Using a Historical Institutionalism Perspective to Examine Chinese Foundations’ Development Characteristics From the 1980s to 2017

Abstract

This paper adopted a historical institutionalist framework to identify the major developmental stages of Chinese foundations that were established from the 1980s onward and examined their emergence and evolution. By examining primary and secondary data, and conducing statistical analysis results, this study demonstrates Chinese foundations’ developmental characteristics from 2008 to 2017. The emergence of public fundraising foundations (PFFs) has followed in the wake of the developmental path of such foundations; the government’s intention has been to use them to supplement the functions of administrative departments. Subsequent developments demonstrate that there was a stronger relationship between the working model of each PFF and the developmental direction of the entire foundation in relationship to previous developments regarding the state. Such foundations have increased rapidly since 2004, and interactions of foundations with grassroots NGOs started in 2008. However, later interactions with grassroots NGOs did not have a transformative effect on the operation of these foundations. This study’s findings reveal that, in China, government-affiliated foundations formulated their own approaches for fundraising and for creating and using operating models; furthermore, right from the early stages, Chinese foundations excluded grassroots NGOs from their operating mechanisms.