"China has become a pioneer in using Internet technology to make small donations and has made great contributions to poverty reduction … The Internet plays an important role in helping charities reach more people and cultivate future charity culture." This is Christopher Pisarri, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, commenting on Internet charity in China at the China Internet Charity Summit, which opened on May 20th.
As observed by Pisarri Des, Internet charity in China has made great progress in recent years.
At this summit, a report jointly released by internet society of china and Beijing Normal University Public Welfare Research Institute shows that from 2017 to 2021, the annual Internet donation in China increased from 2.59 billion yuan to about 10 billion yuan, and the average growth rate was much faster than the social donation in China. The report also pointed out that as of September 2022, the Internet fundraising information platform designated by the Ministry of Civil Affairs has driven netizens to participate in more than 51 billion people.
Successfully embracing digitalization, China Internet charity has attracted worldwide attention.
The application of digital technology has been a compulsory course in China’s public welfare industry. The development of Internet charity in China is driven by technological evolution, and technological innovation and application have also become a business card for charity in China to attract the world’s attention.
In 2019, Fortune magazine in the United States pointed out in a report that philanthropists in China began to look to a wider field and use their technological advantages to promote a new donation model. According to the analysis of this report, the core of modern philanthropy in China is advanced technology, which can stimulate greater influence by using the booming digital service industry in the country.
The article claims that the continuous contribution of China’s technology giants and the rising new forces shows how digital innovation can give a unique way to solve the sustainable development goals, including the innovation of fundraising through WeChat.
As one of the largest charitable foundations in the world, the Gates Foundation also believes that China has become a global leader in the field of Internet charity and digital poverty alleviation, and online donation has become an important source of donations in China. At the 2021 Internet Charity and Digital Poverty Alleviation Forum, robert rosen, director of the charity development team of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, bluntly said that China’s Internet charity and extensive partners have demonstrated the ability of large-scale innovation, which left a deep impression on peers.
As Guo Kaitian, Senior Vice President of Tencent Group, said in his speech at the summit, Internet charity in China is the most gratifying chemical reaction between public welfare and the Internet. It has not only achieved rapid growth, but also ensured a solid foundation and ecological order. The exploration results of Chinese public welfare have entered the global vision and contributed a "China sample" of Internet public welfare.
Internet Charity "China Sample"
What is the "China sample" of Internet public welfare mentioned by Guo Kaitian? In 2019, the Ministry of Civil Affairs called the achievements of the deep integration and development of "internet plus Charity" the "China Sample" of Internet Charity.
On May 20th, the research report "Internet Charity" China Sample "released at China Internet Charity Summit gave a more specific definition of this sample. According to the report, the "China sample" of Internet charity is based on the advantages of technological innovation, mobile internet, and integration of data and reality emerging from the development of the Internet under the support and guidance of the government. The Internet platform promotes the deep integration of public welfare and users’ daily life scenes, promotes the trust mechanism and transparent digital transformation of the public welfare industry, and promotes the construction of a common prosperity ecosystem rooted in counties and grassroots, achieving a new path of public welfare development with the lowest threshold for public welfare participation, the richest public welfare interaction methods and the most significant public welfare leverage.
Guo Kaitian believes that the Internet public welfare in China, which has formed a "China sample", is no longer limited to traditional donations and materials, but tries to form a strong synergy of high-quality development through deep integration into the industry and resource allocation, and make efforts in the field of pluralistic society. With the empowerment of digital technology, Internet charity has changed from simple online payment and fundraising function to participation in the whole process of charity, stimulating the discovery of social problems, setting social issues, research and development, advocacy and information disclosure of public welfare projects, and participation of stakeholders.
For example, social platforms such as WeChat and Weibo are profoundly changing the way the public participates in public welfare, and efficiently cultivating the awareness of charity and public welfare within the society. In the rainstorm rescue in Henan in 2021, Weibo became the hub of emergency linkage among all parties. Through topic integration, media submission, out-of-the-box feedback and other channels, Weibo Hotspots combed and screened tens of thousands of pieces of information for help, so that the connotation of public welfare was continuously extended, the form of charity was continuously innovated, and the public’s participation was continuously improved. During the Public Welfare Day, Tencent also launched the public welfare interaction mechanism jointly created by the whole people for the first time, and launched the new gameplay of "One Flower, One Dream" to support every caring netizen to become the product manager of the 99 Public Welfare Day, and help the public welfare dream by using small red flowers. "Vote for" public welfare claims, which is also a new exploration of Tencent’s public welfare platform.
