Guangdong provincial government has been doing well in social reform and policy innovation, with a clear aim to become a responsive government. Besides complying with the central governments’ policy on social innovation, they would always try to tailor the inner-provincial policy in accordance with their discretionary power (Interview with GYK, Guangdong ICF). With reference to social organizations’ administration, Guangdong government initiated the cancellation of supervision units for social organizations, and designated the civil affairs departments to unify the process of registration and administration of social organizations in 2006.137 This made Guangdong the first province to comprehensively break the shackles of “Dual Management System” in China. This policy move reflected that Guangdong government was a pioneer in social organization’s administration reform and explained why it kept an open attitude towards Guangdong NCCs’ development nation-wide.
Guangdong government supported the Guangdong NCCs’ development in an unprecedented way. First, it delegated Guangdong Liaison Offices in different regions to help Guangdong merchants build up their own organization, comply with different situation in various localities and make full use of the Canton cultural heritage. For example, Tianjin Canton Guild Hall was built more than 100 years ago and has become the national cultural relic protection unit and historical tourism spot. Sun Yat-sen visited Tianjin Guangdong Guild Hall on 24th August 1912 and made a famous speech after he was elected president of the Republic of China. When Tianjin Guangdong NCC prepared to be established, it connected this heritage with Guangdong merchants’ current development in Tianjin, which enhanced the sense of identity of Guangdong NCC members in Tianjin (Interview with WTH, the vice-president of Tianjin Guangdong NCC). Second, all the Guangdong NCCs nation-wide had the same supervisory unit in the government of origin - Guangdong Economic Informatization Committee (EIC hereafter). Unlike in other provinces, EIC was an information coordination department that was good at integrating economic information from all over the country and become an essential information platform for Guangdong NCCs. This mechanism could profoundly limit the vicious horizontal competition of same level bureaucratic organizations and improve
137 Source from the “Blue Book of Civil Organizations (2011-2012)”,民间组织蓝皮书：广东率先全面突破
双重管理制度束缚, http://www.ssap.com.cn/web/c_0000000100120002/d_28837.htm, last entry on 16th
Guangdong Government’s efficiency to deal with different Guangdong NCCs’ requests. Thirdly, Guangdong government even gave financial support to Guangdong NCCs, which was quite unusual among all the bottom-up NCCs. Especially in the establishment period, Guangdong government had budget to support Guangdong NCCs in different host places to run their activities without prohibiting/interfering with their freedom and independence in operation.
Generally speaking, the Tianjin government did not have any special policies towards the Guangdong NCC’s development, and Guangdong NCC kept a relatively low profile in government initiatives but maintained a prominent business network within their membership enterprises. Rather than building links with the Tianjin municipal government, Guangdong NCC preferred to interact more with district level governments, so as to access the updated economic information and preferential policies. From this point of view, Guangdong NCC was “practical and flexible”138 in building up its official networks; “Keeping distance with politics but getting close to government”139 became Guangdong
NCC’s motto in Tianjin. Guangdong NCC achieved satisfactory result from it. Thanks to the outstanding performance in coordinating Guangdong enterprises’ investment in Tianjin140 and directly helping with Tianjin’s investment attraction work, it was awarded as “the Advanced Unit for Two-way Services” (shuangxiang fuwu xianjin danwei) in 2008 and 2009141 respectively, and “The Advanced Unit in Introduction of 500 Competitive Domestic Enterprises” (yinjin guonei wubaiqiang qiye xianjin danwei) in 2009 (Official website, Tianjin Guangdong NCC). Among all the NCCs in Tianjin, Guangdong NCC significantly kept its independent status and adopted a different philosophy compared to other NCCs. Yet, it showed a strong capacity in business cooperation and business lobbying in some specific projects.
Because of the interests of Tianjin bureaucrats in attracting investment from Guangdong enterprises, Tianjin Guangdong NCC became the target for Tianjin business departments to cooperate. Moreover, some local bureaucracies could get interest dividends by taking advantage of Guangdong NCCs.142 In Tianjin, the whole city was composed of 6 districts,
138 From the interview with Tianjin Guangdong NCC membership enterprise-legend Culture. 13/06/2012. 139 Speech from WJS at the Secretary-general seminar in Changchun, Jilin Province. 19/05/2012.
140 This will be introduced in the first policy case in this chapter.
141 This award was especially designed for those organizations that contributed greatly in interprovincial
communication and regional cooperation in Tianjin.
142 This “interest dividends” idea was mentioned in the interview with WJS, but he has not come to the
4 suburb districts, and 5 counties, and each district level government was given investment attraction tasks, which directly related to the district leaders’ promotion prospects. In this context, the districts were faced with fierce competition when there was a big potential investment project from Guangdong coming to the city. In order to get useful negotiation information, Guangdong NCC usually became the target of different district governments to cooperate. At the same time, Guangdong NCC needed to negotiate with district governments to fight for the best policy for potential investors and best commission rate for themselves. Therefore, Tianjin Guangdong NCC and local bureaucracies’ interests coincide in the aspects of investment attraction and business cooperation (Interview with WJS, Tianjin Guangdong NCC).