Asian Political And Social Transformation In The Non-profit Organization

Scholars attached great importance to the study on Non-Profit Organizations recent years. In China, scholars study them singly as one side of civil society, such as from the field of China civil society, or citizen movement in Europe or East Asia. While this paper studies NPOs by comparative structure, that is comparison the Asian Civil Society in 1980s with European and American Civil Society in 17th ~18th century.The NPOs in modern sense are originated from Europe. The primary connotation was focused on the endogenous change within the civil society in the process of destroying feudalist ranking system, and breaking away from constrains by region and consanguinity in the development of market economy. In the 17th century, the Prussia Mining Industry has formed famous NPOs as Mineworker Association and Disease Security Institutions; In America, the diversified voluntary organizations (Church, Community Corporation, Civil Organizations) made special contribution to the social transformation and the building of democracy system in North America. There is no doubt that the inner development of NPOs represents the rational growth of civil society.While during the rational inner development, the civil society gradually turned to depending on ratio status and power system. Then the imperialism capital accumulation system based on ratio status spread to outside Europe, even to the colonial areas. The centralization of state power resulted from the Great Depression in 1930s, as well as the Global Development Strategy raised by USA after World War II, reflect the economic growth on ratio status.In 1950s, Asian nations became independent gradually, but are greatly influenced by the growth strategy dominated by Western World. Asian nations were well-known as"world factory", but the secrets of rapid economic growth lies on the overall control of state power, and the interferences to resource allocation and income distributions by governmental power., which obviously was authoritarianism system. And the industrialization based on this system obeyed the concept of"Growth First". The economic development went contrary to the social development. The World Development Report 2000~2001 by the World Bank shows that more than 3/4 of the poor people live in Asian areas.On the reflection to the economy-growth-first society dominated by state, the NPOs advanced the rise-up of Asian civil society. While, different from the situation in 18th century, the Asian civil society began with the reflections to the state-dominated growth mode. So, on one hand, the Asian NPOs inherited the characteristics of Europe in 18th century. On the other hand, they were deferent in background and development goals.The differences lie in the following three aspects: (1) On the reflection to the state dominated growth, the NPOs promoted the civil society; (2) In the transformation from exogenous development dominated by state to the endogenous development dominated by citizens, the NPOs played an rather important role; (3) NPOs made the economic growth benefit the society,"social economy"realizing the"People Centered"development.To China in the transitional period, the development of Asian NPOs made great sense to Chinese Society. First, most of the NPOs in China were founded in the"up-bottom"way, and were greatly constrained by administration power, it is hard for NPOs to balance among government, market and civil society; Second, the function was limited in participating in the policy-making, so for the transformation of development mode, it is hard to benefit the local government policy; Third, the"profit"tendency in Chinese NPOs holds back the function of"Social Economy".Under this circumstance, this paper further forwards that, for the construction of Harmonious Society, the roles for NPOs among government, market and civil society depends on the following; (1) NPOs being the motivation for government transformation; (2) NPOs participating into the forming of development mode with local characteristics; (3)NPOs functioning as"Social Economy".