Foreign NGO Representative Office

Today, Guangdong Public Security Bureau (PSB) Executive Vice Director Li Qingxiong met with Cambodian Member of Parliament Suos Yara, who visited the PSB as part of an inspection team related to the Foreign NGO Law. Li said he hoped Suos’ visit...

As we approach one year since the Foreign NGO Law went into effect, these are some of the common questions and concerns we’re hearing from legal professionals, scholars, funders, and NGOs themselves—along with any answers we are able to offer. The...

According to the Foreign NGO Law, a foreign NGO must provide “proof of premises of the proposed representative office,” though the law is not explicit on what constitutes “proof” if an NGO does not yet have an established presence in China. This...

We’ve updated our suite of data visualizations to include the month of October.Of note, Qinghai registered its first representative office last month, while Anhui, Hainan, Hebei, Ningxia, Shanxi, Xinjiang, and Xinjiang Bingtuan all remained without...

What is the Foreign NGO Law, and why did the P.R.C. create it? The “Law of the People’s Republic of China on Administration of Activities of Overseas Nongovernmental Organizations in the Mainland of China” was adopted by the National People’s...

We’ve just posted a new analysis juxtaposing the process for registering a representative office and for filing a temporary activity. In particular, the flowchart highlights the differing points in the process during which an application or filing...

Based on its discussions with various foreign NGOs (and with much-appreciated assistance from several experts), The China NGO Project has created the following flowchart to help show the differences between registering for a representative office...

Today, the Beijing Public Security Bureau (PSB) Foreign NGO Management Office issued registration certificates to three foreign NGOs: World Sport Federation Asia Headquarters (世界体育总会亚太区总部) (Macau), Oxfam (Hong Kong), and France Export Céréales.

We’ve updated our page of monthly data visualizations to include September. The data show that Hong Kong and the United States continue to have the most representative offices and temporary activities of all the countries/regions working in China...

After a slow start, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and its provincial Public Security Bureaus (PSBs) seem to be finding their stride in implementing the Foreign NGO Law with the rate of registering representative offices and filing “temporary...

The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development has issued guidelines for NGOs requesting the Office to serve as its Professional Supervisory Unit or as its Chinese Partner Unit for representative offices and temporary...

The State Forestry Administration has formulated “Measures for State Forestry Administration Departments and Subordinate Units Managing Cooperation and Exchange with Foreign NGOs,” meant to regulate and guide offices within the State Forestry...

Following are the Professional Supervisory Units that have sponsored a (or multiple) foreign NGO representative office(s).

The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development issued two documents on August 22 outlining the procedures for foreign NGOs seeking to register a representative office or file a temporary activity in conjunction with...

On August 21, the China Philanthropy Research Institute (CPRI) at Beijing Normal University published an interview with Elizabeth Knupp of the Ford Foundation in both English and Chinese, discussing Ford’s history in China and its registration...

On August 16, the Beijing Public Security Bureau (PSB) Foreign NGO Management Office met with Italian NGO “International Cooperation Volunteer Group—Our Homeland,” and presented the group with its registration certificate. Also present were...

Today, in conjunction with the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) issued a “Notice on Handling Work Permits for Foreign Employees of Foreign NGOs and Related Issues.” This is the first official...

Can my organization appeal if public security officials reject our request to establish a representative office or prohibit our temporary activity?According to one source, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has stated on multiple occasions that...

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,...

We’ve crunched the numbers and updated our suite of data visualizations to include the month of July. Let us know if there are other ways we could analyze the data that would be useful for you or your organization.

Today, the Guangxi and Shaanxi Public Security Bureau (PSB) Foreign NGO Management Offices issued registration certificates to the Guangxi Business Association of Canada and Plan International (United States), respectively.

Contributor Tee Zhuo has done a deep dive on the statistics provided by the Ministry of Public Security for the six first months of Foreign NGO Law implementation. Among his findings are that representative offices tend to skew toward trade with...

On June 30, the Beijing Public Security Bureau (PSB) Foreign NGO Management Office granted registration certificates to 15 foreign NGOs: Ford Foundation (United States), Give2Asia (United States), The Asia Foundation (United States), Caterpillar...

A total of six entities, not originally included in the Ministry of Public Security’s 2017 list of eligible Professional Supervisory Units (PSUs), have now sponsored foreign NGO representative offices. More details about the newest of these PSUs can...

