Chinanews, Beijing, Jan. 22 – As Chinese society makes progress and income disparity widens in society, more and more Chinese become familiar with charity organizations, which are an effective means for redistributing social wealth. A recent survey among 5,000 people shows that 71.9% of them think that “everyone in society is duty bound to make contributions to charities.” 78.7% of the respondents say they have made donations to charity institutions before. However, the survey also shows that charity organizations gain low credit among the Chinese public and their development lag rather behind. Most ordinary Chinese do not trust charity organizations.
The survey was jointly made by the China Youth Daily Social Investigation Center, Tencent Information Center and the Information Center of Sina.com.
According to a charity ranking list published by Rupert Hoogewerf, Chinese charities gained fast progress in 2006. Since 2003, 50 Chinese entrepreneurs named on the list have donated nearly 5.1 billion yuan for development of education, social public welfare, health, and disaster relief programs.
The survey shows that most Chinese participate in charities by making donations through “their work companies” (70.8%), some (67.6%) give money to street beggars and some (54.7%) make donations by purchasing welfare lottery tickets. In addition, 28.6% of the people say they express their love for society by donating blood or bone marrow.
However, an expert points out that these activities might not be termed as real philanthropic acts.
“One can perform real philanthropic acts only through charity organizations,” said Deng Guosheng, director of the NGO Research Department at Tsinghua University's School of Public Management.
He said that Chinese public give low credit to charity organizations in China, because Chinese charities have progressed slowly and ordinary Chinese do not trust charity originations.
His statement has been confirmed by the survey. In the survey, only 21.5% of the respondents say they have“voluntarily donated to some fund management organization or some charity organization.” 64.5% of the respondents even say that if they have extra money and want to do something for charities, they'd find the people who need help by themselves, rather than through a fund management organization.
On the other hand, it should be admitted that due to an improper management and supervision system, corruption does exist in charity institutions. Some people say it is not easy to make money. So they had better not make any donations at all lest the donations go to the wrong persons. Xia Yeliang, a professor from Peking University, agrees with this view. According to him, donors have the right to know where their money goes.
