Attitudes for social charity in the modern society: How undergraduates in Guangdong react to the charity scandals

Keywords : charity values， the gap between the urban and the rural， volunteer education， Chinese， undergraduates

1. Introduction

China's charity management is a core part of social development. As the development of China's economy， the charity develops very fast today. Since 1978， many charitable organizations have been built. According to the data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs， shows that China received a total of RMB 22.316 billion in funds and in-kind donations from the public and enterprises in 2007， representing an increase of 123 percent compared with the previous year. (The Ministry of Civil Affairs [MOCA]， 2007). During the last 30 years， China's charity has developed a new system run by the government department to service the society. The charity has made an impressive development.

And the student charitable organizations are an important part of the organizations. Well-educated and sympathetic， the undergraduates are enthusiastic to contribute themselves to the charities. And their experience and values will influence their choice after they graduate from their school.

However， the charity's development needs the understanding and favor from the people. This kind of favor is more important than the funds from the personal and companies. As most of the charitable organizations are in the control of the government， the management of these organizations has many weaknesses. The information about the use of the charitable funds is limited among these organizations， so the people do not have enough ways to get the information.

Because of it， the supervision of the organizations becomes very difficult. With these problems， many scandals about charity organizations were exposed since last year. For example， Guo Meimei and her luxury car made people query about the use of charitable funds. In her blog， Guo Meimei， a 21-year-old girl， showed off her luxury car， her beautiful bags and her villa. And she claimed that she was a manager of Red Cross Society， a famous charity organization. In addition， it was widely spread that her father was the vice-president of Red Cross Society. The whole society became angry and queried about the use of the charity funds. After months， the girl apologized to the society and admitted that she was just a model who had no relationship with Red Cross Society. But the faith of the people didn't come back. In 2011， the fund of the Red Cross Society lost many donators' faith. After the scandal， more scandals and problems about charitable funds were exposed last year. The criticism from the internet and other medium challenged the old charity system. Many of the critics are undergraduates.

In NB University， it is found that many undergraduates chose to be volunteers and workers for NGOs after they graduated from their university. However， they have to face much pressure among their work， such as lack of salary， lack of promotions and bad work environment. And according to another study of career choice values hold， the study showed that the respondents who are college students didn't focus on the professional loyalty， but they concerned about their salaries and welfares， or known as the individual interest (Jia Zheng， 2006). That restricts the further development of the charity.

Charity， including undergraduate charity， is the act of giving money， goods or time to the unfortunate， either directly or by means of a charitable trust or other worthy cause. Charitable giving as a religious act or duty is referred to as almsgiving or alms. The name stems from the most obvious expression of the virtue of charity is giving the objects of it the means they need to survive (Wikipedia， 2012). The student charity organizations aim to educate and encourage the undergraduates to participate in the charity. In addition， the work in the organizations also provides important experience and skills for the staff. Facing to the charity crisis and changes of the society， the well-educated undergraduate always react more quickly. The unique traditional culture and history， the management from the government and the charity education system in universities consist of the charity in China. These factors also made some troubles that are different from western troubles. With these problems and changes， the study is made to answer following questions:

（1）As the development of business， more

business starts to affect the charity organizations in Guangdong. Do undergraduates affected by the student charity organizations in Guangdong support the charity having relationship with business?

（2）The education about the charity is an

important part of education in university. Do the education from the society and university make the undergraduates become more enthusiastic about the charity?

（3）By many kinds of medium， undergraduates show different voices and different participations. Whether their different voices and different participations have relationship with their family， their majors and other backgrounds?

（4）Facing to the charity scandals， how do

the undergraduates think about the charity scandals exposed last year and what are their suggestions and proposals?

2. Review of related literatures

2.1 Charity values

Value denotes something's degree of importance， with the aim of determining what action or life is best to do or live， or at least attempt to describe the value of different actions. It may be described as treating actions themselves as abstract objects， putting value to them. It deals with right conduct and good life， in the sense that a highly， or at least relatively highly， valuable action may be regarded as ethically \"good\" ， and an action of low， or at least relatively low， value may be regarded as \"bad\".(Wikipedia ， 2012 ).

As noted above， the charity value where favor and understanding come from is a core part of the charity in China. The funds from the companies and persons， the management by the government and the charity value are the foundations of the charity. One origin of the charity comes from human welfare theory. These philosophies focus on the social welfare and social justice. Therefore， the supervision of the charitable organizations becomes very important. But this kind of supervision is not enough as the management information. More investigations should be done to provide enough data.

