the need to develop ties with the business community. In short, the rise of
NGOs, especially environmental NGOs, was closely connected to Taiwan’s
democratic movement. Environmental NGOs formed myriad alliances with
grassroots environmental activists, opposition parties, and specific political
elites.
There was an international dimension to Taiwan’s democratization, and
observers wonder whether ENGOs in China may be a channel along which
international democratization impulses may travel. It is the case that
international aid agencies and foundations have played a key role in
stimulating the emergence of organizations concerned with social issues.
Activities of international NGOs grew in the 1990s, which has catalyzed the
development of a number of associations and centers^89 particularly at the
grassroots level. Activities of INGOs such as TNC, ICF, WWF, and CI in
capacity building are an important but relatively small-scale means for the
diffusion of democratic ideas of participation. Furthermore, in order to
improve its international image and guarantee the 2008 Olympics bid, the
Chinese central government, on several occasions, has endorsed a degree of
international participation in China’s ecological issues.
In contradistinction to the Taiwan case, the environmental movement and
ENGOs have had little direct impact on the embryonic democracy movement
in China. Few ENGOs have reached out to other NGOs to develop common
goals of political change.^90 China lacks a competitive party system. Environ-
mental NGOs may have friends in the elite, but there are no political parties to
dance with as was the case in Taiwan after 1986. Thus Chinese ENGOs are
knowledge providers and agenda setters, but not agents of value change in a
new democratic movement.^91
However, ENGOs bring new people in to politics. Increasingly, they are
active at the grassroots level, where elections are now held for village
councils. Although they have not, as associations, figured in local elections,
they may in the near term because they take positions on issues of interest to
electorates. At both local and national levels, ENGOs have linkages to foreign
democratic nations, whose INGOs stress political participation and capacity
building.
Thus, to answer our second question (How have ENGOs influenced
the growth and dynamics of civil society?), China’s ENGOs have broadened
civil society but are a less vibrant element in it than the ENGOs of
Taiwan. To answer our first question (To what extent have ENGOs been able
to influence environmental outcomes?), individual ENGOs have affected
environmental outcomes, particularly in their work of identifying threats
to endangered species and ecosystems and publicizing these threats. In
Chapter 8, we consider their more general impacts on the conservation of
biodiversity.
ENGOs, civil society and biodiversity conservation 187