Mark Sidel on China's Oversight of Foreign NGOs: Eight Years of the Overseas NGO Law

Welcome to the Seneca Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you this week from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Seneca is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Seneca podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I'm doing with the show and with the newsletter, please do consider lending your support. You can reach me at cinecapod at gmail.com And as we all know, I am in need of more institutional support. Listeners, for your part, you can support my work by becoming paying subscribers at cinecapodcast.com.

You will enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, essays from me, as well as writings and podcasts from some of your favorite China-focused columnists and commentators, and of course you can bask in the knowledge that you're helping me do what I honestly believe is very important work. So do check out the page to see all it's on offer, and consider helping out. I had the pleasure of hearing this week's guest speak in Madison back in February when I was up visiting the Center for East Asian Studies at the university there. The talk reminded me that we are long overdue for a conversation about an area that has quietly, but quite profoundly, reshaped China's relationship with the outside world, the regulatory environment for overseas NGOs, foundations, and nonprofits. Since the law on the management of domestic activities of overseas NGOs took effect on January 1, 2017, it was promulgated in 2016, China has introduced what is now a remarkably comprehensive, vertically integrated system of oversight for foreign civil society organizations.

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