As the charity value is a part of welfare ideology， different countries also have different definitions of charity value (Chow， 1987: Huang， 2008). Affected by Confucianism culture and its long history， the charity value of Chinese is different from western charity value， which rooted in the Christian theory of charity.

In China， the charity is for the people who have no ability to afford themselves and get no support from their family. Chinese was ashamed to seek assistance from the society because it showed their weakness. But China's charitable organizations didn't develop the system that suit for Chinese value. The government and some researchers have noticed that and tried to solve this kind of problems. In a word， the traditional culture and management system affected the development of China's development.

Table1 The factors that affected the charity values

2.2 The current situation of charity value and charitable organizations

The current situation of charity value and charitable organizations are very complicated. The research will focus on several aspects of the charity that influence the value and the organizations.

Traditional culture

As mentioned before， the charity value of Chinese is different from western charity value， which rooted in the Christian theory of charity as they are affected by Confucianism culture and its long history. In the culture， family is the most important part. With the development in its 3000 years of history， relationships are central to Confucianism.. Particular duties arise from one's particular situation in relationship to others. The individual stands simultaneously in several different relationships with different people: as a junior in relation to parents and elders， and as a senior in relation to younger siblings， students and others. While juniors are considered in Confucianism to owe their seniors reverence， seniors also have duties of benevolence and concern toward juniors. Everyone has its obligation and the charity has become a proof that shows the virtue of the donator. After the PRC established， the reforms of economy and social regions started. The reform increased amazingly since 1978， the value evolved to be the mixture of Western Culture and Eastern Culture (Cheung Kwok， 1999: Lu， 2008).

In some aspects， China's charity is very unique. On one hand， the young undergraduates are very collective to be the volunteers. With the affection of traditional values， the undergraduates are willing to contribute themselves to others. On the other hand， more individualism is appearing in China. The behavior of the undergraduates is affected by their own interest.

The social welfare system

The era is the ear of Changing as the development of the economy and the society. Since the opening and reform in 1978， more charitable organizations and management systems have been established. China has a new social welfare system. In this system， individuals work to raise funds with the favor of the government and their employees (Lu Feng， 2008). There is no doubt that the system challenged the traditional Chinese charity values. The house， the health care and other welfares become large pressure for ordinary Chinese. Mao's time has left， and its welfare system also left. The old generation grown in Mao's time didn't have ability to face the change. And they need the help from the undergraduates. As showed above， the undergraduates are willing to help the people. New charity values need the practice and the researches.

The encouragement from the government helps a part of people get richer. However， it also makes inequality spread across China. In 2005， Gini coefficient of China was estimated to be 0.44 which was more than 1.5 times the figure for 1982(Chen， Hou Jin， 2008; United Nations Human Development Report Office). As NGO， Charitable organizations have no enough ability to help their workers to improve workers' welfare. Their salary was limited and they have no other source of income. This is also a big challenge for the charity.

The influence on the undergraduates

The charity needs the favor and understanding， and it also needs the skills and technology of the undergraduates. With the development of China's education， more and more undergraduates left their universities and join the volunteers. Because of getting some social professional education， students should be more responsible (Lottes Kuriloff， 1994). But many of them are not as well-trained as required. Obviously， some students don't have any experience to help others. Although the undergraduates are enthusiastic， their few practice restricted them. In some degree， that resulted from the Confucianism. The Confucianism believes that student should respect their teachers. In addition， research and academic discussion having relationship with the regulation are limited. Compared to other subjects， the government didn't focus on the social science until recent years.

In addition， the development of university education increases the pressure of employment. The government stopped to provide works and encourage the undergraduates to find a job by themselves. The policy made less students choose the volunteers and other jobs related to the charity.

The education of the charity developed very fast but it also has many problems. Although thousands of foreign books have been translated into Chinese， the theory about charity still need more time to understand. Chinese professors need to develop a new Chinese research method， which is totally different from western methods. Another problem is that the professors in university have less enthusiastic to teach the theory about the charity. In addition， the employment pressure also threatens the study of the students related to social work.

In the aspect of the education of the charity， other research found that different backgrounds， different characteristics and different volunteering experiences influence the values and Charity work competence. And the survey showed that males and students from well-developed area backgrounds are more likely to focus on the responsibility for the welfare of the society (Cheung Kwok， 1999).

3. Methodology

After some preparations， the questionnaires for the study were made for all the students， most of whom were familiar with student charity organizations. The researches were made in NB University and the surveyors are from different student charity organizations.

