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May 29, 2009, 04:39 PM ET
The State of Chinese Philanthropy a Year After the Killer Quake
A year ago an earthquake that killed over 85,000 people hit China’s Sichuan Province. The devastation elicited an unprecedented philanthropic response within China with more than $10-billion donated and some 100,000 volunteers pitching in to help.
Has this giving been sustained and has Chinese philanthropy been bolstered by the tragedy?
The answers appear to be mixed, according to a recent Public Radio International program that examined those issues.
Philanthropic donations within China for the first quarter of this year were only a fraction of the giving recorded in the same period a year earlier—and that was before the earthquake. The economic downturn can be blamed for much of this but the program says, “another reason could be skepticism about how the earthquake money was spent.”
Volunteerism does appear to be stronger now, the program reports, as the Olympic Games in Beijing also introduced many Chinese to idea of giving their time. Some 10 million people volunteered in some capacity last year.
The Chinese government, however, has tamped down the proliferation of new charities that bloomed in response to the earthquake by adding new requirements for nonprofit groups to meet, including getting government sponsorship and supervision.
“So if the earthquake response moved China a seismic step closer to having an engaged and independent civil society, the government has since tried to nudge it back,” the radio show reports. “The authorities may be succeeding for now. Whether they will in the long run is another question.”
(See The Chronicle’s article on giving in Asia.)
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