China Red Cross Clarified on Restaurant Receipts

A snap shot of a restaurant receipt was posted on the Internet by anonymous people. It showed Red Cross paid $1,600 (Y9859 RMB) for a meal on 2/28/2011 in a private club 'Hui' in Shanghai. No other information was revealed. Many Chinese netizens were shocked by the bill, and demanded an explanation as well as an investigation on government corruption.

The Shanghai Red Cross clarified on Saturday that the money was from its own operating budget, rather than from accounts of donations. Also, as many as 17 persons, including clients and collaborating agencies were involved, therefore the per person bill was not high.

To read the figures with perspective, Shanghai's local poverty line is $75 per month for urban and suburban residents and $55 per month for rural residents, or about $2 per day per person.

On the other hand, the Communists Central Propaganda Department argued, comparing to the per diem rate published by the US State Department for Shanghai was $131 for meals and $229 for lodging per day for government employees, the exposed dining expense was by and large within this range.

NetEase Terminated Partnership with China Red Cross

Netease (Nasdaq: NTES) issued an announcement to terminate partnership with China Red Cross in the earthquake relief operation after China Red Cross refused to make the amount of donations available to the public. Effective 22:00 of May 14, 2008, donations made through Netease will be passed to other charities that accept openness. China Red Cross is the original designated beneficiary.

It is not rare to see disaster relief money fail to reach the hands of victims. In a publicized incident after a disaster in 2003, in a RBM 59,060,000 relief grant from the National government, only RMB 500,000 reached hands of victims after two years.

Where did your donation go? In this picture posted by a Netizen of Shifang, a tent printed 'RELIEF' appeared in an area not suffered from the earthquake last week.

One Qinghua University student was banned from using the campus forum for 14 days, because he post a message asking how much of the donation will be used on actual relief.