Author Description

China’s rapid socio-economic transformation has generated extraordinary movements of people from rural areas to urban centres. At the peak of labour migration in the early 2000s, some 100 to 200 million people moved to cities in search of higher wages and better standards of living. State of Exchange examines how – despite operating in a restrictive authoritarian environment – non-governmental organizations in China have increased dramatically as central and local states now permit migrant NGOs to deliver community services to workers in cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. Interacting with the layers and spaces of the Chinese state, NGOs conduct and scale up their programs, while the state engages with NGOs as a means to remain relevant and further legitimize its own interests. Jennifer Hsu uses a new conceptual framework to assess state-NGO relations and ultimately reveals how NGOs are navigating a complex web of government bodies, lending stability to, and forming mutually beneficial relationships with, the state. As North Africa and the Middle East move into a new era of politics, the Chinese experience outlined in this book will serve as a blueprint for better understanding the best practices and lessons learned for state-society relationships at the central and local levels.