It can be said that China’s Internet charity has developed into a new road and model with China characteristics and comparable to the European and American models.
Why can China form its own sample?
The popularity of mobile payment has contributed greatly. The initial form of charity in internet plus is charitable donation through the Internet. Using the Internet to make charitable donations first requires people to have the habit of using mobile payment to make small payments and corresponding network facilities.
However, this habit has just begun to take shape in western countries, and the western society still has a strong dependence on credit cards, which has led to the fact that the popularity of mobile payment has never reached the level of China. Through WeChat and Alipay, it can be said that almost every Chinese has used mobile payment. This has created great convenience for charities to promote the function of small donations to the public through the Internet platform and realize public welfare for all.
The digital innovation brought by the deep participation of Internet technology enterprises is the technical base of "China Sample". Mobile payment only solves the problem of convenience, which is far from supporting the "China sample". The research report of Internet Charity "China Sample" also mentioned that one of the connotations of the "China Sample" is that the Internet platform promotes the deep integration of public welfare and users’ daily life scenes.
The "China Sample" contains more effective supervision, wider participation, more accurate access and richer public welfare behaviors. As mentioned above, Internet charity has not only made online donations, but also participated in the whole public welfare field. For example, animal and environmental protection, energy conservation and emission reduction, launching public welfare activities and so on. These all need strong digital technology support, and only with the deep participation of mature Internet technology enterprises can we achieve the widest social benefits.
With the deep participation of China Internet companies represented by Tencent and Alibaba, Internet charity can use social, commercial and other scenes to attract more people to join. Tencent’s public welfare exploration using ai and other technologies to participate in the restoration and protection of murals, and using ar/vr and other technologies to digitally present the Great Wall and the Forbidden City are all vivid examples of technology empowerment.
On the other hand, the platform of foreign Internet public welfare is driven by big data and business. The main body of digital public welfare is not Internet companies, but commercial enterprises. Their biggest role in doing public welfare in the Internet industry is channels. For example, google.org, a non-profit organization founded by Google in 2005, supports other non-profit organizations through economic support, technical support and digital empowerment. China Internet charity has further expanded the charity boundary and actively practiced "science and technology for good".
Under the guidance of the government, China has promoted the co-construction, co-governance and sharing of Internet public welfare. In recent years, the state has gradually improved the system of China’s characteristic charity policies and regulations with the Charity Law as the core, established a support and encouragement policy system with government purchasing services, tax incentives and trustworthy incentives as the main body, and designated 30 internet public fundraising information platforms. All these provide a new direction for the development of Internet charity "China sample".
It is a "China sample" and a story of China.
The "China Sample" has made China a global leader in the field of Internet charity, attracting the attention and research of overseas counterparts, which in itself is an opportunity to tell the story of China well. In 2019, the Gates Foundation sponsored representatives of several Indian public welfare platforms to come to China to inspect the Internet charity and learn from the practical experience of their counterparts in China.
Compared with foreign countries, the "China Sample" is rich in China story materials.
In sharp contrast to the American charity industry, which is mainly donated by enterprises or rich people, China’s Internet public welfare mainly focuses on small personal donations, and constantly enriches the innovative ways of distribution and behavior donation, making "public welfare for all" a reality. Under the background of "public welfare for all", a large number of touching stories about China have emerged.
At present, China Internet public welfare platform covers almost all areas of national economic and social development, such as poverty alleviation, education, medical assistance, disaster relief, environmental protection, etc., which greatly promotes the traditional charitable culture of China, such as charity and poverty alleviation, to flourish among the people. This kind of culture itself is one of the connotations of lovely China, and it will certainly give birth to a large number of lovely stories.
Internet charity in China is a rich mine of China stories, and all sectors of society can participate more openly, more yuan and more deeply, so as to make this "China sample" more vivid and become a famous China story all over the world.
Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Wu
Text Editor: Yang Rong
Author: China Daily
Source of the title map: upper view of the title map
Photo editor: Yan Xi
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