Depoliticizing China's Grassroots NGOs: State and Civil Society as an Institutional Field of Power

Abstract

Abstract This article employs ethnographic fieldwork and interviews to examine two distinct processes of depoliticization by non-governmental organizations advocating rights for sex workers in China. Drawing upon Bourdieu and institutional theory, we argue that the consolidation of state repression of civil society under the Xi regime created an institutional field of power to which two NGOs responded differently. While one of them relied on government procurement as its major funding source, thus diluting the original mission, the other internalized state rhetoric as it sought political legitimacy through state certification, thus sanitizing its political mission. These distinct responses were then institutionalized into organizational practices, norms and culture. Rather than portraying NGOs in China as either capable political actors or pawns of an authoritarian state, this article illustrates how NGOs are subtly depoliticized by being inculcated in a state-produced, hierarchical social order in which compliance with state norms becomes synonymous with organizational competence.