This thesis seeks to explain the evolution of non-state welfare provision in the People’s Republic of China under Xi Jinping and his recent predecessors. In particular, it examines the emergence, spread and institutionalization of a policy of government contracting services to non-governmental organizational (NGOs) and related political dynamics at the national, local, and state-NGO interaction levels. This thesis makes several theoretical claims regarding the causes and process of institutional change and the political implications of these transformations. I contend that decentralization, international influences, and authoritarian consolidation have combined to produce gradual institutional change characterized by processes of layering, conversion, and drift. These incremental changes have led to local institutional frameworks and practices of government contracting that remain incomplete and beset by unequal power dynamics between party-state and NGO actors. Notwithstanding the intent to increase the supply of services and promote state-NGO collaboration at local levels, purchase-of-service contracting policies are inseparable from strategies of political control, consent making, and governing techniques deployed by the ruling party-state. This dissertation reveals the presence of informal rules and power relations between purchasers and regulators (local governments) and service providers (NGOs) behind the façade of increasingly institutionalized state-NGO partnerships and of market-based standardized bidding competition processes. In this context, NGOs have adopted mitigating and adaptive strategies in order to cope with new opportunities and constraints. This thesis draws on interviews with NGO leaders and subject matter experts conducted during fieldwork in Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing. It also leverages policy documents, media sources, and an extensive review of distinct bodies of scholarly literature.

This thesis investigates the ways in which the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden could influence the Swedish Foreign Aid Policy for NGOs, with particular focus on financial support for their missionary activities. Furthermore, it investigates how the church’s involvement in the emerging Foreign Aid Policy work, and its relationship with the government agency NIB/SIDA during the years 1964-1980, influenced the church’s own policy-making. Using Mahoney, Streeck and Thelen’s concept of gradual change and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus this thesis investigates the influence the relationship had on 1) the Aid policy 2) MCCS: s evangelical mission. The results of this thesis indicate that the government agency’s original demand for a Foreign Aid work neutral from religious or political influence changed into a policy embracing missionary organisations. The results also indicate a change in the priority of the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden’s mission methods with the church prioritising social work over evangelisation. This study aims in general to deepen the knowledge of the NGOs involved in the Swedish Foreign Aid in order to further the understanding of their influence on the Foreign Aid Policy as well as their methods to remain uninfluenced in return.