Chapter 12 Chained "Spider-Man"

When it comes to what charity is, nothing is more quoted than a story by Andrew Carnegie, the founder of the Carnegie Foundation of the United States. In 1889, Carnegie pointed out that there are three ways for the rich to use their surplus wealth: (1) pass it on to their families and descendants; (2) donate it to public welfare after death;In Carnegie's view, it is a disgrace to die with huge wealth, and only the third option can be called wise. Some people criticize the Chinese people for not being charitable. Such harsh criticism is obviously contrary to history and reality.The so-called "the old and the old and the old, the young and the young and the young and the young" and "there are tens of thousands of buildings in the world, which shelters the world's poor and happy people", whether it is the "kindness" of the vertical relationship or the "kindness" of the horizontal relationship ", these two qualities are not uncommon in Chinese people. The wave of relief triggered by the Wenchuan Earthquake in 2008 was earth-shattering and showed that charity is not what the Chinese people lack.So what is the problem?

China needs philanthropists, but also needs the institutional environment and social psychology to grow philanthropists.It has to be admitted that for a long period of time, due to the underdevelopment of social organizations and the absence of social forces, "Chinese-style charity" led by the government-units tends to evolve into a kind of "moral apportionment" in the context of power. It can arouse public resistance or negative response to a certain extent, thus affecting the development of philanthropy. After the "Wenchuan Earthquake" occurred in 2008, all sectors of society actively donated money.An interesting piece of news is that "NetEase has suspended its cooperation with the Red Cross Society." As for the termination of cooperation between the two parties, the outside world speculates more on the opacity of the Red Cross Society's donation channels, which has triggered "condemnation" by netizens.Although the Red Cross has since made relevant clarifications, similar concerns are not groundless.According to the relevant surveys conducted by financial websites, only 100% believe that the donations should not be embezzled and can be safely and completely sent to the victims.At the same time, some people think it is unreasonable that charities can withdraw 10% of donations as management fees.

Human nature is ever-changing, let alone perfect.History and reality have shown time and time again that at no time should one underestimate the emergence of nobility and goodness in human nature, nor should one underestimate the spread of evil and ugliness in human nature.The former, once upon a time, many people criticized contemporary Chinese for believing in "fetishism" and lacking public spirit. However, the Wenchuan Earthquake made this society see the long-lost unity and brilliance of humanity; The news revealed that some unscrupulous criminals have begun to use text messages or online platforms to try to fraudulently use the official accounts of charitable organizations to defraud charitable funds.If it is admitted that human nature does not distinguish between inside and outside the system, it is not difficult to find through this detail that if there is no effective supervision, donations may be degraded and deteriorated at any time due to certain loopholes in the process of circulation.

The main body of modern charity is the whole people, which concerns everyone's conscience, responsibility, freedom and rights.However, in China today, on many occasions, charity is more like a relationship, a kind of imitation and competition, and it is sometimes coerced by administrative violence or moral violence. After the "Wenchuan Earthquake", enterprises from all walks of life donated generously.Hong Kong and Taiwan actively donated money in the face of the earthquake disaster, and performed extremely well, sweeping the top three in the list of disaster relief heroes.In stark contrast, Vanke, known as the real estate leader, only donated 2 million yuan.The amount of the donation and the subsequent statements made by Vanke Chairman Wang Shi brought Vanke the biggest crisis of public trust in recent years.Subsequently, Vanke announced that it would participate in post-disaster reconstruction with 100 million yuan of funds, and Wang Shi publicly apologized.Although people advertise that donating one yuan is the same as donating 100 million, they will still be compared in specific charitable acts, making citizen charity give way to "acquaintance charity", so that some people feel that donations are like "followers", but rich If you take too little, you will be despised.

According to a charity survey, there are more than 10 million domestic companies registered with industry and commerce, and no more than 100,000 companies have donation records, which means that 99% of the companies have never participated in donations.As a result, the working class often complains that they have become the main source of charitable donations, while the wealthy class who control huge social wealth are often absent from charitable undertakings.But if you compare the charitable foundations of China and the United States, you will find that only 10% of Chinese citizens have donated money and goods, while the figure in the United States is as high as 85%.Of course, all this does not mean that Chinese people are not as charitable as Americans.Regarding this point, perhaps we can find the answer from another set of statistics: China currently has more than 100 charitable organizations, most of which are official, while the United States has 1 million.Obviously, China's philanthropy has not developed greatly, more because of institutional reasons.In addition to the fact that citizens' free association and self-organization are still suppressed to a certain extent in China, another important reason is that so far there is no special charity promotion law in China.

