Wastepaper can provide the wrapping for a lot of good works. In east China's Hangzhou City, three entrepreneurs co-founded a "paper for love" project to hire laid-off workers and people with intellectual disabilities to recycle wastepaper, or sell it and use the money to pay for the family service expenses of widowed elders.

One of the three entrepreneurs, Chen Boqin, head of the city's first car dry cleaning service company, had read a newspaper report about several pupils who had paid the education expenses of economically disadvantaged students by collecting wastepaper and bottles. "I could do that, too," Chen thought. Now Chen's "paper for love" project encompasses over 400 government offices, enterprises and institutions that all turn over their wastepaper for re-use.

Though the project has progressed well, the three founders have begun to have problems: with the increasing volume of business and funds, rumors have spread that "they are seeking private profits under the name of charity". The three men turned to some government bodies for help, but got no response.

The fact is that there are no specific laws and regulations in China as yet covering charity organizations and their activities. This lack of legal support bothers those people full of love and care, and they have reached a consensus that creation of the proper legal environment is vital to the charity cause.

Charity law lags

"The lack of appropriate policies and regulations has been a bottleneck for China's charity development," said Wang Keying, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

The existing regulations in China can be counted on two hands, including the Red Cross Law of the People's Republic of China (1993) and the Public Welfare Donations Law (1999). No specific regulations exist to cover functional distribution among government sectors.

"Even the existing charitable regulations are too general, lacking the operational details; what's more, these regulations aren't really compatible with other laws in China," said Xu Huozhou, Deputy Director of the Red Cross Society of Guangdong Province.

Legislative proposals to foster a smoother charitable donation channel have been put forward since last year by many influential figures including Wang Keying, Shi Yongxin, the head abbot of Shaolin Temple and Yang Lan, a well-known TV presenter and studio manager.

"One bottleneck is the function of the charity organizations and foundations," said Gu Shengzu, Vice-President of the All-China Federation of Industry & Commerce. By the end of 2005, the number of registered unofficial organizations had reached 315,000, including 168,000 social groups and 999 foundations. Of these, there are only a few hundred non-profit charity organizations, handling a mere 10 percent of public donations.

Currently, China's legal charity organizations have to register with either some government departments or organs authorized by the government. "Government still plays the leading role in charity, and this hampers the establishment and admittance of charitable organizations, and also results in unclear functional distribution and low efficiency," said Yang Lan.

"It's more difficult for private foundations to register with government bodies, which discourages the role of private wealth," said newspaper columnist Ji Gang. "Public and private foundations have to have a minimum of 8 million yuan or 2 million yuan in capital to register. This threshold is too high and is not good for the development of foundations in China."