_[Rural China Education Fund (RCEF) is a non- profit organization that promotes education for people in rural China. Huimiao Sun is a teacher from RCEF who works in these areas, teaching children basic level of education. She regularly writes blogs and posts them on the website toumingyu.org (the Chinese branch of Transparent Fish), where it is taken and translated by a U.S. Intern. Below is one of Ms. Sun's recent blog posts.]
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This week, our focus point is on Civil Society by Lao Mo. So what is civil society? Civil society is a type of social governance. It gives the citizens space to move about freely, enabling them to participate more actively in public affairs. Usually, the government and the market are the two main forces of society. The more developed a country is, the greater the citizen participation and community efforts. In a developing country, there is a small government and a large society. On the contrary, in a third world country, there is a big government, but a small community.

Civil society can lead a country towards the direction of justice and fairness. The main values of civil society are reflected through three aspects: rights, participation, and tolerance. The “rights” that are spoken of here are in existence to protect an individual’s rights and values, but their individual rights and values are achieved through the community. “Participation” refers to groups that contribute in developing themselves and their community. “Tolerance” means the acceptance of social diversity and differences, the act of understanding, and compromising.