Charity transparency

China drafted a charity law in order to increase transparency of charity donations, according to the Legislative Affairs Office of the State Council in late July. The draft charity law aims at ensuring charities enjoy favorable taxation policies and rights to manage their properties. It quoted a legislative affairs official as saying the charity legislation was basically finished, but the time for the draft submitted to the top legislature for deliberation had not yet been decided.

The office's deputy director, Gao Fengtao, said that the draft has provisions on charities, donations, volunteer services, charitable trust, and activities of overseas charities in China, and provides for a registration and management system for charity organizations. In addition, the draft stresses that the government should give more guidance to the charity sector instead of using administrative power to accumulate charity resources. Guo said the principal element of the charities would focus on people, not officials.

Website: http://www.gov.cn/jrzg/2010-07/30/content_1668090.htm

Online gaming gets real

China's first law on online games became effective on August 1. The move is expected to protect minors from unwholesome and violent content and Internet addiction so as to improve management of the booming virtual gaming industry. The regulations also require web players to register using their real names before playing games online and gaming companies to develop techniques that limit the gaming time for minors in order to prevent addiction. But the regulation did not clarify the techniques and the permissible gaming time.

The rules apply to all multiplayer roleplaying and social networking games. But many question the effectiveness of the policy, because it may not protect youths due to the absence of a credible identity recognition system. Experts believe that minors might borrow or even buy ID cards if they really want to play games. Therefore, without an effective national identification system, the real name registration will only increase costs for the games operators and brings them greater risks.

Website: http://www.gov.cn/flfg/2010-06/22/content_1633935.htm