Representatives of Chinese Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Wednesday voiced their wishes to offer their help for and be good partners of the government.

Li Xiaolin, vice president of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, made the remarks while delivering a keynote speech at a "Chinese NGO Forum" held in Beijing.

"Chinese NGOs have the necessity and also the responsibility to be helpful to the government and become its partners, in ways like helping the government draw up and carry out policies," she said.

Chinese NGOs, different from some NGOs in western countries that take pride in anti-government practices, act under the principle of "supporting and cooperating with the government," according to Sun Gonglin, secretary general of the China Society for Promotion of the Guangcai Program, an NGO composed of private businesspeople to help reduce poverty.

Since 1978 when China initiated the policy of reform and opening-up, the country has witnessed a steady progress of the NGOs, which are termed as "civilian organizations" in Chinese officialese.

Statistics of China's Ministry of Civil Affairs show that as many as 289,000 civilian organizations had been registered nationwide by the end of last year, involving education, science, technology, health, labor, sports, environmental protection and other areas.

"Civilian organizations have become important social organizations in China and they have exerted positive influence in boosting China's economic growth and helping maintain social stability," said Li Yong of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Ramu Damodaran, chief of Civil Society Service of the Outreach Division with the UN Department of Public Information (DPI), said the number of Chinese NGOs is "staggering."

"So they have a tremendous role to play in working closely with the government, such as helping set up schools, hospitals," he said.

In fact, Chinese NGOs have served as "helpful assistant" for the government in many areas including poverty reduction, environmental protection, education, health, employment.

Statistics show that from 1978 to 2004, China's poor population in rural areas decreased from 250 million to 26 million. Apart from Chinese government's contributions, Chinese NGOs had also played an indelible role.

Chinese NGOs launched a series of programs to reduce poor population, such as "Project Hope " to help primary school students in poor areas, "Guangcai Program" to help develop poor rural areas, "Rehabilitation Poverty-Reduction Program" to help the poor disabled people, "Project Happiness" to help poor mothers, and "Chunlei (Spring Bud) Program" to assist school girl dropouts for returning to school.

In addition, Chinese NGOs said they can work as a "bridge" linking the government and the public.

"The NGOs have a good base of broad masses of the people. They may convey the voices of the public to the government so as to offer reference for the government to enact laws and regulations," said Zhang Ling of China's Association for Wild Animals Protection.

In the open letter jointly written by Chinese NGOs at the forum to the organizing committee of the UN DPI/NGO annual conference to be held in New York in September this year, they expressed ideas to supervise the government.

"Especially in achieving the goals of environmental protection, safeguarding the public or social environmental rights, mobilizing the society to participate in environmental protection, the NGOs should cooperate with and supervise the government," they wrote.

Source: Xinhua