Tsinghua University and Peking University jointly published expert recommendations for the «Charity Law». This report will be published together with other six reports from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Beijing Normal University, Sun Yat-Sen University, Shandong University, the Charity Department of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau and the Shenzhen municipal government on December 21st.
This report touches upon all the important matters concerning charity in China, such as donations, property management, trust funds, charitable services, branches of foreign organizations in China etc.
The Ministry of Civil Affairs mentioned the need for a «Charity Law» for the first time in 2005; however this law only appeared in the plan of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in 2013.
Jin Jinping, head of the Center for NPO law of the Peking University Law School, stresses the three main issues that the law will address, and hopefully resolve: transparency, public donations, and the establishment of foreign charitable organizations in China.
On transparency, she states that the rights and qualifications of charitable organizations must be guaranteed before the government can ask them to be transparent and that transparency must not be a way for the government to interfere with, and control their work.
On public fundraising she says that despite the fact that there are over 1500 foundations that can publicly call for donations in China, barely 10% do it in an efficient way. Therefore, the current system must be reformed.
Finally, the report eagerly supports the establishment of foreign charitable organizations in China. Jin Jinping states that: “foreign organizations want to come operate in China and we want to go abroad. We have to develop these exchanges and support the principle of reciprocity. China has to have a greater role on the international scene and charity is a good way to do it. Therefore we have to allow foreign organizations to operate in China”.
