6. Understanding the Present, Looking to the Future

The impressive growth of China’s NGO sector belies the fact that China’s civil society is still a work in progress. Nonetheless, NGO leaders who are involved in that building process have established effective organizations that are making important contributions to social governance. In this respect, they defy the understanding that effective NGOs cannot be found in non-democracies and that effectiveness can only be defined in terms of effecting revolutionary political changes. As a work in progress, China’s NGO sector is under-institutionalized, which means that the NGO leader is especially important for organizational effectiveness. In this respect, contemporary China offers a unique opportunity to assess the importance of NGO leadership and its associated skills. This study’s focus on leadership ties in general and state linkages in particular reflects the empirical reality in China. However, it is important to continue monitoring the emergence of other types of leadership ties and a new generation of leaders because such changes may point to important developments in China’s civil society and, by extension, changes to China’s political landscape. Similarly, the continuing importance of the NGO leader must also be subjected to regular observation. In this vein, the greatest challenges to the development of China’s NGO sector in general and NGOs in particular may not be their dependence on linkages with the state. Instead, elitism and individualism may constitute a greater threat to their development. Both Chinese and foreign actors can play an important role in addressing these challenges.