The "Blue Book on the Development of China's Charitable Donations" published in April 2008 pointed out that most of China's philanthropy remains in the form of "government-led". cause.It is obvious that although the concept of instant charity is gradually accepted by more and more people, compared with many advanced countries, the development of Chinese charity still lacks an "institutional force" that encourages people to do charity. For example, the United States has a history of tax relief for charities for nearly a hundred years.Four years after the federal government first began collecting personal income taxes, the U.S. Congress passed a constitutional amendment in 1917 encouraging people to donate, making donations or donations in kind tax deductible.Income tax deductible up to 15%. In 1935, the government raised personal income and corporate taxes, but at the same time allowed companies to use donations as tax deductions.By 1952, the maximum deductible percentage of income was increased to 20%.At present, the deductible ratio of personal income tax in the United States is maintained at 50%, while the corporate standard is 10%.

The boost is immediate.With the increase in income and taxation level, more and more people who do not want their income to fall into the tax department choose charity, and non-profit charities have also developed rapidly.In half a century, the number of charitable organizations in the United States has increased by 20 times.In fact, the rich are also willing to redistribute their wealth through doing good deeds. Compared with paying taxes, they not only gain a good reputation, but also gain the same initiative as the government, turning taxation into "government". Chinese society looks forward to the emergence of "public welfare leaders" from time to time. In some conferences, slogans such as "Looking for China's Carnegie" are often seen.In Carnegie's eyes, his huge wealth does not belong to himself, but instead "keeps and distributes these wealth" on behalf of the whole society, so he must return the wealth to society during his lifetime.Making more money is a kind of ability, but spending money well is a kind of responsibility.As the motto in the movie "Spider-Man" reveals, "With great power comes great responsibility".

At the same time, you have to admit that in today's China, these "Spidermen" who take charity as their own responsibility are restrained and unable to fulfill their lifelong ambitions. When it comes to the relationship between the government and society, Tocqueville distinguished the world politics before and after the French Revolution in this way in his book "On Democracy in America": "In France, all new undertakings are initiated by the government; Local dignitaries take the lead; in America, you will see that people must organize associations.” Today, most countries’ philanthropy is done through society, and even France, which Tocqueville criticized back then, has already overturned the government Leading a heavy page of society allows individuals with rights to take root in the self-organization of society and realize mutual relief.

Looking back on the "Glorious Thirty Years" of reform and opening up, one of the major changes in philanthropy is that: With the development of China's economy and society, the government has gradually changed from an all-powerful government to a public service-oriented government. Charity has begun to shift to social organizations, and various non-government and non-profit non-governmental public welfare organizations are becoming an important driving force for the development of China's philanthropy.When it comes to the development of charities in China, there is a consensus that it is necessary for the government to pass legislation to encourage and guide the development of non-profit organizations and the public welfare undertakings they set up. Service, entrust them to provide services to the society for the government, promote and guide the self-management of non-profit organizations; guide non-profit organizations by providing funding to non-profit organizations that are particularly needed by the society, such as social assistance, education, science, culture, health, environmental protection, etc. The right direction of development; guide the transfer of social funds to public welfare undertakings through tax incentives.

Charitable activities are regarded as the third distribution besides market distribution and government distribution.In the past three decades, the gap between the rich and the poor has intensified in China. It is undoubtedly a top priority to redistribute social wealth through philanthropy, promote social fairness and justice, and resolve the crisis of the times.Promoting the development of philanthropy with "charitable money tax credit" actually means that the state is giving power to the society, that is, returning the wealth distribution power that originally belonged to the government to the society, so as to complete the joint governance of the state and society.At the same time, for the Chinese society that focuses on "recovering rights", letting the government fade out of the field of charity is also the only way to prevent the government from turning donations into another "tax".

