THE PEOPLE'S REVOLUTIONARY ARMY:

Citizens' Groups Take Root Across China (HOWARD W. FRENCH, 2/15/07, NY Times)

In 15 years, China has gone from having virtually no independent groups of any kind to more than 300,000 nongovernmental organizations, by official count. But that understates the true number. Counting unregistered groups, some estimates place the number as high as two million.

As Mr. Du's experience attests, such activism has spread out of the big cities and well beyond the intellectual class that gave rise to the movement in the early 1990s. It has done so by taking on what were less risky issues like environmental protection and avoiding overt challenges to the government, like those that led to the Tiananmen Square massacre.

This explosion has begun to change the relationship between citizens and the government. Many activists say it has gradually pushed the authoritarian system in the direction of greater openness and accountability.

It has also aroused strong concerns within the government, with some officials warning that nongovernmental organizations could become Trojan horses for Western-style democratization.

Although they rarely use the word Western to describe their inspiration, many people in the movement acknowledge that gradual democratization is precisely the point.

"In the past, all decisions were made according to the government's sole judgment," said Wang Yongchen, a co-founder of the Green Earth Volunteers, one of the oldest organizations. "What we're saying is not only the government, but the nongovernment sector, too, should participate in decision making so that broader public interests can be reflected in decisions."