When Fu Weigang made a promise on his microblog at weibo.com to give 1 yuan ($0.15) to the son of Zhang Miao, a young mother stabbed to death by a student in Xi'an last year, every time his post was forwarded, he never dreamed it would make such a public impact.

The killer was sentenced to death and ordered to pay compensation of 45,498.50 yuan ($6,975) to Zhang's family. Fu, a 34-year-old lawyer who works at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, believed the compensation was too small, so he launched the donation campaign on April 22, in order to help the impoverished family.

But Fu never expected there would be so many followers to this post. Within three days, Fu's microblog, which previously had 600 followers, got more than 50,000 new followers, and his post had been forwarded more than 360,000 times by April 25.

"I made this promise on impulse originally," said Fu, who set a ceiling on his donation at 540,000 yuan ($83,407), the compensation that Zhang's family asked at court, after the post went viral. Fu said some of his friends and fellow posters would help him raise the cash. He said he will honor his promise and "can't eat his words."

New trend

On January 16, at a wedding ceremony held in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, the bride and bridegroom announced their promise posted together on 3150114.com, a website that collects people's promises.

The 23-year-old bride, Gao Panpan, said she wanted more people to see that she and her would-be husband Jia Guofa promised on the site that they will "grow old together."

People post various promises on this website. Some even uploaded their pictures and posted their cellphone numbers.

For example, Wang Xiaoping, a 37-year-old real estate agent in Urumqi, apologized for a dispute with a client and said he would like to take all the blame for it.

Yuan Xinzhe, who works with the website 3150114.com, said as long as people made promises on the website, they would accept the burden of being monitored by society.

Founded in 2006, this website has more than 200 registered users in Xinjiang. "The users have to sign up with their personal information, including birthdays, cellphone numbers and ID numbers," Yuan said. "If they cannot keep their words, we will publicize their information on the Internet."

Corporate members need a legal representative to sign and provide basic company information. Yuan said company details would be published on the site if promises were not kept. 

Monitoring problems

At the end of January, many express delivery companies in China posted notices on their websites, promising they would not halt operations during the weeklong Spring Festival holiday beginning February 2. However, when a reporter from Xinhua News Agency tried to contact the companies on February 2, he found out only one company was operating normally.

"I don't trust their promises online anymore," said Xiao Xinyu, a resident in Yunnan Province who bought some food from an online shop before the Spring Festival. "When I made the order, the shop owner said they could be delivered on time," Xiao said. "But after I paid and waited for three days, I still didn't get a delivery number that I could use to track the order online."

Xiao then contacted the shop owner, who said express delivery companies had refused to deliver during the Spring Festival.

"It is the problem of monitoring online promises," said Li Jiayu, a microblog marketing manager in Beijing. "In most cases, the public has no idea where to turn to when there are frauds."

As for Fu's donation campaign, Fang Zhouzi, an Internet affairs commentator in Beijing, suspects Fu was attempting a publicity stunt. "When he saw users forwarding at a frightening rate, he set a maximum number of the donation," Fang said. "It is, in a way, eating his own words."

"No matter whether Fu kept his words or not, he is known by many more people and his followers soared from 600 to 50,000 and the number is still increasing," said Xie Qiang, General Manager of Beijing-based Freelong Cultural Communication Co. Ltd., "Many people take advantage of microblogging, especially for commercial purposes. There are no rules for punishing people or companies who fail to fulfill their promises. In Fu's case, even if he refused to donate in the end, we couldn't force him to fulfill his promise except for decrying the irresponsible act."