The Chinese people are becoming more charity conscious Han Yuan, an 11-year-old boy in Beijing, has just spent the most meaningful New Year’s Day of his life. At the party held by Han’s primary school on that day, students, their parents and teachers donated or auctioned off articles to help fund a free training school for migrant workers’ children. And it seemed the spirit of goodwill was plentiful, as all everyday household items were sold at prices several times higher than their value.
“Being generous is a great way to help others,” said Han. He auctioned off his treasured set of Harry Potter books and a pair of Nike shoes at a good price. He also learned that charity is a team effort.
Han’s father Han Dacheng, a doctor, is proud of his son. He believes that the more charity events are held, the more people could learn to feel good about giving. This is his idea of a harmonious society.
Han Dacheng, who has been taking charge of the charitable activities at his medical school in his spare time, told Beijing Review that after President Hu Jintao and other central leaders took the lead in donating articles and money to the needy, society’s response has been enthusiastic.
Charity clinics
Han Dacheng has also suggested his leader open “charity clinics” after seeing an example of a clinic in Zhuzhou City in Hunan Province, where he had lived before he entered university. The hospital that opened the clinic is a private hospital founded in March 2005. The charitable clinic, the first of its kind in the city, began service December 1 that year. There, laid-off workers, urban residents living on the breadline, rural poor and the disabled can all enjoy free medical treatment, a 50-percent discount on surgery, lab tests and physical therapy fees, and a 15-percent discount on medicine. In addition, the clinic organizes free group consultations of specialists for complicated medical cases, and also provides health file and health care services for free. The daily cost for each patient with general ailments is kept under 20 yuan ($2.50).
“To open a charity clinic and provide so many free services, the risk is self-evident,” said Wu Jianchun, head of the private hospital. Wu said they’ve already invested several hundred thousand yuan in medicine and other consumable materials, and made financial plans to divert some of the hospital’s profits to make up for the loss of the charity clinic’s operation.
Wu hopes that the clinic could build up a good social image and improve its finances in the long run. He also hopes that the clinic would set a good example for other hospitals.
Self-promotion or compassion?
However, Cao Jixiang, an official in charge of supervising medical institutions from the Zhuzhou Health Bureau, said that charity clinics might be a means of self- promotion, even though, objectively speaking, they provide assistance to the poor.
Han Dacheng said the wealthy are willing to donate to charity, but the procedure to go about it makes this process too difficult. He continued that once he read a report saying that in 2005 the Guangzhou Charity Federation received only 200,000 yuan ($24,754) for flood victims.
“Guangzhou, with a population of several million, is a rich city. Why were the donations so small? In comparison, at the end of 2004, Guangzhou donated 18 million yuan ($2.23 million) in 10 days for the Indian Ocean tsunami victims,” he said.
Han believes ordinary Chinese are glad to give to charities. “Some people with medium incomes have donated for years.”
Charity becomes accepted
A charitable spirit has always been an essential component of traditional Chinese culture. Confucian and Mencian philosophy on benevolence has been part of Chinese culture for thousands of years. After 1949, when the New China was founded, “socialist humanitarianism” became the core of China’s charity culture. The government controlled most of the social resources, administering and serving the whole society through each work unit. It also undertook maximum employment and basic welfare of all social members, and national relief for disasters. During that period, state power replaced charity organizations.
At the end of the 1970s, China began economic reform. During the transition from a planned economy to a market economy, charities have been developed under the conscious fostering of the government.
The Amity Foundation, an independent Chinese voluntary organization, was created in 1985 in Nanjing, on the initiative of Ding Guangxun, Director of China Christian Council at that time. Money raised is mainly from church organizations or church-related development institutions in Hong Kong, Europe and America.
In 1989, the China Youth Development Foundation was set up in Beijing. Programs it has launched include Project Hope, which is to help school dropouts in remote poor regions return to school and complete at least an elementary education.
In 1994, the China Charity Federation was set up, which is considered a milestone. “Until 1994, People’s Daily, China’s most influential and authoritative newspaper,
hadn’t used the word ‘charity.’ It would use ‘public welfare undertaking’ instead,” said Tian Kai, a Ph.D. from the School of Government of Peking University, in his research report. He said that when the China Charity Federation was permitted to directly use the word charity in its name, it signaled that the Chinese Government had changed its attitude toward the concept of charity. This broke through the ideological factors restricting development of charities in China.
Now, most of China’s provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities have set up local charity federations, Red Cross societies, disabled persons’ federations and other kinds of foundations. However, donations raised each year are about 5 billion yuan ($618.84 million), only accounting for about 0.05 percent of the country’s annual GDP. Experts think this may be due to a lack of relevant regulations or policies. Without standardization and the guarantee of specific and systematic laws, some charities have no credibility with the public. Money-raising activities are often random and many charities still have government connections.
Team efforts
Li Xueju, Minister of Civil Affairs, said China’s charity system is still to be established. It needs the joint efforts of the government, enterprises, the public and charity organizations to make it work, he said.
According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, in China, a country having one-fifth of the world’s population, unexpected disasters occur frequently, so that each year more than 60 million affected people need relief. There are 22 million low-income urban residents living on a minimum living standard and 75 million absolutely poor or low-income people in rural areas that need relief. In addition, there are over 60 million disabled, over 300,000 orphans and 140 million people aged over 60 requiring social assistance. Meanwhile, a wide gap exists between the rich and the poor-a gap that continues to widen. Recently, research conducted by the Renmin University of China and the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology shows that the Gini Index, an international measure of income inequity, has reached 0.45 in China, above the international warning line of 0.4.
Evidence indicates that charity will become a new social system in China. Charities, as institutions for the “third round of distribution,” will certainly play a more important roles in China.
Now the Central Government is creating an environment beneficial for the development of charities. An efficient system to guarantee and simplify the donation procedure has been put on the national agenda. In his government work report in March 2005, Premier Wen Jiabao said, “We will also support the development of charities.” It’s the first time the word charity appears in a premier’s government work report.
Charity development
On November 20, 2005, the Ministry of Civil Affairs publicized guidelines for the development of China’s charities for 2006 to 2010, explicitly pointing out that one of the main goals of charity development in China is to let people widely acknowledge and give to charities. According to the guidelines, the charity tax exemption policy will be a project for the ministry over the next five years.
“Tax exemption of public welfare donations will target both enterprises and individuals, encouraging every ordinary citizen to take part,” said Wang Zhenyao, Director of the Department of Disaster and Social Relief of the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
In the next five years, the Ministry of Civil Affairs will promote the rapid establishment of all kinds of charities in large and medium-sized cities, and widely set up charity service centers. A charity welfare system will play a growing role, with charities sponsored by the government serving as examples, public charities becoming the backbone, and community initiatives serving as the foundation.
To date, in some large and medium-sized cities, over 4,000 “charity supermarkets” and “love supermarkets” have been set up, creating a new model in communities.
In the future, non-governmental charities involved in social welfare and social relief will be supervised by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and given support at the initial stage of their establishment and operation, said Wang Zhenyao.
Some qualified colleges and universities are going to set up relevant majors to train charity staff for this process. Meanwhile, a project training professional charity staff has already begun, including mainly the compiling of training plans and teaching materials.
In the next five years, relevant departments will form a policy or guideline for voluntary service, with an eye to completing the voluntary service system. To achieve this goal, the Ministry of Civil Affairs will extend a series of relevant systems to encourage more people to participate in voluntary service. Currently, Beijing, Shanghai, Dalian, Qingdao and Shenzhen have all set up a volunteer system.