The first ever Chinese Charity Day, which takes place today, will centre around the themes of ‘law’s role in charity’ and ’poverty relief’. The 5th of September has officially been designated as Chinese Charity Day by China’s new Charity Law, which came into force this month. A couple of Chinese cities have held events in honour of the occasion, which aims to promote the concept of charity more widely.
On the 4th of September the joint Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei charitable exhibition, held at the Agricultural Exhibition Hall in Beijing, hosted a number of activities including a Charity bazaar of creative products, a 3D artificial limbs demonstration and a shadow-puppetry show. Over 150 charitable organisations and social groups attended and showcased their achievements, which strikingly included a number of technological devices and internet functions.
One item which attracted some attention was a set of behavioural teaching systems on display at the Beijing Abundance Foundation‘s stand. The set includes several games which allow the players’ behaviours to be recorded and analysed by professional therapists. This system has been deployed to help treat adolescents with psychological illnesses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Yunnan Province and some other less developed regions of China.
A few other cities apart from Beijing also held activities for the Charity Day. In the province of Shaanxi, a poetry reading ceremony was held in honour of a teacher who spent 19 years teaching in remote rural areas. In the city of Nantong, Jiangsu, China’s first national philanthropy museum was opened on September 1.
