Charity
in China
Charity itself is a good thing. But under
the distortion of some unscrupulous people, who use charity for personal gain, make
the charity events become just another money-tree.
China’s charity agencies are always calm
when the situation goes out of control, because the government agencies are not
afraid of anything. They know that they have the last line of defense, which is
the government has the power to silent public opinions. I have to admit that
citizens enjoy greater freedom of speech than years before, but if the
government makes mistakes, people cannot say anything; the violator will be
punished by some virtual charges. When the charities are involved in the
unethical problems, the government will make the charity look better, and
silence the people who contradict the government.
A well-known charitable organization used
their power to eliminate the public opinion in 2002. The Southern Weekend magazine exposed the “Project for Hope” charity (a
charity that helps all poor kids) as being responsible for misappropriation of
one hundred million Yuan (158 million dollars), an investment that eventually
to loss. These donations were enough to support millions of kids. Hundreds of
thousands of this article copies from the magazine were recovered and destroyed
because the effect of the article. There is only thousands of remaining article
copies did not be destroyed in the world. Furthermore, the journalist who wrote
this article was punished and the person who provided clues to the journalist suddenly
died of cancer in 2006. It is obvious which party did the trick. The audit
report has not been made public since then.
The “Project for Hope” charity has
another scandal. A small private company in Shanghai contributed to 17 students
through the Hope charity; the company received grateful letters from all
students. After the results have been confirmed, only three students received
money and the rest were fabrications. Later on, the Southern Weekend reporter went to do the reporting discovered some
of the students actually were deprived of education. One of the students, who
did not receive the donation, has a paralytic mother. People with disabilities
can be exempt from agricultural tax, and the student’s mother definitely needed
to save the money from tax in order to afford her kid back to school. Things
did not turn out good. She could not even afford the 50 Yuan (8 dollars) to get
a disability certification. So, she climbed by her arms to the entrance of the
local government to beg them for the disability card. The official claimed, “If
you do not have a disability card, then you are not disabled. I trust the certificate,
not what I’ve seen.” I question, where is the conscience? After this news was
exposed, the rest of the 14 students received the charity, but the date has
been altered. Once people can heard the reality, and action occurred to
response; the country is progressing in the freedom of speech.
Although people believe the official
charitable organization should take the responsibility of the fake letter
incident, but the essence of the problem came out from the Board of Education,
another department of the government. There is no doubt that is the systemic
problem. If such charity organizations like the Hope Project, or Red Cross (in
China) is notorious, why doesn’t the government allow unofficial charitable
institutions like NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to take over the job? I
do not think it is because the government worries about the managing issue,
because the NGOs cannot be more chaotic than the government. Rather, because
the official agencies knew they have done badly, they understand the birth of
many NGOs can quickly establish credibility, attracting a large number of young
people to work for them, get more funds and members to support them, and
eventually access people. In time, NGOs would pose a threat to the regime. The
NGOs and government will be compared by citizens; this makes the government
uncomfortable, like an ugly movie star never wanting to stand beside Angelina
Jolie. So, the official charities hold media, financing, and justice firmly in
control. This is the so-called problem of the Chinese charities.
The Red Cross is not that lucky, because
it does not have a solid background as Hope Project. For example, searching the
Red Cross online in China, both positive and negative news about it showed up.
If we search for Hope Project foundation, soon there will be “According to
relevant laws and regulations, the contents cannot be displayed.” The
government does not want any negative media about this agency, so people know
nothing bad about it. The hope project turned out to be a hopeless project. I
did research on Google for the scandals. Unfortunately, many are shielded. Now,
I realized the reason Google exited the Chinese market.
After the scandal emerged, the leader of
the Red Cross held a press conference and said a bunch of nonsense. But, at
least the Red Cross faced the media. And the journalist who publishes the
negative news was not punished. On the other side, the Hope Project did not
face the scandal of their own response to any media. What they have done were
directly blocked the media, destroyed papers, and punished the reporter. The
Red Cross stated that they would open the query system immediately that allows
donors to know distribution of every placed donation. However, the Hope Project
cannot be audited. When I look at this
high-handed and mysterious charity agency, I have every reason to speculate it
with worst ideas. I think the financial part of the Hope Project should be
independent from the government, so that the financial can be public.
As students in China, we were asked to
donate to Hope Project year after year. If I am asked again, I will ask the
person, if Americans’ Twitter search for a charity agency and the result is
“cannot find any information,” would they donate? There is no reason for a
person to donate to a charity that is reluctant to publish the audit report and
oppress the media. No matter whom the charity is, and what kind of success the
agency achieved.
The government collecting people’s
contribution to do good things is reasonable. But now, hundreds of billions a
year of public funds are being used to please administrators, and some unheard
countries, while China still has three million children out of school and
countless number of people in poverty. It is only one billion a year to
undertake their education. Suppose, there are no primary schools in China; the
government needs to build five hundred thousand in order to have one primary
school in every village. The total expenditure is only a quarter of all
administrative staff spending. Thus, I think no reason for Hope Project to
“steal” money from people, because the government has already given them
enough. Education is important part of financial expenditure for a country.
Today, the government has sufficient
abilities and obligations to take basic education into account. All citizens do
not need to pay for apparent contributions. Here is a fact, the Chinese
education expenditure is between 2 to 3 percent of GDP, and the American
education expenditure is 5.3 percent of its GDP. If the Chinese government had
the same ratio of the other countries in spending of education on GDP, the
problem will be solved.
All these are facts, but do not mean that
we are no longer in need of charity, if the problem remains, people are willing
to put effort at times. The more we do, the better the world will be.