Today, Shanxi held a meeting for foreign NGO Professional Supervisory Units (PSUs). Representatives from each of the province’s 42 PSUs participated. (Note: This likely refers to eligible PSUs, as Shanxi had registered no representative offices as of December 22.) At the meeting, 11 articles of the Foreign NGO Law were explained and PSUs’ responsibilities clarified. PSUs were requested to familiarize themselves with the representative office registration and temporary activity filing processes and to be in frequent contact during the course of such work. Staff from the Shanxi Public Security Bureau (PSB) Foreign NGO Management Office offered an analysis of the situation going forward and answered PSUs’ questions.
Today, the Guangxi PSB Foreign NGO Management Office held a training for foreign NGO PSUs at the Guangxi Policy Academy, going over the registration and filing processes, the Foreign NGO Law, and how to use the Foreign NGO Management platform. A total of 110 key personnel from all city-level administrative divisions, as well as some from some county- and district-level administrative divisions, attended the meeting.
Today, the Beijing PSB Foreign NGO Management Office held a training for foreign NGOs to facilitate their submission of annual reports to their PSUs. Chief representatives from Beijing representative offices of the Caterpillar Foundation (United States), OVCI la Nostra Famiglia (Italy), Environmental Defense Fund (United States), and ApexBrazil were among those in attendance. PSB personnel first reviewed the annual report requirements as stipulated in the Foreign NGO Law and addressed several commonly-asked questions. An information technology specialist from the “Foreign NGO Service Platform” did a live demonstration of how to use the platform to submit an annual report.
Today, the Ministry of Public Security released data about foreign NGO representative office registrations and temporary activity filings for all of last year, noting that over 200 organizations were registered in 2017. The data included information about foreign NGOs’ country or region of origin, location of work, field of work, and, for representative offices, Professional Supervisory Unit.