As we do periodically, we recently updated our categorization scheme for foreign NGOs’ fields of work in China. We added “Science” to the “Technology” category to yield the new label “Science and Technology.” We then went back through our data and added the label to any temporary activities and representative offices that mentioned scientific research in their activity or office description, as posted on the MPS website. We also added the label to activities or offices that mentioned medicine or medical research as a scientific discipline; we did not add it to activities that focused on standard medical treatments, such as cleft palate or cataract surgery. (It is worth a periodic reminder here that our categorization system is more art than science—though we use a set of categorization standards we’ve developed over time, our categorizations are still based on sometimes fuzzy descriptions of activities and involve some subjective judgement.)
This alteration meant that we added the “Science and Technology” label to an additional 19 temporary activities that had not previously been tagged as “Technology.” This affected less than one percent of the 2,357 temporary activities in our database with a start date on or before December 9, 2019. Looking at only temporary activities in that timeframe, our database now has 64 temporary activities in the field of Science and Technology, making it the 11th most commonly used tag, and moving it ahead of Economic Development (59 activities), Unknown (57), Aging (50), Law and Governance (50), and Trade (48). It is still relatively far behind Arts and Culture (93), which is the next sector ahead in terms of frequency.
We added the “Science and Technology” label to 17 representative offices that had not previously been tagged as “Technology.” This affected approximately three percent of the 509 representative offices in our database as of December 9, 2019. Our database now has 50 activities in the field of Science and Technology, making it the ninth most commonly used tag, and moving it ahead of Disaster Relief (47), Civil Society Capacity-Building (46), and Arts and Culture (44). There are still slightly more representative offices working on Economic Development (53) than there are on Science and Technology.
For context, the most popular field of work for foreign NGOs conducting activities is Education, which we’ve tagged for 1,157 temporary activities as of December 9. For representative offices, the most common field of work is Trade, a label we’ve applied 255 times as of December 9.