As we have done for the past two years, The China NGO Project reconciled all the temporary activity information in our databases with that provided on the MPS website. Last year, this process allowed us to see that two temporary activities previously in the MPS’s dataset had subsequently been removed from it. Our data reconciliation for this year showed no such irregularities.
We did notice that in 2019 a relatively large number of temporary activities appeared in the MPS database more than six months after their posted start date. From January 1 to September 30 of this year, the MPS entered at least 14 such activities into their database; in contrast, the same figure for all of 2018 was two. Based on the few relevant foreign NGOs we were able to successfully reach, it appears that these “late entries” are more likely the result of a delayed database entry process, rather than a delay in the timing of the filing itself.