrant youth and women groups, being amenable to the local authorities' requests and proactive with the constituents concerned are the strategies that have been adopted to raise the knowledge level of the local authorities.

Direct contact and communication with individual officials is another tactic used by some NGOs such as Beijing's Shining Stone to foster epistemic awareness of the NGO's capacity and initiate collaboration with local authorities. While no promise of collaboration is guaranteed via this strategy, the NGO can nevertheless establish a direct line to the relevant government departments: “We would look for guanyuan 官员 (local officials) with whom we were familiar and approach them with the social problems we wanted to work on, particularly social problems that the government also wanted to solve.”Footnote ⁵⁴

These various strategies for increasing local authorities' knowledge of the NGO sector and for building trust have indeed improved the potential for collaborative relationships between the local state and NGO. A number of NGOs have further suggested that trust is no longer a major barrier to collaboration; rather, they say, it is “jiaodu 角度,” or perspective, that plays a stronger role. As Facilitators noted, it not that local authorities do not trust NGOs, it is just that they have a different perspective of the situation. For Shining Stone, variations in jiaodu refer to the degree of familiarity that local authorities have with NGOs. If local authorities increase their knowledge of NGOs' perspectives and vice versa, and NGOs are able to increase their epistemic capacity, greater collaboration between both parties will occur.

The Growing Epistemic Capacity of NGOs

In the classic formulation espoused by Haas, NGOs are generally seen as epistemic communities – that is, they constitute a network of professionals with “recognized expertise and competence in a particular domain, and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Further, NGOs share a set of normative and principled beliefs; notions of validity; and a common policy enterprise. That NGOs have become part of an epistemic community would suggest that the experience and knowledge they have developed have become important to policymakers and to the general public in addressing a range of issues.Footnote ⁵⁶

There was no consensus among the interviewees about whether NGOs in China can currently be conceived of as a community of experts whose symbolic and interpretive powers can be meaningfully utilized, and whether it is the role of NGOs to produce new knowledge or not. For some NGO representatives, such as the one from Shanghai's Green Oasis, the development of knowledge – whether it comes in the form of innovative projects or delivery methods of certain programmes – was thought to detract from the goal(s) of the organization. According to other NGOs, such as the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center, the NGO sector is not yet a community of experts as the NGOs themselves lack the requisite transparency. Tongyu's representative was even more adamant that NGOs are not experts in their fields, claiming that, “NGOs are about mass awareness. China doesn't have an established NGO scene,” even though she believed that the contribution of NGOs across the sector could in time lead the sector forward.Footnote ⁵⁷ While the diversity of the NGO sector is readily apparent, and the individuals who work for NGOs represent a wide spectrum of professions, the Green Earth Volunteers' representative opined that NGOs “do not represent, as a whole, a group of scientific experts.”Footnote ⁵⁸

In the view of the China Association for NGO Cooperation, a certain segment of NGOs can be considered as having expertise and inherent interpretive and symbolic powers that derive as a function of this expertise. For example, the Climate Change Action Network in China, which constitutes a consortium of environmentally focused NGOs, fall under this category. However, in the majority of instances, and particularly if NGOs are considered individually, their experience is “very low.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Notwithstanding, China Dialogue's representative believed that NGOs embody a level of interpretive power that is not found within government ranks, since the former are potentially staffed by experts in the field, and are increasingly important sources of information when “big social problems breakout.” Whether NGOs in China should be responsible for the production of new knowledge or not, NGOs do have a vital role to play in the dissemination of information to the public. Green Earth Volunteers' representative presented an interesting insight: “Producing knowledge is not necessarily something that a NGO does, because that's not something we do, but reframing knowledge is something that NGOs can do and have definitely done in China. And I think they have been relatively successful in this.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Perhaps Chinese NGOs cannot fully achieve a mature epistemic community because of coercive pressures. However, if we accept the representative of Green Earth Volunteers' perspective, NGOs may be more effective as agents of change not by pushing knowledge boundaries, but by using their interpretive powers in a relatively covert manner to recast existing issues in a new light and/or shedding light on the under-emphasized spectrum of political, economic and social issues.

Final Words

This article has suggested that the local state lacks meaningful knowledge of the NGO sector and that NGOs have not sufficiently matured to become part of an epistemic community. Given that NGOs are relatively new to the social landscape in China, we postulate that the Chinese NGO sector has not developed sufficiently to become part of a mature epistemic community in which their expertise or interpretive powers can be used as reference points by the state. In time, it is plausible that NGOs in China may become part of a mature community of experts where they can more effectively harness not only their material power but also their symbolic, interpretive and geographical powers. There are, however, a few reservations in this regard. We can prognosticate that it is not simply a matter of time before Chinese NGOs mature into an epistemic community; rather, given the strength of the Chinese state and the existence of strong coercive isomorphism pressures, any production of knowledge outside of the state arena may challenge the legitimacy of China's Party-state, thereby becoming intolerable and, ultimately, hindering the development of NGOs.Footnote ⁶¹

In effect, the existence of such structural forces, rooted in the Party-state system and a regulatory framework that undeniably dominates local state–NGO relationships, strongly suggests that NGOs will have to stay one step ahead of the state. To do so, NGOs need to produce new knowledgeFootnote ⁶² and, more importantly, anticipate surprises or discover the unknown.Footnote ⁶³ For example, NGOs will have to anticipate the next major social problem, and enact upon it with programmatic endeavours. When executing such a strategy, we posit that NGOs will more likely gain the trust of state authorities through a “best practices”Footnote ⁶⁴ framework, or by following successful NGO “models”Footnote ⁶⁵ that will, in the end, lead to greater possibilities of collaboration with the local state. Moreover, a “best practices” framework will entice the NGO sector to professionalize under the auspices of mimetic and normative isomorphic forces.Footnote ⁶⁶ Of course, the scenario in which the state may attempt to compete and/or absorb such innovative NGOs, akin to the Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center example in its early years, may be a reality.

While the institutional environment in which NGOs are operating is slowly changing, thereby allowing greater participation of NGOs to address a number of social issues, the majority of the NGOs interviewed still perceive the state as having limited meaningful knowledge of the sector. Further, even if epistemic awareness were achieved, it is quite plausible that the state would develop a strategy of strategic ignoranceFootnote ⁶⁷ to vary its degree of acknowledgement of an NGO, depending on a pragmatic calculus that is based on the NGO's resources for social and welfare considerations – in essence, by factoring whether NGOs can utilize their material power (rather than their symbolic, interpretive and geographical powers) to supplement the local state's social and welfare provisions. The initial underlying reasoning for this theory is based on McGoey's concept of “factual ignorance,” which suggests that local government officials can utilize competing facts about NGOs (e.g. beneficial to society versus potential socio-political threats) as capital.Footnote ⁶⁸ Part of this calculation involves mediating the uncertainty of forging working partnerships with NGOs presently.Footnote ⁶⁹ The second reasoning is the idea that strategic ignorance can be used as a defensive strategy whereby errors or problems can allude to an interpretation of evidence (e.g. the ambiguous nature of NGOs as they exist outside of administrative structures) and further exonerate local authorities from engaging with NGOs. It will be prudent for future work to examine and measure the extent to which strategic ignorance on the part of the local state is used as a deliberate tactic to allow and disallow collaboration with NGOs.