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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
July 12, 2005
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| site design imagesparkle.com |
| February 4, 2005 |
NPOs and NGOs in Chinese Civil Society – Wang Ming |
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| Mr. Wang Ming enjoying time with Global University students. |
Mr. Wang Ming was dismissed from his position as a university professor in Beijing, China after making remarks in a lecture that the Chinese government found objectionable. After spending six years in Japan and earning a PhD in sociology from Nagoya University, he returned to China in 1998, where the political environment was drastically and significantly changing. There, he founded the Non-Governmental Organizations Research Center of Tsinghua University and initially ran it single-handedly, out of his own home. "I realized that if change was to be made, it would have to be within the system" the former dissident said. |
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| Peace Boat participants gather to learn about the activities of the NGO Research Center of Tsinghua University. |
In the first lecture held on Peace Boat's 48th voyage, Mr. Wang shared the mission and activities of the NGO Research Center with an enthusiastic audience. At the time of the Center's founding, NGOs and NPOs were not well known by the Chinese public. Mr. Wang founded the Center in hopes of promoting NGO/NPO activities through research, education, and advocacy.
Since then, the Center has experienced tremendous growth; it currently employs six professors and educates a total of thirty-seven students in its PhD and Masters courses. It has made major contributions to Chinese society by supporting NGOs and NPOs in a wide variety of fields, including environmental education, policy proposal, AIDS/HIV, human rights, and the political arena. The Center is also engaged in the publishing of books related to NGOs and NPOs in China (including the first and only book on the subject in Japanese) and has been awarded several prizes for its activities. Because one of the challenges potential NGOs and NPOs are facing is the difficulty of legally registering with the Chinese Government, the Center is planning an intensive study of law establishment in China in the coming year and hopes to open both an NGO University and NPO evaluation center. |
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| As China continues to experience explosive growth, there are many significant issues NGOs and NPOs must contend with. |
The evening before Peace Boat arrived in Shanghai, in order to help visitors more deeply understand China, Mr. Wang held a second lecture in which he presented a comparison of Japan and China's economic growth as well as a discussion of the relationship between the two countries. The economic growth that China is experiencing is remarkably similar to that which Japan experienced in the 1970s, but the country is still experiencing considerable environmental, health, and poverty-related problems.
"China is a dynamically changing country." Mr. Wang told lecture attendees. "There is construction everywhere and the values of the people are changing. There are also many contradictions: visitors to Shanghai will think that China is quite developed, but other parts of the country are severely underdeveloped and experience significant poverty depending on your point of view and focus, the conclusions you draw about China may be different from the true situation. You cannot learn about the real China if you approach it from a biased point of view, which is what the mass media provides. To understand the true situation; you must see China for yourself, with your own eyes and ears - you must participate in order to fully experience it." |
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Attendees were inspired by Mr. Wang's advice to the more than 200 people who would be visiting the Nanking Massacre Museum the next day. He urged people to leave behind their sense of guilt and shame, and to visit the museum not as representatives of the Japanese people, but as human beings. Through such an approach, he hoped that they would be able to learn from the tragedy of the past so that it would never be repeated again |
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