China Development Brief - Social Welfare

NGO report damns campus health, disability discrimination

Wed, 23 May 2007 06:41:28 +0100

Discrimination against students with medical conditions is rife in Chinese colleges and universities despite being formally prohibited by China’s Constitution and various related laws, according to a report published by three NGOs.

Child trafficking: Protecting children in a society on the move

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:23:25 +0100

Rather than treating child trafficking as an isolated issue, the government of China should respond by creating comprehensive and integrated child protection mechanisms, Save the Children’s Kate Wedgwood, He Ye (何叶) and Sun Tiezheng (孙铁铮) argue in the following excerpts from a recent presentation to the Foreign Correspondents Club in Beijing.

First person: "Uncle, I want to go home”

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 10:26:15 +0000

Musapir, a native of Kelamayi (克拉马依) in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, is a police cadet in the Peoples’ Public Security University of China. In July 2006 he posted the following story on a website devoted to Uighur affairs.

During this summer vacation the school arranged for us to go to Shenzhen on a two month internship. The people and events in this story are all real, but for their security and for other reasons some names have been changed.

The danwei where I did my internship was a local police station (派出所) in Shenzhen city’s Bao’an (宝安) district. Around midday the day before yesterday we received a call saying some of our people on the beat (巡防人员) had arrested a thief in front of a commercial plaza. After taking the call, a police officer and I went together to the scene and found that the thief was a boy from Xinjiang, the same place I come from. He had been stealing a cellphone from someone’s bag, but the victim noticed.

Social Work: Putting care into professional practice

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 09:09:14 +0000

China’s top leaders recently recognised the need for a corps of professional social workers. Chang Tianle (常天乐) reports on ongoing efforts and challenges in building the new profession.

NGO service group aims to grow "learning networks"

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 02:25:01 +0000

An informal, national network of around 45 NGOs serving autistic children and their families has provided both a learning opportunity and an inspiration to the Beijing-based Capacity Building & Assessment Centre (CBAC, 倍能组织能力建设与评估中心), which is now hoping to facilitate similar networks with funding support from an international development agency in Germany.

Symposium presents "social enterprise" as key to sustainability

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 01:26:10 +0100

Although oceans apart in some respects, social entrepreneurs from the UK and China share common experiences and challenges in their organisations, as they found at a symposium in Beijing on October 18.

Broadcasts to keep blind people in touch

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 09:55:55 +0100

Yang Qingfeng (杨青风), a 25-year-old blind man who is studying massage and acupuncture at a special college for people with disabilities, has been making school radio programmes since he was 16. But until recently becoming a professional broadcaster seemed an impossible dream.

Disability NGO pioneers local fundraising

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 16:27:47 +0100

An independent non-profit organisation that provides community-based care for mentally handicapped youngsters is managing to raise enough funds in China to expand its services without increasing dependence on international donors—despite a restrictive legal framework that leaves the fundraising market dominated by a handful of large, state-backed players.

Listening to the community is the main ingredient in Chinese NGO recipe for city governments

Tue, 02 May 2006 11:03:35 +0100

‘Community construction’ is the government’s watchword for coping with the social transformation of Chinese cities. Nick Young and Tina Qian visited Ningbo, where local authorities are working with a Chinese NGO to invest the phrase with real meaning, and to give ordinary citizens a somewhat greater role in community development.

On a weekday morning in the prosperous coastal city of Ningbo, thirty elderly residents of a relatively low-income neighbourhood are gathered in the sunny atrium of the Xujiachao (徐家漕) Neighbourhood Centre, listening to a volunteer teacher read newspaper articles aloud in the local, Zhejiang dialect. In a community diner downstairs the pensioners can buy a hearty meal for as little as one yuan (USD 12 cents), and an air-conditioned common room is also set aside for them to meet, chat and play mah jong.

Feature: Betting on reform

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 04:18:58 +0000

In January Beijing launched a new crackdown on gambling, with a spate of high profile arrests and sieges of underground casinos. However, the government now seems interested in taming and channelling the betting instinct, rather than eradicating it. Moves towards legalisation of gambling may also bring more transparency to the distribution of funds from the multi-billion dollar state lotteries. Matt Perrement investigates the current state of play.

Village elders become asset, not burden, to their families

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 07:55:59 +0100

Following our March 2005 feature on urban provision for senior citizens, Matt Perrement reports on efforts to improve the lot of older people in rural Shaanxi.

Feature: For older people, non-profits step in where government declines to tread

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:46:57 +0100

The Centre for Strategic and International Studies predicts that 25% of China's population will be over 65 by the year 2040 (see endnote). Some older people who lack family support will need community or residential care, but this will be hard to fund given that only a quarter of the workforce has any kind of retirement pension. Moreover, as Matt Perrement discovered when he visited two retirement homes over the Spring Festival break, existing coverage is minimal; and government institutions cater only to the well-off, leaving non-profit organisations to provide for the frail and to pioneer community-based services.

NGOs to propose revisions to disability law

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 06:21:50 +0100

Beijing Huiling, and the New Era Citizen Education Institute are working with a private law firm to propose amendments to the 1990 Law on Protection of Disabled Persons..

Feature: 'Dragon people' want business opportunities, not speech therapy

Tue, 02 May 2006 07:43:05 +0100

Nick Young meets a gang of pickpockets in Shenzhen and a Deaf American who hopes to make honest citizens of them.

First Person: 'We need to expose the bad things'

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 05:21:33 +0000

Fu Shengjun grew up in a state orphanage in Hefei, the capital of Anhui Province. He has since travelled to Wales and Denmark as a representative of disabled people in China. Here he talks to China Development Brief staff writer, Tina Qian, about changes in the orphanage, where he now works, and about his new life as a disability activist.