China, NGOs and Color Revolutions

The following can perhaps serve as a partial or indirect explanation as to why non-government organiza-tions (NGOs) – especially foreign, and even local? - in China are kept under a tight leash.

As David Shambaugh wrote, many Chinese analysts had emphasized the role played by NGOs in "fomenting" the color revolutions in Central Asia (pictured, Rose Revolution in Georgia). Many have also noted the activities and influence of the Soros Foundation, Eurasia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Freedom House, National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, Carter Center, and other NGOs. (China’s Communist Party Atrophy and Adaptation, Woodrow Wilson Centre Press, 2008)

These organizations are said to “disseminate propaganda about democracy and freedom, so as to foster pro-Western political forces and train the backbones for anti-government activities," as well as to "take advantage of their experiences from subversive activities abroad to provide local anti-government forces with a package of political guidance from formulation of policies to schemes of specific action plans … All that the NGOs have done have played a crucial role in both the start and final success of the Color Revolutions."

Chinese analysts also felt that NGOs do not act on their own but are closely linked to various U.S. government agencies, including, allegedly, U.S. intelligence agencies.

As Qi Zhi of the China Institute of International Strategic Studies noted, "an important part of CIA espionage training is how to make use of NGOs, and indeed some of them have served as the Trojan horses planted in other countries by the CIA."

Shambaugh noted that China's reaction to the color revolutions was one of "alarm, fear, even paranoia." Even simple reporting about the color revolutions in the Chinese media "carried certain risks."

In the wake of the color revolutions, the Chinese government begun scrutinizing foreign NGOs operating in China – both as a result of their role in the color revolutions in Central Asia, and also because Russian President Vladimir Putin warned President Hu Jintao at a 2005 Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting about their subversive impact.

"If you don’t get a grip on them (NGOs), you too will have a color revolution!" Putin was said to have warned Hu.

And to tie in with the overall point made by Shambaugh in his book about how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had atrophied yet adapted, the effect that the color revolutions had on the CCP was said to be similar to that of the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

"The events in Central Asia only seemed to renew earlier fears and reinforce the CCP mindset that the U.S. strategy of "peaceful evolution" was alive and well."