Primary school students in east China's Jiangsu Province donated money to victims of the major earthquake in southwest China's Sichuan Province in 2008. [File photo by Xinhua]?

A recent survey found that 70.6 percent of Chinese people felt China's charitable undertakings were not transparent enough, the China Youth Daily reported Monday.

The Beijing-based newspaper conducted an online survey of 2,003 people during the ongoing meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC), which runs from March 5 to 16.

About 70.6 percent of the respondents complained about the transparency of China's charitable undertakings, while 60.6 percent believed that establishing a comprehensive charity law system would greatly aid the development of the country's charity sector.

Regarding the specific problems of charitable funds, 43.2 percent of the respondents felt that they were not well organized, and 35.5 percent felt they lack external supervision.

The public's opinions were echoed by volunteers and scholars. An anonymous volunteer from the Beijing Normal University said that China's charitable organizations need a set of standardized rules for staff wage, professional credentials, and information disclosure procedures to ensure the professionalism of staff and the proper handling of funds.

Deng Guosheng, a professor with the School of Public Policy and Management at the Tsinghua University, suggested that in addition to laws forcing charitable organizations to disclose relevant information, "Third party non-governmental organizations should be introduced to monitor and evaluate the operation of charitable organizations."

About 10.8 percent of the respondents to the survey claimed they took part in charitable affairs frequently, 43.5 percent said sometimes, 38.5 percent said rarely and 7.1 percent said never.

A draft of a bill to regulate charitable activities, China's first, was submitted to NPC last week. The new law was expected to encourage more citizens, enterprises, and social organizations to engage in charitable programs, and to tackle loopholes and problems in charitable activities, which have boomed in the past few years.

According to official statistics, the total amount of donations to charitable programs in China has increased from 10 billion yuan (US$1.54 billion) in 2006 to about 100 billion yuan (US$15.4 billion) today.

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