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This paper is the first from the “Salon Series on the Creation of Legislation on the Right of Association and Social Organizations”. This was a series of salons jointly hosted by Tsinghua University’s ngo Research Center, the Philanthropy and ngo Support Center, and the editorial office of the China Nonprofit Review. In 2013, China’s three main sets of regulations on social organizations are all to undergo major revisions. This is part of the requirements laid out in the State Council Institutional Reform and Transformation of Functions Plan. But what is the thinking behind these revisions? Just what connection do the revisions to these regulations have to the legislation process to create a basic law for social organizations and the formulation of a law on the right of association? These were the kinds of questions that formed the discussion on which this paper is based. Four experts came together during this salon to explore the context for the revision to the three sets of regulations, the necessity of these revisions, the level of difficulty in making the revisions, and the fundamental problems that may be faced. They call for the government to guarantee that social organizations will become genuine entities in their own right, to guarantee the separation of the functions of the government from those of social organizations, and to create the right conditions within which a basic law for social organizations may become a reality.

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This paper uses theoretical analysis and substantial evidence to show that aside from the relationship of power control (权利控制) existing between state and society, there exists also assistance and support provided to society through the state’s use of public power. Moreover, this supportive relationship creates an independent dimension of interaction between state and society that cannot be simplified to the dimension of power control, a condition which we here deem the “dual-axis” relationship between state and society. The “dual-axis” relationship is opposed to the single-axis relationship espoused in traditional theories of civil society. The latter emphasize a zero-sum relationship of strength and weakness between state and society. The dual-axis relationship is not equivalent to simply proposing that there can be a constructive relationship between state and society, but rather emphasizes the structure comprised by these two relationships, and says that support can be independent of control and exhibit an effect all its own.

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