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This paper looks at the regulation and evaluation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the People's Republic (P.R.) of China as a means to build trust with the public, the government and the corporate sector. It puts special emphasis on the analysis of NGO certification systems in different countries and regions, with reference to the principles and good practices laid out by the International Committee on Fundraising Organizations (ICFO). NGO self-regulation accompanied by third-party evaluation and monitoring is a trend increasingly embraced in both developed and developing countries. Taking into account the situation in mainland China, it seems that having the government taking the lead in steering and providing initial support to such a certification scheme is unavoidable. In the P.R. China, the likely scenario for the NGO sector is that state authorities will take the lead in designing NGO evaluation and certification systems. However, the relevant authorities seem inclined to engage in a process of consultation and draw on academic expertise and international experience.

Concerns about shrinking spaces for civil society organisations have risen in China over the past years, in particular among international nonprofit organisations. The third sector in China, however, continued its growth in numbers, diversity and activities of organisations, accounting for more than 700,000 registered organisations. Government's financial support to nonprofits significantly increased through contracting out of services. The new Charity Law contains provisions for public fundraising activities, including for online platforms. International activities of Chinese nonprofits took off in the context of participation in global conferences. Chinese NGOs also started to engage in delivering humanitarian aid to communities in other countries. Assessments on shrinking or changing spaces for civil society in China much depend on the type of organisations in focus. This paper pays attention to discourses related to NGO development in China and sheds light on changing spaces for different types of nonprofits in China, those that are negatively affected by new regulations and different kinds of restrictions and those benefiting from emerging opportunities in the context of growing cooperation with the government or the business sector. Analysis based on interviews and talks with experts in China and abroad shows that advocacy-oriented organisations and those receiving foreign funding tend to face more difficulties. Larger international nonprofits with a long track-record in China, however, are seen to continuing or even expanding their activities.

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in September 2015\. The term sustainable development will further shape international cooperation in the next decade and beyond. It is also frequently used in China's policy documents and connects well to a set of home-grown Chinese discourses, in particular the term of ecological civilisation and the chapter on green development in the 13th Five Year Plan (FYP) approved in March 2016. This paper discusses Chinese discourses related to the promotion of sustainable development on the basis of interviews with experts – academics as well as practitioners. The hybrid character of the concept of sustainable development has been conducive to its growing relevance in China. The Chinese government, however, has also paid attention to balancing the use of the term at the level of policy formulation by promoting home-grown discourses, in particular the concept of ecological civilisation.

The global sustainable development agenda of the United Nations stresses governance and partnerships involving public and private actors as key elements for achieving the sustainable development goals. This paper relates the analysis of China's growing engagement for sustainable development to the concept of collaborative governance. Based on the analysis of literature, policy documents, participation in conferences as well as interviews with experts, it proposes five factors to explain the promising developments of collaborative governance for sustainable development in China: political leadership, discourses, in-country expertise, institutional density and international cooperation. Against the backdrop of a strong government and tightened political supervision in many policy areas under the Xi Jinping administration, Chinese academics as well as practitioners largely agree that the "green development agenda" stands out in providing opportunities for the business community, think tanks and universities as well as nonprofit organisations to implement projects and gradually influence policies and practices related to the promotion of sustainable development.

In the last five years China has passed new laws and regulations and has formulated new policies and targets for climate protection. The country's private sector is also making contributions to this new focus, in terms of technology development, green investments, public-private partnerships, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting. Civil society organizations, meanwhile, have built networks and launched campaigns and projects at local and national level. Against this backdrop, this paper examines China's efforts at addressing climate protection from a multilevel governance, collaborative governance, multi-stakeholder, and trisectoral cooperation perspective. It is argued that China is currently implementing a policy mix of commandand-control and market-based mechanisms to address climate change. The case study of Xiamen highlights that local governments in China use low-carbon policies as a marketing tool, but lack strong incentives to actually implement such policies. The case of Xiamen illustrates some policies and potentials of low-carbon reforms and initiatives, but it also discusses the hereto missed opportunities for stakeholder interaction - in particular regarding the involvement of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in projects and campaigns. (Asien/GIGA)

Widespread support I received for my thesis that the matrix currently dominant Western governance research paradigms is not sufficiently practicable in order to understand the success of economic development and political stability in China. Katja Levy rightly pointed out that 'have underestimated the foresight of Chinese politics and a sinking of the People's Republic of predicted early on a large part of professional China watching, in particular the media, is not occurred nor engage in future threatening.'. Adapted from the source document.