Red Cross sees no dip in donations despite scandals

BEIJING - The total amount of public donations raised by the Red Cross Society of China this year was not that much different from that in previous years. Evidently, the Guo Meimei incident, which had put a big question mark on the country's most high-profile humanitarian organization in June, has not substantially reduced the amount received, although the number of individual donations might have been less than before.

The donations collected through the society and all of its local branches stood at nearly 4.2 billion yuan ($660 million) this year and so far about 3.95 billion has been spent, statistics released by the organization on Wednesday showed.

Wang Rupeng, secretary-general of the China Red Cross, told China Daily on Wednesday: "The Society's Beijing headquarters collected nearly 600 million yuan this year and hasn't seen an apparent decrease compared to the average in previous years."