Anthony Spires's expertise makes him well-qualified to write on global society and China for the Cambridge Elements series. This short but excellent book, written for a wide audience, offers a comprehensive, succinct overview of the topic, well-grounded in empirical scholarship.

The book begins with a brief overview of the Western scholarship on global civil society (GCS) and transnational activist networks. Turning to China, Spires provides a cogent analysis of the frameworks used by the CCP to understand global civil society. The historical, political, economic and cultural experiences of both Chinese officials and citizens lead them to blur the difference between foreign donors, organizations and governments. (To be fair, this is something that Westerners also tend to do to Chinese individuals, organizations and the government.) This framework has led to the CCP treating GCS organizations and activists with wariness, as well as implementing relatively restrictive policies on international organizations. The inhospitable environment has led to an unusually low density of foreign organizations in China.

Spires also reveals that the actual practices and actions of international NGOs in China have been quite mild and congruent with Chinese political and social values. Moreover, he offers evidence that, despite the CCP constraints, the GCS has transformed the values and language of Chinese society, which have absorbed the concepts of universal values, cosmopolitanism, democratic participation, freedom and human rights. I find this argument intriguing, but I believe that Spires underplays the ways that some of this language predates GSC. The CCP has always claimed that China is a democracy. It has used the language of equality and minority rights since Maoist times. The rule of law has been an important component of CCP discourse for a couple of decades. All these concepts precede the influence of the international NGOs and may explain why GCS language is effective when citizens use it in China.

The second half of the book examines the internationalization of Chinese civil society. China is no longer just a receiver of GSC, but instead now sends out its own NGOs to other countries. In conjunction with Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative, in the 2010s the government began issuing calls for Chinese organizations to “go out” into the world. Although the call was general, state resources pushed GONGOs (government-organized NGOs) rather than independent organizations, and GONGOs were used to supervise and control other Chinese civil society organizations. Despite the emphasis on GONGOs, Spires notes that, at least for now, China does not seem to be interested in using its internationalizing civil society to transform the recipient countries. Instead, the goal seems to be to increase China's soft power and to use Chinese NGOs to support Chinese businesses and projects abroad. Chinese civil society has also burst beyond national borders through the rise of “diaspora activism.” This includes Chinese activists who leave the country and work to influence Chinese society from foreign locations as well as Chinese citizens who become activists because of their experiences abroad. These new forms of diaspora activism make civil society more difficult for the CCP to control, although its surveillance abilities are also increasing.

Since the book is short, it neglects some aspects of Chinese global civil society. For those unfamiliar with the history of foreign NGOs in China, it flattens out differences in terms of time, region and sector. In the first decade of the 21st century, the CCP was much less concerned about regulating international organizations and much more interested in drawing upon the financial resources that GCS could offer, especially in the environmental sector. Civil society developed unequally across China because political officials in different provinces were more or less interested in permitting and pursuing the possibilities that NGOs offered (Jennifer Y. J. Hsu, Carolyn L. Hsu and Reza Hasmath, “NGO strategies in an authoritarian context, and their implications for citizenship: the case of the People's Republic of China,” Voluntas 28(3): 1157–1179 [2017]).

Since Xi Jinping's ascension in 2012, there has been a greater interest on the national level in regulating GSC more consistently across the country. At the same time, international sources have become less interested in funding work in China because of the country's economic success and due to international political tensions. As Spires makes clear, the CCP targets specific sectors of the GCS (human rights) for particular surveillance and control. Yet the book fails to note that sectors which the party-state finds useful, such as environmental protection, are allowed to flourish even in times of constraint (Xiang Gao and Jessica Teets, “Civil society organizations in China: navigating the local government for more inclusive environmental governance,” China Information 35(1) [2021]). The book also downplays many of the ways that Chinese civil society actors are not simply pawns of the state, but have agency. The entire Chinese civil society sector emerged out of the entrepreneurial actions of citizens, not due to state policies. Successful Chinese NGOs were starting international branches years before Xi Jinping's Belt and Road Initiative.

Spires posits that the suppression of the GCS and domestic civil society go hand-in-hand. Yet the suppression of international NGOs can be beneficial to the development of domestic organizations because it protects the latter from needing to compete with well-resourced foreign organizations. In the 2010s, while the state was passing more restrictive laws against foreign NGOs, it was also promulgating a series of laws that made it easier for domestic NGOs to operate legally and to influence state and society (Meng Ye, “Building and enabling legal environment: laws and policies on social enterprises in China,” Journal of Asian Public Policy 14(2): 182–199 [2021]). Even under Xi Jinping, the CCP's goal has not been to repress civil society but to tame it, removing its risks to the Party while enhancing its benefits. To this end, it has engaged in waves of openness and repression but, as Spires makes clear, its ability to fully control the situation is always limited.