CRI听力:Charities Act to Regain Public Trust amid Scandals

As one of the measures introduced, these charities say they'll set up a platform to make public donation-related information.

Wang Zhenyao is dean of the One Foundation Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal University.

"I think this is a milestone event for the development of charity in China. It will have a huge impact on this industry. Before, it was only the government that kept calling for transparency. That's far from being enough."

Transparency is an issue that has long clouded the charity sector in the country.

It has attracted public attention since 2008 when huge donations were quickly raised to help with reconstruction following the massive Sichuan earthquake. Yet, the total amount of money donated to the disaster cleanup efforts still remains unclear.
 
According to the China Foundation Center, among the country's 2,000-plus foundations, 1,300 have no websites and 800 cannot be contacted by telephone. Some even claim that the way they spend their funds is confidential.

The lack of an effective platform for information disclosure has led to a series of fund misuse scandals.

Last August, the China Charity Federation was accused of mishandling 15 million yuan, or more than two million U.S. dollars, in corporate donations. Last November, the Soong Ching Ling Foundation in central China's Henan Province reportedly embezzled charitable donations to invest in real-estate companies.

Hu Min, a professor with the China National School of Administration, says a legal approach is needed to supervise charities.

"The establishment of a legal framework is the fundamental approach. We also need some intermediary organizations such as highly-disciplined NGOs to supervise the operating process of charity organizations."

Statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs indicate that donations to public charities dropped dramatically by 86 percent in the latter half of last year.

Analysts say this was mainly due to the "Guo Meimei incident," a highly publicized scandal that plunged the country's most high-profile humanitarian organization into a public trust crisis. Last June, a 20-year-old woman named Guo Meimei, who claimed to have close connections to the China Red Cross, bragged about her luxurious lifestyle on her microblog.

The incident led to widespread public distrust of the country's charities.

Wang Zhenyao from the One Foundation Philanthropy Research Institute says it is important for Chinese charities to learn from international practices to regain public trust, such as issuing detailed reports to their donors on a regular basis to let them know how their money is being used and where it goes.

For CRI, I'm Wu Jia.