New foundation aims to add transparency to Chinese charities

Some of the world’s most recognized philanthropists gathered in Beijing this past week for the launch of the China Foundation Center, a new organization that aims to help increase the transparency of Chinese charities, which have struggled with public suspicion of mismanagement and even corruption.

The organization looks to bolster trust in Chinese foundations by making information about their activities available to the public and to encourage more participation in charitable work. The center’s website will initially archive data on more than 1,800 foundations across the country.

The launch brought together Chinese and international philanthropic leaders, including Peter Geithner, father of the US Treasury secretary and a former long-time leader of the Ford Foundation, and Xu Yongguang, founder of Project Hope, China’s largest non-governmental social welfare group.

Many of them described China Foundation Center as mirroring crucial steps taken to improve the credibility of philanthropic organizations in the US in the 1950s.

Establishing greater transparency and self-governance models in the US “was the product of both crisis and extraordinary vision,” said Bradford Smith, president of the US Foundation Center, on which the new Chinese center is largely modeled.
 
As in China today, where there is mistrust in the relationships between foundations, the government and the public, Smith said US foundations in the 1950s were scrutinized as being “un-American.” The Foundation Center in the US has advised China’s philanthropic leaders that improving self-governance will benefit the entire sector.

In the wake of natural disasters, like the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan and the more recent one in Qinghai Province, the Chinese public has demonstrated itself to be a powerful force in times of crisis.

“The public is wishing for more transparent foundations,” said Victor Yuan, a leading Chinese thinker on social responsibility and founder of Horizon Research Consulting Group, the nation’s biggest polling firm. “And the message we should derive from this is the public wants to put its money where the transparency is.”
Meanwhile, the interaction between the Chinese government and charitable organizations remains unclear. But despite its ambivalence toward private-sector philanthropy, the government has also participated in its own recent push to bolster donations. In one example, Wang Zhenyao, a former official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, recently established China’s first philanthropic research center. Wang has since called on China’s billionaires to donate at least 1 million yuan annually to charity.

(The Wall Street Journal)