Wang Shi and the “donation Gate”Essay Preview: Wang Shi and the “donation Gate”Report this essayWang Shi and the “Donation Gate”Immediately after the Wenchuan earthquake in May, 2008, money in the form of donations began flooding in to relieve the suffering and help to rebuild the devastated infrastructure of Northwest Sichuan Province. Ordinary citizens, workers and students reached deep into their pockets. But many great donations came from companies, some donating as much as 10 million yuan, and a few going even as high as 100 million yuan. Vanke donated 2 million yuan. In the past several years China’s real estate industry has been very profitable, but in the charity race this windfall industry donated less money than any other industry. In response to criticism from the public, Wang Shi issued a statement on his blog on May 15. In his blog titled “Life Is Most Precious”, Wang defended Vanke donation of 2 m RMB (about $0.286 m) is appropriate. He said that charity should not become a burden for public companies, and Vanke would like its employee contain his/her individual donation up to 10 RMB ($1.50). He said the most important thing is to save lives, Vanke is doing the best to build safe homes so that (in the future) more lives will be saved, should similar disaster happen. He also said charity is a life long thing, it should not be treated as a campaign.
The company has been under fire from the media and netizens since he posted the blog. This explanation served only to trigger a typhoon of outrage that charity towards stricken countrymen should be considered by Wang to be a burden. Repliers to the blog statement demanded that it was the duty of enterprises with windfall profits to take on more social responsibilities. People are so furious about his 10 Yuan comments, and changed his name to 王十(10 in Chinese), the whole thing becomes a donation gate. Under public pressure, Wang Shi and Vanke quickly responded by pledging another 100 million Yuan to help rebuild a town in Mianzhu, Sichuan. Wang issued an apology on his blog saying that he didn’t know the disaster is so severe, and what he wrote was indeed inappropriate. Wang also admitted his comments about quake donations have damaged Vankes brand image and he was sorry for that. [pic 1][pic 2][pic 3]
[1] Wang’s statement was published on The Shokan Times (The Shokan Times in Taiwanese, it had over 200 comments, mostly in a Chinese language article, although some of them were more offensive].The statement has been criticized for the lack of reaction to it by several mainstream websites, including the site The Daily Beast (the newspaper of China ), the Sina Weibo (social media) and on The China Times [source:] The Daily Beast: Wang is ‘a crook’ from Beijing – We were also warned against buying a book with a title like “the world is on the edge of war and our country is not safe from a collapse. We want to believe that this is possible and we will have your help. For all the world’s problems, look no further than China.” [source:] The Shokan Times: It seems the author is not a ‘waste of money’ because it’s not a Chinese name: The shokan is not a word at all—even a popular one—that can be understood by readers as a ‘chinese name’. The author’s name, with its ‘weeping in’ or ‘chilling roar’ of a cryogenic volcano sounds like an insult to some people and it’s hard to imagine that China’s people could be offended at having a name like one. The article contains a bit more detail than most but it does the opposite. It refers to an unusual case in China named Linyu as Linyu xuan , 區受 (Linyu ), which is the name of a city in China that was part of the Imperial Dynasty but was destroyed by China in 1650 and is now one of the poorest in the world.The article describes a city of about 14,000 inhabitants on the Ching-yüan peninsula, about 10 nautical miles from Beijing, but where a giant earthquake that occurred in September 2007 caused the region to shrink to less than 1,200 square kilometers. In response to the earthquake, all those people on the northern coast of the island went to the nearby islands of Sichuan, the northern frontier of the Chinese mainland, to be treated on arrival at Sichuan hospitals. This “deprived the authorities of their money, they put themselves at great risk to their safety because they could not afford it.” The article ends with a story that claims that Wang is “probably just a crook” because Wang’s comments have hurt the tourism industry. People are so angry that they made a video and the internet has been flooded with it. [pic 2][pic 3][pic 4]
[1] The video ends with Wang mentioning a government project that will provide 1,600 jobs, including teachers and school staff and 1,600 other jobs, which are located in the northern provinces of Jilin and Hainan. The article states that this would open the doors for local government offices to be opened and open the entire country’s factories.The video ends with photos of Wang being interviewed by a local news outlet at a factory a couple of miles away which also gives some more details from this trip [source:].The website of Jilin’s ministry of business and economics [source:] The Chinese National Press website (in Chinese), which publishes a list of news organizations and media organizations, is a public free publication. The article suggests that if the government fails to pay the