An analysis of NGO's policy advocacy under Hong Kong's political landscape: a case study of Hong KongUnison

Abstract

What is civil society? This term is no longer new to Hong Kong people in the past 10 years. Nowadays we learn about the conflicts between the HKSARG and civil society groups from time to time given the increasingly weak governance under Hong Kong’s political landscape. A new type of nonprofits (NGOs) formed after 2000 in Hong Kong is closely related to the development of civil society. This paper attempts to argue that the state-nonprofit relationship in Hong Kong can be classified as statist-corporatist, a term used by Lee (2005a) with reference to Salamon, Sokolowski, and Anheier’s Social Origins Theory (2000). The “statist” character refers to the authoritarianism undertaken by the government to grip the control of nonprofits in order to consolidate its ruling; on the other hand, the “corporatist” character is displayed by its consistently generous support to social welfare through funding the non-government service providers. This paper further argues that with the rise of civil society, the non-profit regime also displays a “liberal” character, a term used in Lee and Liu (2011), which has been taking shape in the past 10 years. Under the liberal regime, there is a sizeable civil society comprising smaller individual nonprofits with state financing only one of the possible funding sources. Then, how are the NGOs or civil society groups performing under the liberal regime with respect to their relationship with the state? The majority of these nonprofits work on policy advocacy to fight against the government. The current study will use the case of Hong Kong Unison, an influential nonprofit serving ethnic minorities, to demonstrate how a self-funded NGO, deficient in financial support from the government, carries out advocacy works to call for policy change to suit the need of ethnic residents in the areas of education, employment, and race discrimination. It is found that its size, composition and financing are evident to the features of a liberal regime. Furthermore, with reference to Lee and Liu’s (2011) paper on factors influencing network formation among Hong Kong nonprofits, the present study seeks to explore how this policy advocacy NGO makes use of networking as an effective strategy to form alliance with like-minded parties, given its limited resources. The interactions with different parties such as politicians, government officials, private donors, ethnic minority community, human rights groups, and the media have been discussed. What is civil society? This term is no longer new to Hong Kong people in the past 10 years. Nowadays we learn about the conflicts between the HKSARG and civil society groups from time to time given the increasingly weak governance under Hong Kong’s political landscape. A new type of nonprofits (NGOs) formed after 2000 in Hong Kong is closely related to the development of civil society. This paper attempts to argue that the state-nonprofit relationship in Hong Kong can be classified as statist-corporatist, a term used by Lee (2005a) with reference to Salamon, Sokolowski, and Anheier’s Social Origins Theory (2000). The “statist” character refers to the authoritarianism undertaken by the government to grip the control of nonprofits in order to consolidate its ruling; on the other hand, the “corporatist” character is displayed by its consistently generous support to social welfare through funding the non-government service providers. This paper further argues that with the rise of civil society, the non-profit regime also displays a “liberal” character, a term used in Lee and Liu (2011), which has been taking shape in the past 10 years. Under the liberal regime, there is a sizeable civil society comprising smaller individual nonprofits with state financing only one of the possible funding sources. Then, how are the NGOs or civil society groups performing under the liberal regime with respect to their relationship with the state? The majority of these nonprofits work on policy advocacy to fight against the government. The current study will use the case of Hong Kong Unison, an influential nonprofit serving ethnic minorities, to demonstrate how a self-funded NGO, deficient in financial support from the government, carries out advocacy works to call for policy change to suit the need of ethnic residents in the areas of education, employment, and race discrimination. It is found that its size, composition and financing are evident to the features of a liberal regime. Furthermore, with reference to Lee and Liu’s (2011) paper on factors influencing network formation among Hong Kong nonprofits, the present study seeks to explore how this policy advocacy NGO makes use of networking as an effective strategy to form alliance with like-minded parties, given its limited resources. The interactions with different parties such as politicians, government officials, private donors, ethnic minority community, human rights groups, and the media have been discussed. The present study has certain limitations. However, it is meaningful as it provides insights into the state-nonprofit relationship as the society evolves. It argues that the tension between the government and policy advocacy NGOs cannot be resolved if Hong Kong is not to run democratisation as promised by the Beijing Central Government1. Recommendations are made to call for further research on the development of policy advocacy NGOs following the establishment of the Fourth Term Government of the HKSAR on 1 July 2012.