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In light of the recent devastation of the Sichuan province in China this is a challenging time for the country, revealing much about its approach to private and public giving.
Recent reports coming out of China indicate that there has been a surge in direct giving to the survivors of the earthquake to circumvent the official government controlled routes and avoid potential corruption.
While this may be true on some levels according to Professor Vivienne Shue, Director of the Contemporary China Studies Programme, Oxford University, this giving trend has wider and deeper implications for a country that is in the full glare of the West’s media and governments.
Premier Wen Jiabao listens to Lang Zheng, a boy injured in the earthquake in southwest China's Sichuan province. © AP Photo/Xinhua, Yao Dawei
“This is a very special moment for China”, Prof. Shue told Philanthropy UK. “The leadership’s frankness about what happened and Premier Wen Jiabao’s and President Hu Jintao’s visit to the region demonstrated official compassion and have inspired many people to take independent action.
“Young people in particular have been inspired to give during this crisis and so we could see long-term effects in how the Chinese give as a result of these young people’s experiences.”
Philanthropy in China has deep, historical roots but the recent emergence of direct giving is a reflection of the current leadership that since 2003 has, according to Prof. Shue, been allowing citizens a more critical voice and more opportunities to take independent action, including the creation of private wealth and private charitable foundations.
The 2008 Hurun Philanthropy List, a benchmark report on the state of charitable donations in China, reports that the country's top 100 philanthropists have given away 12.9 billion yuan, (c.£940m) since 2003, with education, social welfare and poverty reduction attracting the most donors.
A China Charity Information Center (CCIC) report published earlier this year, found explosive growth in the number of private foundations, which increased 71% to 349, compared with a 3.1% rise in the number of public foundations.
Before the rise of socialism, Chinese society had an integrated approach to giving in which private and public philanthropy worked together but during the Maoist era there was much less independent wealth and the only acceptable form of giving was through government donations.
“What we are seeing is a decompression of that narrowing [of wealth and giving] with many new organisations now being established,” explains Prof. Shue. “Since the 1990’s the state has been calling on people to create a ‘smaller state and bigger society’ and has called upon social groups and individuals to participate in public foundations.”
However, widespread scepticism and distrust in the management of public foundations has influenced the establishment of private foundations, with the Hurun report citing “three-quarters of the money donated by the country's top 100 philanthropists were also channelled into foundations set up or monitored by the donors themselves, and experts have attributed the weak development of the sector to the lack of public confidence in various charity foundations.”
“It is true that corporate leaders and other donors in China have doubts about the state’s salubriousness and there is a history of a lack of proper accountability, but the state is working to improve transparency and clean-up corruption,” says Shue.
“…many Chinese donors think and act much like many of their Russian counterparts, being active, outspoken, forward-looking and democratic, sometimes more democratic than the NGOs they support,” says Olga Alexeeva, Head of CAF Global Trustees, about her recent official visit to China in an article for Alliance magazine. “They are business people and they invest in civil society in the same calculating way they make business investments, because it, too, is necessary for their business.”
According to China Development Brief, the Ministry of Civil Affairs (MCA) is making efforts to encourage public and corporate participation adopting the slogan ‘Everyone can do charity' in 2007, and staging a high-profile charity award to recognise corporate donors, individual philanthropists and best-practice programmes.
While Government-led foundations still out-number private ones, the CCIC report predicts the biggest foundation will be privately operated within five years. Other unconfirmed reports suggest that the Ministry of Civil Affairs has recently stipulated that private foundations are able to use 30% of funds to set their own giving agenda.
“This is an important breakthrough, which could among other things chart the beginnings of new forms of giving, such as donations made in support of the arts”, says Shue.
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