The teams who authored five Charity law drafts met in Beijing to share their thoughts on the future of this legislation. According to the head of the Peking University Center for NPOs law, Jin Jinping, since the NPC has already called for opinions on the Charity law bill, it may be possible that the actual law will be published next year.
This event brought together scholars, experts, officials, NGO representatives and the media to discuss the similarities and differences between the NPC draft legislation and the five draft legislations people working in the sector of charity and scholars proposed. They discussed the aims and the scope the future law should have, as well as how to tackled issues concerning the diverse forms of charity, supervision of charity work and charities’ contributions management.
The director of the NPC’s Domestic Law Committee, Yu Jianwei, stated that all the good propositions made by the five drafts would be included in the law.
The draft from Beijing Normal University defines charity as any activity that “aims at solving social problems, promotes humanism and a harmonious society and develops public welfare”. All the reports agree on the fact that the Ministry of Civil Affairs should be the government body responsible for the sector, except for the one published by the Shanghai Jiaotong University which supports the idea of creating a “Charity Commission” under the State Council.
In so far as the right to call for public donations is concerned, the Beijing Normal University draft sugests that it be automatically given when an organization is registered as charity while the joint draft of Peking and Tsinghua University recommends to give it to organizations who have already been active for two years.
Finally, the law should help build the public spirit and encourage people to get involved in charitable activities.
