An Analysis of China Health Charity Credibility Before and After the 2016 Charity Law of the People’s Republic of China

Due to corruption and limited oversight, philanthropy in China has come under increasing scrutiny by both the Chinese government and public. In particular, corruption has impacted charities, resulting in operational funding declines that have also impacted legitimate charities serving the vulnerable. Hence, an increase in the number of Chinese charities without adequate transparency and needed good governance threatens the health of these organizations and their service groups. In response, the Chinese government enacted the 2016 Charity Law, implemented on September 1, 2016. Yet the impact of this law, if any, is unknown. We therefore conducted a literature review of the academic and gray literature to assess characteristics of the law, its strengths and limitations, and to explore anti-corruption case studies. In addition, we reviewed publicly available secondary data on the transparency status—complete financial information and responsible staff—of Chinese charity organizations and a group of health-related specific charities before and after the Law’s enactment. This included the transparency scores of the top 100 charities and top 30 health-related charities in China. The academic literature we reviewed focused on general governmental corruption and little on charity-related corruption. However, the gray literature reflected a poor view of charities in China due to publicized claims of fund and abuse. Based on our secondary data analysis, we found charity organizations’ transparency shows some variation but as a total continues to score low overall across the top net asset holding charities. Importantly, based on a regression analysis, the transparency scores of Chinese charities did not experience a significant change despite the Charity Law’s enactment. In response, strengthening the Charity Law by enhancing enforcement of financial regulations and implementing systemic good governance measures is needed. Further, efficiency initiatives such as philanthropy de-administration, e-government, and outsourcing monitoring of Chinese charities to external agencies would promote trustworthiness and credibility of Chinese charity organizations now and in the future.

     

Deforestation Crimes and Conflicts in the Amazon

This article explores and explains deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. It primarily takes a green criminological perspective and looks at the harm that is inflicted on many of the Amazon’s inhabitants, including indigenous populations such as ‘uncontacted’ tribes of hunters-gatherers, the oldest human societies. The green criminological perspective also implies that the definition of victimisation is being enlarged: not only (future) humans, but also non-humans can be considered victims. Being the most biodiverse place on the planet, deforestation of the Amazon leads to threats and extinctions of animal and plant species. The main causes of deforestation in the Amazon are land conversion for agriculture (mainly cattle, also soy), practices that are mostly illegal. As the products of the (illegally) deforested rainforest in the Brazilian Amazon are mainly for export markets, western societies with large ecological footprints could be held responsible for deforestation of the Amazon.     

Major Combat Operations and Counterinsurgency Warfare: Plan Challe in Algeria, 1959–1960

In 1959–60, the French Army in Algeria achieved a major tactical and operational military success under the command of General Maurice Challe, in which the French destroyed half of the combat capability of the Algerian insurgency. Rather than adopting a population-centric, or “hearts and minds,” approach to coin, the French Army created an innovative method for military success based on the use of major combat operations against the military power of the insurgency. The success of major combat operations in Plan Challe is omitted or dismissed in most of the Algerian War historiography, which focuses instead on French pacification. An analysis of Plan Challe, however, provides lessons and examples for the conduct of a successful sustained counterguerrilla campaign, a coercive method seldom discussed in current debates over coin warfare.     

An evaluation of Pakistan's third five year plan

The decline in the share of agriculture and increase in secondary production's share have generally been found to accompany changes in per capita income. Cross‐section data have long exhibited such a ‘pattern of development’. Recent panel information combining cross‐section and time‐series data seemed to extend the behaviour to time series. Using analysis of co‐variance tests for such patterns over time, the paper rejects the assumption of homogeneous patterns over time. In addition 45 per cent of the individual countries deviate from the expected time series pattern. Thus such patterns certainly do appear in cross‐sections, but their existence across countries over time is not confirmed.