Charity needs culture support for greater influence

Wang Zhenyao speaks during a forum celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sino-France ties in Beijing Yishu 8. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

5. Could you make a comparison of charity development in China and France?

Charity exists everywhere in France. Charity activities there have gone deep into communities and people's daily life, like Carrefour. Besides, their charity is closed integrated with culture, like Hermes, Lafayette and the Rothschild Family, with their own unique cultural taste, who have successfully combined their charity move with culture. That's what China should learn from them.

6. Which stage of development are China's charity causes at now?

China's charity has developed rapidly in the past 30 years, and now it is being taken over by the government.

For example, only 2.2 billion RMB budget was put into charity per year when I was working in disaster relief department in the Ministry of Civil Affairs, but now the budget amounts to over 200 billion, an increase of 100 times. So in my view China's philanthropy is getting systematic and institutionalized as the government dominates and civil charity being supplementary. In the past, the situation was opposite. Now China's charity begins to penetrate into the fields of culture and education.

According to my analysis, normally the philanthropy in the world will go through four stages: helping the poor, improving the society, social service and social enterprise. As China is a large country and is widely open to the world, China enjoys characteristics of all the four stages. Particularly, I think China's charity is in transition, integrating closer with the culture and art fields.

7. What's your view of Chen Guangbiao's way of carrying out charity?

China is in transition period now and has a variety of charities. Many people can't adapt to the new social environment as something is beyond their expectation. Individuals couldn't have their own personalities in the past, so people feel uncomfortable when someone does charity in a different way. In fact, people in western world think Chen's way of doing charity is normal and it is fun to be a different person.

In my view, Chen Guangbiao has taken the first step and has already done better than the majority. He is really investing his own money to do charity, though the response is not all positive. We have no reason to judge him because we haven't done it yet.

The whole country and society take little consideration of the dignity of philanthropists and recipients. We should examine our own behaviors before we make demands on others.

We should learn to respect other people's privacy and dignity, so that the society will be more powerful in doing charity, which is also part of the humanistic culture.