Jinghua News recently reported that there has been s sharp drop nationwide in charitable donations. In the past couple of months, Chinese media gave extensive coverage to the “the Guo Meimei Incident,” in which large scale corruption was reported in the state-managed Chinese Red Cross. According to official statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Chinese charities received RMB 6.26 billion from March to May this year. However, after the Incident, for the period of June to August, donations dropped to RMB 0.84 billion. The sharp drop is believed to have resulted from the loss of confidence in the charity system. At the same time, individual-to-individual direct donations have risen from RMB 38.87 million to 127 million. In Shenzhen, the largest city for donations, the amount of recent donations dropped to near zero. Xu Jianzhong, a senior official of Ministry of Civil Affairs, made the observation that extensive media coverage is destroying Chinese charities.
[Ed: A Sina Weibo user, Guo Meimei, claiming she was with the Red Cross, flaunted her wealth on-line. In response, tens of thousands of Weibo users a day posted objections to the corruption involved in personal use of donated funds.]Source: Jinghua News, August 27, 2011
http://epaper.jinghua.cn/html/2011-08/27/content_694600.htm