3.1 Sample

The surveyors are from different student

charity organizations in NB University. The NB University is located in Guangdong where economy develops very fast. The student charitable organizations have developed their own management system. And NB University has thousands of students across China. The students' backgrounds are so different that they can represent many different characters of the society. To reduce the difficulty from government， the study got the agreement from official department. To keep the representativeness， the respondents were selected purposely. The students selected from the organizations include freshmen， sophomores and juniors. The charitable organizations in the university are also representative. Some of them are organized by students， and others are organized under the direction of universities and departments concerned.

Table2 the social demographic characters

of the respondents

The social demographic sample was shown above. As a large part of respondents are between 18 and 21， the research divided the respondents into 3 parts. In addition， some students are from HK and Mao Cao. They are very active in the charitable activities.

3.2 Measures

The research includes 7 factors， which reflected the preference of the undergraduates. The instruments use some IPA analysis as the reference. Some factors are about the experience and the others are related to the participations of the charity. The factors also reflect the students' needs related to their backgrounds. In the first part， the respondents were asked indicated their degree of expectation (Very important， important， unimportant and very unimportant). In the second part， the respondents were asked indicated their degree of satisfaction for the charity (Very satisfied， satisfied， unsatisfied and very unsatisfied)

3.3 Data collection

After got the agreement from related de-

partments， the questionnaires were distributed among the student. By the student leaders of the organizations in NB University， the questionnaires were sent to the students during this April. The leaders were well trained and experienced so they could answer the questions from the respondents. After getting the students' background， the surveyors helped them to understand the questions. Every questionnaire took the respondents between 10 minutes and 15 minutes. During the month， the researchers collected 200 from different schools of the universities; over 90 percent of the questionnaires were usable. And less than 20 questionnaires were incomplete. Finally， the data was collected from the questionnaires.

3.4 Data analysis

The first part of the questionnaire is the importance of the factors in today's charity management. The respondents were asked to rate the importance. The factors were used to measure the management of China's charity. These data are divided into several groups to help the collection work.

And then， IPA matrix was used to analysis the data. The IPA matrix has 4 quadrants along 2 axes， one for the importance and the other for performance evaluation. With the importance analysis and evaluation analysis， the research provides an image.

Each quadrant of the matrix is named to implicitly indicate the nature of the plots. The first quadrant， \"concentrate here\" represents factors that need to be improved. The second quadrant named \"keep up the good work\" it represents factors of high importance and high performance. Factors with low importance and low performance are included in the third quadrant named \"low priority\". The last quadrant named \"possible overkill\" contains factors of low importance but high performance (Martilla James， 1977). The information reveals the potential problems and weakness of China's charity system. On the other hand， the analysis also shows the strength that needs more attention.

Reference

[1]Chen， J. Hou， W.， Jin， S. (2008). A review of the Chinese Gini Coefficient from 1978 to 2005. Social Science Research Network， working paper series

[2]Cheung， C.K.， Chan， C.M.， Lee， J.J.

(1999). Beliefs about elderly people among social workers and the general public in Hong Kong. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology. 14(2)， 131-152

[3]Chow， N.W.S. (1987). Western and Chinese ideas of social welfare. International Social welfare. International Social Work， 30(1)， 31-41

[4]Huang， Y.M. (2006). Exploiting and ap plying the resources of traditional culture and localizing the values of social work. Journal of Zhang Zhou Teachers College. 20(3)， 40-44

[5]Jia W.D Zheng H.Y. (2005). Overview of the contemporary university students' choice of occupation. Journal of Zhang Jiakou Vocational College of Technology. 19. 13-15 (in Chinese).

[6]Lottes， I.L. Kuriloff. P.J. (1994). The impact of college experience on political and social attitudes. Sex Role， 31(1/2)， 31-54

[7]Lu. L. (2008). The individual-oriented

and social-oriented Chinese bicultural self: testing the theory. The Journal of Social Psychology， 148(3)， 347-372

[8]Martilla， J. A.， James， J. C. (1977).

Importance-performance analysis. Journal of Market， 41(1)， 77-79

[9]Ministry of Civil Affairs of the People's

Republic of China. (2007). the China Charity Donation Report 2007. Retrieved September 2008 from: http://www.mca.gov.cn/article/zwgk

/tjsj/

[10]Wikipedia. (2012). Charity (practice and

value). Retrieved April 2012 from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charity

[11]Vivian WQ Lou， Veronica Pearson and Yu C Wong. (2010). Humanitarian welfare values in a changing social environment: A survey of social work undergraduate students in Beijing and Shanghai. Journal of Social work. 12(1) 65-83

（作者單位：廣東珠海中山大學翻譯學院）