China, the economic success story of the 21st century so far, is calling on its growing middle class to share more of its good fortune with the needy.
The government has made an appeal for charity amid rising criticism that the spirit of philanthropy is developing a lot less quickly than the urge to accumulate wealth, as the country becomes richer but more divided.
Almost twenty-five years of spectacular economic growth are estimated to have created more than 10,000 people with assets in excess of US$10 million.
But while the new rich are spending, investing and gambling more than ever, their willingness to give something back to a society which still contains tens of millions of people living on less than a dollar a day is being called into question.
Last week Vice-Minister of Civil Affairs Li Liguo (李立國), said the government needed more help from the private sector to deal with natural disasters. Last year was one of the worst in memory for typhoons, floods and droughts, which claimed 2,500 lives, left 15 million people homeless and created food shortages for more than 70 million, mostly in the poor western and northern regions.
"We ask for greater support from charity organizations and from society," the minister said.
"The government will make new policies, such as the introduction of tax breaks, and try to create a more a encouraging climate for corporate donations," he added.
The appeal would have been unthinkable a generation ago, when the Communist authorities boasted that they would provide for every social need, and displays of wealth would have been condemned as bourgeois and counter-revolutionary. But the private sector now accounts for more than half of China's economy. Although tax revenues have grown, public spending has not prevented a widening gap between rich and poor, particularly with regard to health and education.
International funds, once an important source of support for the poor, are drying up. Citing China's economic success, the UN world food program closed its last humanitarian project in the country two years ago. Japan, the biggest provider of aid over the past 30 years, has said it will do the same soon. And the British Department for International Development is among many other big donors now scaling back their activities.
To counter these trends, the government has established thousands of charity centers to accept donations of cash and clothing from the public. Last June it introduced the country's first tax relief on donations, though initially only to a small number of foundations.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS