Law of Nonprofit Organisations
A further research emphasis being pursued by Knut Benjamin Pißler since 2005 is the Chinese law of nonprofit organisations, an area of law currently being revised by the Chinese legislature. Pißler first addressed the law of nonprofit organisations in China at an April 2005 event hosted by the Bucerius Law School's Institute for Foundation Law and the Law of Non-Profit Organizations; subsequently he and Thomas von Hippel engaged in a comprehensive study on the outlook for nonprofit organisations in China. Pißler and von Hippel's efforts led them to being invited by the Chinese legislature to serve as advisors at a November 2005 symposium in Peking on the further reform of foundation law in China.
The first research findings on foundation law from Pißler and von Hippel were published in January 2006 in Volume I of the Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law. A further study incorporating practical findings based on an analysis of foundation law statutes in China as well as the published annual reports from Chinese foundations appeared as a country report in the collection "Handbuch des internationalen Stiftungsrechts" (edited by Dr. Andreas Richter and Thomas Wachter). An English language publication on Chinese nonprofit organisation law will be released in 2010.
Since 2008 Pißler and von Hippel as well as Katja Levy have been working on a Robert Bosch Stiftung funded project titled "Philanthropie in der Volksrepublik China". Philanthropy, literally "love of mankind" and here the support of charitable aims by private individuals, is a relatively new but significantly growing phenomenon in the People's Republic of China. Subsequent to the long-standing monopoly claimed by the Chinese government in regards to the common good, the Chinese legislature has, in the last 10 years, undertaken considerable efforts to create a new civil law and tax law framework fostering philanthropy. The project is intended to promote greater awareness of existing interests and need for individuals who would like to act philanthropically in China and also to outline the framework which currently exists in support of such efforts.
Pictures
Mobile advertisement seeking volunteer helpers for the 2008 Olympic Games at the Tsinghua University campus in Beijing. |