Crisis in Charity is the common theme in China at the moment. Sure, some money has gone astray. Guo Meimei, the 20 year old who claimed to be Business General Manger of Red Cross Commerce flaunted her luxury lifestyle on sina microblog. Lu Xingyu, the inexperienced 24 year old executive chairman overseeing a RMB 1.5 Billion fund at China-Africa Project Hope. Soong Ching Ling Foundation in Henan reportedly made large loans to several companies and converted a charitable construction project into a luxury apartment. But I do not think it is so much a crisis as an evolutionary process. Charity is quite new in China. It only really started 7 years ago as the yawning gap between rich and poor became a chasm.
Since then there has been a lot to improve the situation but people still choose to criticize charity because it is one of the weaker departments in government least able to defend itself. Wang and Carma Elliot (OBE) of China Director
of Half the Sky discussed the hot topic at the Charitarian Launch party in bookworm on 25th October. Q&A lasted for half an hour with many in the audience impatient for improvement in the infrastructure of charitable checks and balances.




