Non-Profits, Civil Society, Expertise

Wanted to point to an excellent post by Guobin Yang at TheChina Beat contextualizing the career of one of China's pioneering environmental activists. Liang Congjie had founded Friends of Nature, the first recognized environmental advocacy group in the PRC, in 1994, battling against poachers and renegade loggers while mentoring a generation of younger scholars and activists.  (Photo caption for the left, aptly: ANTI POACHING SQUAD.)
Yang points to the post '89 crumbling of the Chinese academic world as the key background to this move - the turn towards NGO creation offered "a logical way of seeking meaning at a time of intellectual crisis" but simultaneously helped create a new class of public intellectuals more intimately connected with grassroots, civic movements. As Yang summarizes:

Perhaps more than anything else, the combination of the image of an active and participatory citizenry with the Confucian image of a world of human-nature harmony epitomizes Liang Congjie’s vision as a scholar-environmentalist in action.

The last three months in HK have pulled me into a number of conferences - on impact investing, social enterprise and philanthropy - all primarily revolving around the burgeoning civic sector of China. [An excellent and yet developing reference to social enterprises in the PRC here, btw.] Having somewhat settled down now, I'm trying to figure out the analytical lenses most useful for cutting into what I've been observing, and at least one rough dynamic is certainly the role that scholars play within the sector. I'd been coming from a group whose primary goal was to better integrate scholarship and policy,  so was somewhat surprised to notice that scholarly expertise was not only enlisted by every association in this tightly knit NGO community - but seemed a necessary prerequisite for any sort of legitimacy.

Also, re: the reading list, BUMP to the top Guobin Yang's The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online (Columbia University Press, 2009) - which for all my talk of loving him, I haven't actually read yet.

Google, Isaiah Berlin, Guobin Yang

I've been posting much to a tumblr - EXCURSUS II -- for ease of access, esp. since the interface makes it easier to pop on links or images I find interesting during the course of the workday. While browsing the Social Science Research Council's mash of articles, I came across a great article on Google's projected China exit by Guobin Yang (one of the real academic leaders on the political implications of networked communications there.) "Why Google Should Not Quit" makes an interesting pivot on the ways in which the exit would shift both positive ("to do", capabilities) and negative freedom ("freedom from", non-interference) in the PRC, arguing that the censorship landscape would essentially not change (negative freedom won't be affected) BUT that the reduction in competitiveness may lead to a more impoverished internet landscape generally (reducing positive freedom.) he says:

"It is hard to imagine Google continuing to operate in China by censoring its search engine as if nothing had happened. But neither can I imagine Google retreating into its inner citadel. I find it unlikely, as Isaiah Berlin might put it, that when faced with two methods of freeing itself from the pain of a wounded leg, one of difficulty and uncertainty of finding a cure, the other of cutting it off, Google will opt for the second. Perhaps we will soon see another moment of Google creativity."

More potently, I do wonder whether this is the beginning of a great divergence in global information landscapes.