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Grassroots NGOs lack funds
(China Daily/China Features)
Updated: 2009-12-07 07:45
In the past decade, donations to charity in China has been growing steadily, but nothing matched the donations in 2008, when the whole country came together after the devastating May earthquake.
Statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs show that quake donations totaled 107 billion yuan ($15.73 billion) in 2008, about 3.5 times the previous year. For the first time, private donations exceeded corporate ones, reaching 45.8 billion yuan, more than half the total, with each person contributing 34.6 yuan ($5) on average.
"China is moving toward a modern society in terms of giving to charity," says Yang Tuan, deputy director of the Social Policy Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
She believes that charity is a powerful force that brings people together in present-day China. "In a society undergoing transition, charity is an ideology accepted by the majority."
Nonetheless, a study led by the NGO Research Center at Tsinghua University found that of the 76.7 billion yuan in money and goods raised by the public, more than 80 percent was injected into the government finance basket as "extra tax revenue" and used for quake relief.
A breakdown showed that 58.1 percent of the money raised had gone to government departments, 36 percent to the officially designated Red Cross Society of China and China Charity Federation, leaving a mere 5.9 percent for public foundations.
Wang Zhenyao, director of the Social Welfare and Charity Promotion Department in the Ministry of Civil Affairs, referred to this as "an embarrassment".
"Some NGOs do not have the credibility or a clear feedback that the public requires for charity. Therefore, donors do not trust them with their money and the money or goods raised have instead gone to the government," he explains.
Howard Liu Hung To from Oxfam HK, who has been working at charity agencies for 11 years, strongly opposes this role mixup.
"The government should perform the role of referee, not athlete."
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It is a uniquely Chinese characteristic that all foundations, public or otherwise, should be attached to a government department. NGOs, which fall into the category of social organizations, need to have 100,000 yuan in capital and at least two full-time staff members as well as an office, to be registered in China.
As most grassroots NGOs are not able to find any government organizations to affiliate with, they end up registering as enterprises at local administrations of industry and commerce, with no tax relief or breaks.
This lack of legitimacy for charities has resulted in a resource dilemma. Big foundations, rich in funds, collaborate with government departments, which in turn provide matching funds. So the government departments don't feel the need, or the desire, to work with grassroots NGOs. So the NGOs have no way out but to seek funding from abroad, adding all the more to the distrust from the government.
"It is no wonder grassroots NGOs don't grow," says Xu Yongguang, calling it a "vicious circle".
Statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs and Tsinghua University show that in 2007, non-profit organizations in China only shared a 0.3 percent of added value from the tertiary sector. Likewise, its employment rate is a pitiful 0.3 percent of the service sector, only one-30th of the world's average.
Xu urges the government to release public services from its hold and start nurturing the tertiary sector so that NGOs can employ more people while contributing to society.