"People are unreasonable, absurdly thinking, self-centered / Always love them no matter what / ... the good you do is forgotten tomorrow / Always do good no matter what ..." Founded by Mother Teresa There is such a poem on the wall of the "Children's Home Shishu Baman" in Kolkata.Different from this calm feeling, in today's Chinese society, charity often means some kind of adventure for both the donor and the recipient. Risk of doing good: Cong Fei, a citizen of Shenzhen, sponsored more than 100 poor students and disabled students. However, when the news of Cong Fei's death spread rapidly on Internet forums, many people who had received help from him not only did not pay any attention to Cong Fei's death. On the contrary, it is "greed" and ridicule; Qingdao villager Wang Mingdian has donated money and materials to hundreds of students since 1993, with a cumulative value of more than one million yuan, attracting donations from all walks of life Countless, if they are not satisfactory, they will be scolded as liars for fame and reputation. Recipients took risks: After being sponsored for more than a year, they did not take the initiative to call or write a letter to the sponsor, let alone a word of thanks. The indifference of the five sponsored college students in Xiangfan gradually chilled the sponsor.According to a related poll on Sina.com, more than 80% of netizens believe that poor college students should pay the price for their "gratitude for being aided".People who had received donations had to face a moral trial from the public. In the first case, why do some people feel ungrateful and even force and ask for donations?The author once mentioned in a column article that today, many people do not have a clear definition of the group's self-rights circle, the individual and society, and rights and obligations.During the transformation of Chinese society, many people have a "relative sense of deprivation" in their hearts.When recipients or requesters regard their gifts as "belated justice", it is inevitable that they will have the mentality of "taken for granted" and "received without grace" when accepting social or personal assistance.When they think that what they received from the gift was what he was "deprived of" or "should have been obtained", the gift thus becomes a "lost and recovered" in a sense.Since "the mulberry elm is lost, the eastern corner of the harvest", and it may be "far from enough", or even "the harvest has suffered", "gratitude" is naturally out of the question. In the second case, how does the donor judge and why ask the recipient students to be grateful?On the one hand, gratitude is a state of mind. Obviously, we cannot judge whether these students are grateful based on one or two materialized thank you letters; on the other hand, if the donation must be accompanied by the obligation to write several thank you letters a year, Well, this charity event has actually been out of tune from the very beginning. Obviously, the modern charity culture is different from the traditional Chinese "repaying gratitude culture".The Chinese often talk about "Zhien Tu Bao" actually includes two parts: "Zhi En Tu Bao" and "Zhi En Tu Bao".The so-called "repayment" is just one type of "repayment culture", which also includes "revenge", "revenge for retribution" and so on.From a procedural point of view, whether it is gratitude or revenge, they are all closed.Such as "It's not too late for a gentleman to take revenge in ten years", "An injustice has a head, and a debt has an owner", "Throw me a peach and repay it with a plum", "Drinking water and thinking about the source", etc., all witness that behind the "reporting culture" is a closed circle of love and hatred . Compared with the closed culture of gratitude, charity is open.This difference is reflected in at least two aspects: first, the benefactor does not aim to "repay", so charity is not as exchangeable as "repayment culture"; Passively pointing to the original benefactor, so it is open.To put it simply, if the beneficiary in the "repayment culture" is a "reporter" who is "enslaved" by giri, then in the charity culture it is a "social person" who allows giri to flow freely.If the students believe that the donation of female business owners is a kind of charitable behavior, then they should see that they are not just representing themselves and their families, but accepting the donations of female entrepreneurs as "social persons". Repayment should be to repay the society, so that giri can continuously create wealth like business, instead of rushing to repay the kindness of donors, so that the culture of gratitude stays at the primitive stage of "gift exchange". Someone accused that "the parents of the sponsored college students need to reflect, and the sponsored college students should deeply reflect on themselves, and reflect on the harm they have caused to the sponsors and the society."Based on the above understanding, I can better understand the harm suffered by these poor students.In fact, this kind of donation bundled with the "thank you letter obligation" is more like an investment to obtain the recipient's gratitude bonus from the beginning, a transaction rather than real charity.As for reporting the status of study, it is an excessive requirement, because even if the students accept the donation, it does not mean that their spiritual world has been partially subjugated, and they have lost the ability of self-government, and must “confess” their privacy to the donor—if they Think it's private. Since the reform and opening up, Chinese society has achieved unprecedented development.It is undeniable that the Chinese are still far from being a "social person" and far from a charity culture.Corresponding to this lack is the continued popularity of "newspaper culture".However, the mechanism of repaying gratitude hidden in the "closed circle of repaying gratitude" is precisely the most vulnerable.This kind of closedness determines that both the donor and the recipient seem to be fighting alone for love, so if there is a slight disturbance, all parties will inevitably feel wronged-seeing the sunset, life is so unsatisfactory.