Mainland Chinese are splashing out the cash in a new mood for giving

　　By Priscilla Jiao

Elementary school students donating their pocket money

　　The outpouring of support from the public was unprecedented, John Sparrow, a spokesman for the Beijing office of the International Red Cross, told the Associated Press. Agency spokesman Wang Xiaohua could remember only one other drive for a foreign disaster: The Ethiopian famine of 1985, when a total 13 million yuan (US$1.6 million) was collected.

　　One tsunami has changed all that. By Feb 7, the China Red Cross and China Charity Federation (CCF) had collected 50 million yuan to help tsunami victims in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Maldives. A 6-year-old boy, Mo Yizhen, from Shenyang, Liaoning province, donated all his savings for three years - nearly 200 yuan in coins - to tsunami victims.

　　Yet this newfound generosity by mainland Chinese flies in the face of recent evidence presented by the CCTV News Channel program "News Room," which reported that last year, less than 15 percent of donations came from mainland businessmen. The majority of donations originated in Hong Kong, Taiwan and overseas countries.

　　In China, wealthy companies and individuals like to contribute to football clubs and pop singers, says Zi Zhongjun, a researcher of the American Institute, China Academy of Social Science and author of Method of Distributing Wealth: Comment on Modern American Non-profit Foundations.

　　"It's a unique, abnormal phenomenon," says Zi. "Even if they do donate to education, they like to spend the money on buildings, not long-term things like research projects or improving teachers' pay in poor areas." Asked why wealthy mainland Chinese appeared so lacking in philanthropy by the English-language newspaper Beijing Today, former CCF president Fan Baojun pointed out Chinese tend to adhere to the philosophy "send charcoal in snowy weather." Zi agrees. The Chinese people are much more generous, she says, during times of crisis. During the fight against SARS, CCF received nearly 8 million yuan from regular residents, and a 2 million yuan anonymous donation.

　　But in Western countries, charity has long been regarded as a part of long-term corporate development strategy, says Xu Yongguang, founder of the China Youth Development Foundation (CYDF; Project Hope), and a China Charity Federation vice president. "They volunteer to take on social and environmental responsibilities. Some big companies even have their own charity department. For instance, Coca-Cola has its own Public Welfare Department and encourages staff to donate."

　　Although it might appear mainland companies are failing at corporate philanthropy, in fact the combined public and private sector figures are somewhat misleading: A new wave of successful private companies seem to be catching on to the idea of charity.

　　Private sector income accounted for 66 percent of all corporate income in China in 2003. "The improvement of non-state enterprises gave rise to the development of foundations, an entity which exists to support a charitable institution, and which is funded by an endowment or donations," says Xu Yongguang. "The biggest donors to Project Hope are private enterprises. Zhejiang entrepreneur Li Shengxiong has donated money for building 100 elementary schools and prepares to donate more."

　　Going GONGO

　　GONGOs, or Government Organized NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations, a term typically applied to charitable, not-for-profit organizations despite its broad literal meaning), first appeared in China in 1979, but it wasn't until after the World Women's Conference of 1995 that the acronym "NGO" entered common parlance in mainland Mandarin. There are now about three million associations, foundations and non-government organizations in China, says Professor Wang Ming, director of the NGO Research Center of Tsinghua University, who has engaged in researching NGOs since the center was founded in 1998.

　　An advanced economy contains at least three simple sectors: Public, private and not-for-profit organizations. "But before China's reform and opening, there was only one department: Government," says Xu Yongguang. "The grassroots environment then was not very good. It was hard for smaller groups to develop."

　　"To be honest," says Xu. "I prefer the term 'NPO' [Non-Profit Organization] over NGO, because at the international NGO meetings, the representatives from China actually come from government organizations."

　　Money donated by Chinese companies still forms only a very small part of the gross domestic product (GDP). "It has only been about ten years that there are relatively rich people in China," says Nellie Fong, founder of Hong Kong Lifeline Express Foundation and Chairman of China Operations at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Today, the combined assets of about 1,200 charitable foundations in China add up to about five billion yuan, not a lot compared to, say, the United States, where more than 56,000 charities hold assets worth US$500 billion. About 85 percent of these are private foundations, independent of government.