"A snowballing corruption scandal involving China's Red Cross Society has forced the Chinese government to ease strict controls on the millions of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have been functioning without government recognition.
The Chinese government has been reluctant to endorse these NGOs despite the incredible growth of civil society in recent decades. For years, Beijing has supported government-affiliated charity organizations with funding, while obstructing independent NGOs with a laborious and troublesome registration process and heavy legal oversight.
Several million NGOs with a wide range of goals, including supporting Christians, petitioning the government, fighting for environmental protection and combating diseases, have been founded around China in the past two decades.
The Red Cross began to face public accusations of misuse of donations after a 20-year-old woman calling herself "Guo Meimei" online, who claimed to be general manager of "Red Cross Commerce", posted photos on her microblog in June detailing a lavish lifestyle that included expensive sports cars - she called her white Maserati the "little horse" and her orange Lamborghini the "little bull" - as well as designer handbags and a villa. Netizens suspected that Guo had funded her lifestyle by embezzling money from the Red Cross Society.
The Red Cross Society promptly denied the existence of "Red Cross Commerce", saying it did not have an employee named Guo Meimei, dubbed "Maserati Girl" by media. But follow-up investigations by media showed the charity organization did run a commercial group, though under a different name, which had cooperative agreements with several businesses and whose leaders also worked as the heads of several enterprises. The group had been given discretionary power over the use of donations raised through some of the Red Cross's charitable activities"...............READ MORE
The Red Cross Society promptly denied the existence of "Red Cross Commerce", saying it did not have an employee named Guo Meimei, dubbed "Maserati Girl" by media. But follow-up investigations by media showed the charity organization did run a commercial group, though under a different name, which had cooperative agreements with several businesses and whose leaders also worked as the heads of several enterprises. The group had been given discretionary power over the use of donations raised through some of the Red Cross's charitable activities"...............READ MORE
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