Based on data released on June 28, the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) has permitted four additional entities to become Professional Supervisory Units (PSUs) for foreign NGOs. The addition of these four new PSUs confirms that the MPS is actively...

Today, the head of the Yunnan Public Security Bureau Foreign NGO Management Office met with representatives of MSI Professional Services (Hong Kong) and Plan International (United States). MSI thanked the Yunnan office for its guidance and warm...

On June 28, the Ministry of Public Security added more than 30 new foreign NGO representative offices to its running tally, bringing the total of approved offices to 132. The China NGO Project notes that most of the new additions were for offices...

The following includes links to the official forms (in Chinese), as listed on the Ministry of Public Security website, which are necessary for compliance with both the representative office registration and temporary activity parts of China’s...

The China NGO Project has just posted English translations of the official forms needed to apply for a representative office or file for a temporary activity. You can access them all here.

Today, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau Foreign NGO Management Office presented registration certificates to twenty-one foreign NGO representative offices.

To complement our chart on which government agencies are serving as Professional Supervisory Units (PSUs) for foreign NGOs, we’ve written a separate analysis looking at what agencies are not serving as PSUs. Check it out here.

China Development Brief (CDB) has posted its own list of foreign NGOs with representative offices in China. CDB’s foreign NGO-related content can be found under the keyword “Overseas NGOs” on its website, including document translations and news...

As of June 16, more than six months after the Foreign NGO Law went into effect, 84 foreign NGOs have successfully registered 97 representative offices. Thirty-eight unique Chinese government entities at either the national or provincial level have...

On June 12, the Guangxi Public Security Bureau Foreign NGO Management Office met with the foreign NGO Couleurs de Chine, including the NGO’s vice president, who was visiting from the group’s headquarters in France.

Today, the Heilongjiang Public Security Bureau (PSB) Foreign NGO Management Office, in conjunction with Heilongjiang University, held a meeting on the Foreign NGO Law. In attendance were the university's international culture and education...

On June 13, South China Morning Post published a thorough report by Nectar Gan that details the experiences of foreign NGOs since the Foreign NGO Law went into effect this year.

The Charity Philanthropy Research Institute (CPRI) at Beijing Normal University has published an analysis of the foreign NGO representative offices registered and the temporary activities that have been filed in the first five months of 2017. The...

Here are our translations of the latest WeChat posts from the Ministry of Public Security related to Foreign NGOs.

The Beijing Public Security Bureau Foreign NGO Management Office provides this brochure in paper form at its offices in Beijing’s Haidian District. The content of the brochure is identical to the information found in numbers 1-6 of the Guide for the...

Today, the Beijing Public Security Bureau Foreign NGO Management Office granted representative office registration certificates to five more NGOs, including the Business Software Alliance (United States), The Nature Conservancy (United States), the...

Today, Hunan granted approval for its first batch of Foreign NGO representative offices: the Institute for Integrated Rural Development (Hong Kong), the China-Britain Business Council, and Reading Dreams (Hong Kong).

On May 23, the Beijing Public Security Bureau’s Foreign NGO Management Office presented four German organizations with their representative office registration certificates: Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, Heinrich Böll Foundation, Rosa Luxembourg...

The Center for Charity Law at Beijing Normal University’s China Philanthropy Research Institute (CPRI), which runs a Foreign NGO Registration Support Program, issued a bilingual set of FAQs addressing 30 common questions related to foreign NGO...

The Beijing-based China Development Brief's (CDB’s) English-language website came out last month with more news about the implementation of the Foreign NGO Law in Yunnan, Shanghai, Sichuan, and Guangdong, where a large number of foreign NGOs...

Since April 2, the Ministry of Public Security’s Office for NGO Management has been posting updates on its work to a WeChat account. The following are translations of some recent posts. We’ll do these translations frequently and post them in our “...

Some provincial Public Security Bureaus have posted lists of Professional Supervisory Units (PSUs). The following are links to all the provincial-level PSU lists (in Chinese) that The China NGO Project was able to find online. All lists are in...

A PSU’s precise role vis-a-vis its sponsored foreign NGO remains unclear at this stage in implementation. Many foreign NGOs report uncertainty about the nature of the relationship and have expressed a desire for greater clarity about the parameters...

Unlike Professional Supervisory Unites (PSUs), which are paired with foreign NGO representative offices in China and which must be selected from a list provided by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), Chinese Partner Units (CPUs) are organizations...