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Recently, China's Red Cross Society came under fire after a credibility scandal erupted on the Internet. Netizens were infuriated when a 20-year-old woman named Guo Meimei, who claimed on Sina Weibo (the Chinese version of Twitter) to be the general manager of a company called Red Cross Commerce, boasted about her luxurious lifestyle, showing off her Maserati and Lamborghini cars, expensive handbags and palatial villa. The furious netizens began to question whether Guo had financed her lifestyle out of money that had been donated to the society and started a human flesh search to find out the identity of Guo Meimei and her connection with the Red Cross Society. Although both Guo and the society publicly denied having any ties to one another, continuous disclosures of inside stories and disputes over this incident flooded the Internet. The Red Cross Society of China was plunged into an unprecedented crisis of trust. Due to the Red Cross's long-established shady operation and lack of internal transparency, as well as its already plummeted public credibility following previous scandals, the collective outburst of public doubt triggered by this incident hardly came as a surprise. Join the debate. |
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Wang Rupeng, China's Red Cross Society's secretary general. "The Guo Meimei incident has discredited the RCSC, but, at the same time, it makes us realize the problems and challenges in our project operation and fundraising. We sincerely welcome public and news organizations to oversee our work. If loopholes appear, we will spare no effort to probe and find the truth. However, we hope the public and news organizations shun extremism and treat the Guo Meimei incident in a more rational way." |
Wang Ming, the director of the NGO research center at Tsinghua University. "We're now facing a new world with new technology, where under-the-table transactions are impossible to keep, charity organizations need to have a sense of crisis, to reform in an open and transparent environment where the public will question the credibility of these organizations all the time." |
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Hu Xingdou, economics professor of Beijing Institute of Technology. "Most charity organizations in China are monopolized by the state and the lack of any responsibility mechanisms within these charity foundations means their managers can do anything with the donations. Not only does our government not formulate relevant law on charitable funds, but also they never force the charity organizations to make public their accounts, which provide the leaders opportunity to carry out corruption. While the Red Cross must clearly open to the public where the donation goes to, our government should reform the charity system." |
Yu Jianrong, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "The incident has triggered a collective outburst of long-time frustration about the Red Cross's murky bureaucracy and questionable governance. And faced with this crisis of trust, the Red Cross Society of China failed to give a reasonable explanation. It will lose its credibility completely if it does not learn lessons from the corruption scandals involving the overspending on meals and other spending irregularities." |
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Liu Chun, a micro blogger. "We are not aiming at Guo Meimei, but those commercial organizations behind her that make exorbitant profits out of charity, as well as those charity institutions and activities that lack transparency and regulation. It is high time they stood out to clarify the facts and make public the accounts; it is about time we cleaned up the mess, regulated the procedure and established a transparent, fair and green charity mechanism." |
Yu Shendu, a micro blogger. "Transparency is derived from openness, prestige is rooted in probity. To win the trust of the public, the Red Cross should accept public audit. Any statement will be pale and meaningless without convincing audit findings." |
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China's Ministry of Civil Affairs has started to solicit public opinion on a draft guideline for the development of the country's charities, a move that many believe Guo's incident has stimulated, in a bid to increase the transparency of donation procedures, management and use. According to the draft, China will step up efforts to introduce and amend laws and regulations that manage donations and voluntary services, as well as the registration of non-governmental organizations, private non-enterprise units and foundations. |
