Research On Legislation Improvement Of Charitable Organizations In China

Since the WenChuan earthquake in2008, people from all walks have being actively participating in the charitable cause, and thus China’s charity organizations made great progress over the years. However, due to the undeveloped legal system concerned, many scandals arise from the charity organizations one by one as they are developing rapidly.2011witnessed the event’Guo Meimei flaunts her considerable riches’. After that, the public became wary of China’s charity organizations, making them less credible and imposing crisis of confidence onto China’s charitable cause.This thesis consists of four chapters. From micro perspective, this thesis analyzes real cases and identifies the inadequacies in the legislation system concerning charity organizations in China. And then, this thesis studies the lessons relating to charity organization legislation overseas, and puts forward some opinions and suggestions to the legislation improvement of charity organizations in China.The first chapter is an overview of the charity organizations in China. The academic circle has different addresses towards organizations which are engaged in charitable activities. Based on the criteria of’whether having the purpose for profit’, a charity organization can be called’non-profit organization’;’the third sector’is a concept to distinguish the government from enterprise;’commonweal organization’ means that the mission of an organization is to contribute the social public interests. In China, for most charity organizations, their shared mission is to help the disadvantaged groups, so they can be addressed by any one of the three titles above. In recent years, the Chinese charity organizations have grown in numbers while experiencing decline in their public credibility. This is mainly due to the inadequacies, low validity and imperfection in and of relating legal system, which deprive the charity organizations of normative standard in terms of operation and management.The second chapter probes into the problems in charity organization legislation. Analyses on some real cases causing great social effect indicate that the government imposed excessively strict access system on charity organization in legislation. This makes it difficult for the charity organizations to obtain legal identity. And given the existing laws, few charity organizations are allowed to raise money from the public. These directly allow the charity organizations with government background to monopolize the social resources and deprive non-governmental charitable organizations of their competitiveness to improve themselves. Moreover, the inadequacies and legal loopholes in legislation concerning the internal governance structure and management fees of charity organizations also lead to management confusion. Regarding the illegal and undisciplined behaviors in charity organizations, administrative penalties on the charity organization and the ultimate person liable in case are inappropriate, and there are no provisions on civil liability.The third chapter introduces the lessons of charitable organization legislation borrowed from overseas. Other nations and regions adopt slack policies on the access system of charity organization and have flexible policies on the establishment of charity organization:the charity organization can be recognized by the government after registration or verified. All the recognized charity organizations are allowed to raise money from the public. In some other nations and regions, according to their laws, before raising money from the public, the charity organizations have to apply to related authorities for approval. The modern internal governance structure, that draws lessons from corporate governance model, enables the charity organizations to enhance their public credibility through autonomy and self-discipline so as to get more social donations. Regarding management fees, related laws also provides compulsory disclosure of information about income and expenditure account, increasing transparency and public supervision. These nations and regions also explicitly stipulate the legal responsibility on illegal practices in charity organizations.The fourth chapter proposes suggestions for the improvement of legislation concerning charity organization. Compared to the practice of outdating the legal person system, it seems that the workable solution is to adopt organizational form that recognized by existing laws and include charity non-governmental organizations into the legal regulation through cancelling double-licensing system and reducing requirements for access. In addition to adopting competition mechanism, the government should also allow the charity organizations that registered to raise money from the public. And it is in line with China’s national condition that the charity organization should get approve from relating authorities before raising money from the public. Furthermore, for the charity organization in China, it is more scientific and reasonable to adopt corporate internal governance structure and classify these organizations into corporate organization (such as social group and private non-enterprise organization and foundation) and unincorporated organization. Presently the management fees of charity organizations still provoke great social controversies, so the relating laws and regulation should explicitly stipulate the contents and means of receipt of the management fees. Concerning the administrative liability of charity organization and the ultimate person liable, there should be appropriate and sophisticated legal provisions. While regard to the civil liability of charity organization when it hurting the right and interest of aided person,’the liability for damage relating to the losses caused on the done by the donation’in the Civil Law can workable.