More efforts are needed to support the development of social organizations as their influence, numbers and reach are growing rapidly in China, officials with the Ministry of Civil Affairs urged.

The government has placed more importance on supporting and regulating non-profit organizations especially after the country's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, a ministry's spokesman said in Beijing.

Those social organizations, including industrial associations, have worked to create links between enterprises and government departments, the spokesman said.

The ministry is trying to eliminate the roadblocks and legislative limitations to the development of social organizations, such as removing membership fee limits and reducing administrative direction over their internal management, the spokesman said.

Minister of Civil Affairs Li Xueju said on Monday that China would cultivate more non-governmental organizations, offer preferential support for enterprises entering China's social welfare system and learn from other countries in a bid to expand public welfare.

The ministry launched a website: chinanpo.gov.cn early this month to provide information of more than 240,000 non-profit organizations in the country.

Meanwhile, to better regulate the behaviour of non-profit organizations and help them improve their discipline, the ministry has punished three organizations which failed to obey the Social Organization Registry Regulation.

The three organizations, the China Society on Behavioral Jurisprudence, China Society on Human Being Sciences and the China Association on Architecture and Decoration, had their operating licences suspended for one to six months after they established branches without ministry approval.

Any social organization which wants to establish branch societies should report to the Ministry of Civil Affairs for approval, according to the Social Organization Registry Regulation.

Due to a lack of supervision, management at those societies is in disorder, said Li Bengong, director of the ministry's Department of Social Organization Management.

"How can the industrial associations regulate the behaviour of their member enterprises if the associations themselves have no order?'' he asked.

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