The China Foundation Center (CFC) has established a website which will publicize the financial information of charitable funds in order to let the public supervise the use of donations.

The Beijing Times quoted Wang Zhenyao, dean of the Beijing Normal University One Foundation Philanthropy Research Institute, as saying that the move showed that the charity system has made a big step toward information transparency.

The website, www.foundationcenter.org.cn, covers 1,858 foundations, and includes their annual reports and their financial status.

The website was initiated by 35 charitable organizations including the China Youth Development Foundation and the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation, as call for a clear platform for the release of charity's information.

"Currently our nation lacks a transparent forum to release information about charity funds. The public previously did not have easy access to the details of the foundations, such as their annual reports and financial status," Zhuang Ailing, the head of the CFC, told the Beijing Times.

The newspaper reported that about 200 charity fund organizations have been established annually since 2004.

With new charities emerging every week, there have been occasional scandals. In February, a donation scandal concerning a foundation named after Zhang Ziyi was exposed after Zhang allegedly kept the 1 million yuan ($ 147,000) collected for Sichuan earthquake in her personal account for 18 months.

She later clarified that it was her accountant's fault, and apologized by donating to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation.

In 2004, Bian Zhong, an accountant for the National Natural Science Foundation, embezzled 200 million yuan ($29.4 million) from the organization. He was sentenced to a suspended death penalty.

A regulation issued by the ministry in 2006 stipulated that all foundations should publicize details of their programs, including how the money is spent.

"Regulating the functioning and management of social charity programs is a must. The release of information, the donation transparency and how to effectively allocate the money are issues to be concerned," Gu Xiaojin, vice-director of the China Youth Development Foundation, was quoted as saying.

The CFC started collecting statistics this May but the process is difficult.

"We did a large amount of work to file the information. Meanwhile some foundations were unwilling to release their information, which presented us with a challenge," Xu Yongguang, a CFC trustee, told the Beijing Times.
Hou Jing, a citizen who donated $200 to relief efforts for the Sichuan earthquake, told the Global Times that foundations should enhance transparency by disclosing to the public about the use of funds.