Ryan Hass is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he is Director of the John L. Thornton China Center and the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies. He served as Director for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia at the National Security Council from 2013 to 2017.
Elizabeth Plantan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Government at Cornell University. Her doctoral research examines state-society relations under authoritarianism, with a focus on environmental civil society in Russia and China. Currently, she is working on a project analyzing the development and implementation of the Russian law on “foreign agents” and the Chinese Foreign NGO Law, with a focus on the two laws’ differential effect on environmental groups. Her analysis has appeared both in academic and popular press, including The New York Times and Transitions Online. Plantan holds an M.A. from the Russian & East European Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington and a B.A. in Government and Russian & East European Studies from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut.
Iskander Rehman is a Senior Fellow for International Relations at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University. Prior to joining the Pell Center, Rehman was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the International Order and Strategy Program (IOS) at the Brookings Institution. He has also served as a Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Stanton Nuclear Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and as a Fellow at the Transatlantic Academy, all in Washington, D.C. Rehman has also lived and worked in India, holding visiting fellowships at the Observer Research Foundation and the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, both in New Delhi.
He has published a number of think tank monographs, book chapters, and articles in journals such as the Naval War College Review, India Review, and Asian Security. Rehman’s research has explored a broad range of Asian security issues, including the evolving security relationship between China and India, Australian defense strategy, and naval nuclear dynamics in the Indo-Pacific. His work has also featured or been cited in The Guardian, The American Interest, The Financial Times, The Economist, The Indian Express, Le Monde, The Diplomat, The National Interest, and BBC World, amongst others. He is a regular contributor for the national security website War on the Rocks, and is currently writing a book which examines the ongoing shifts in historically “non-aligned” or neutral Asian countries’ defense postures.
Rehman holds a B.A., Masters of Science, Masters of Research (M.Res.), and Ph.D. in Political Science (with distinction and a specialization in Asia Studies) from the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) in Paris, France.
The Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has not offered clear guidance about this apparently common problem. The China NGO Project has learned from several foreign NGOs that many PSUs are either unprepared to or unwilling to sponsor foreign NGOs, sometimes including past partners. Further, there is no guidance as to how to approach a PSU about sponsoring a foreign NGO’s representative office (whether by phone, fax, letter, email, or in-person). (The MPS has, however, issued contact information for national-level PSUs, and some provinces have issued contact information for provincial-level PSUs.) While Article 12 of the law provides a list of documentation a foreign NGO must present in order to register with the Ministry of Public Security, the law does not provide any clarity on what a PSU should use as a standard for acceptance or rejection, nor does it provide a time frame within which PSUs must respond to requests for sponsorship.
Though the Ministry of Public Security has provided no specific guidance on this point, it appears that foreign NGOs may file one time for a program that will take place on non-contiguous dates during the year. (According to the Foreign NGO Law, no Temporary Activities may exceed one year in duration.) One foreign NGO told The China NGO Project that, according to its Chinese Partner, it would in theory be permitted to submit one filing for a program that will take place twice this year, with months between each activity. The NGO noted, however, that the filing documentation must include all planned program dates; this NGO had not included the later program dates and therefore will have to file a second time for the second activity. As we have reported previously, filing can be an expensive and time-consuming process, meaning most NGOs would prefer to file once per year if possible.
Dhruva Jaishankar is a Fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings India in New Delhi.
Nimmi Kurian is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a Faculty Advisor in the India China Institute at The New School in New York. Her research interests include border studies with a focus on the Asian borderlands, comparative regionalism, Indian foreign policy, constituent diplomacy, and transboundary water governance. Her recent publications include: India and China: Rethinking Borders and Security (co-authored, University of Michigan Press, 2016); The India China Borderlands: Conversations Beyond the Centre (Sage, 2014); “The Blind Men and the Elephant: Making Sense of China’s One Belt One Road Initiative,” CPR Policy Brief, December 2016; “Uncharted Waters: Navigating the India-China Conversation on Water,” CPR ThoughtSpace Podcast, March 2017.
A 7.0—magnitude earthquake struck a remote, mountainous part of China’s southwestern province of Sichuan, killing 19 people, including eight tourists, and injuring 247, the provincial government and official media said on Wednesday.
Hong Kong stepped up efforts on Wednesday to clean up a massive palm oil spill, with authorities scooping up more than 90 tonnes of foul—smelling, styrofoam—like clumps in one of the worst environmental disasters to blight the territory’s waters.
US President Donald Trump’s threats of “fire and fury” against North Korea couldn’t come at a worse time for China.
