Web of charity

To his family and friends, Zhao Zilong is an optimistic 24-year-old man. Hailing from Dongying, Shandong Province, he is known among his friends as a talented singer and dancer.

However, Zhao is facing a potentially fatal leukemia diagnosis, which can only be averted if the family raises enough money.

It was this tragic news, which the family discovered earlier this year, that led Web users to new forms of online charity which draw their funding from Weibo.

The most recent example, Sina Micro-charities, was launched in February this year and has already attracted donations from more than 1.7 million Web users.

According to a report released by Alipay, a third-party online payment platform in China, earlier this March, the amount of donations made via its charity platform increased to a total of 35.2 million yuan ($5.66 million), 70 percent higher than the 2011 figure.

Shock and desperation

Together with his two elder sisters and his mother, Zhao lives in a 140-square-meter house, which the family took out a loan to buy three years ago at a price of about 3,000 yuan ($478) per square meter at that time.

The family lived a contented life, but that all ended earlier this year when Zhao Zilong was diagnosed with leukemia.

"Why did my brother get this deadly disease? Will he leave us soon?" Zhao Fang asked desperately.

A bone marrow transplant had the potential to save Zhao Zilong's life. But their happiness with this news didn't last long when the family discovered that the operation could cost upwards of 700,000 yuan.

In desperation, the family turned to their friends and relatives.

On the evening of March 12, a post about Zhao Zilong's difficulties attracted attention on Sina Weibo. The post was verified to have been written by one of his friends, Li Yingzhi, a renowned model who shot to fame at the 2012 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition when she wore a diamond-studded dress.

Within just two days of Li's post, which was verified by Sina Micro-charities, Zhao had received over 80,000 yuan in donations. He is still collecting donations to pay for the operation.

Competition and cooperation

After Li's post on Sina Weibo, a team of volunteers, randomly chosen from among 255 senior micro-bloggers who lived near Dongying, were sent to verify and publicize Zhao Zilong's situation. His sister said the team made phone calls to verify their identity and income situation, in cooperation with local media outlets.

The platform also helped Zhao's family get in touch with the China Youth Development Foundation, which supervised Zhao's case.

"We aim to bring together individuals in need with charitable individuals and organizations," a staff member of the Public Relation department of Sina responsible for Sina Micro-charities, told the Global Times.

She added that in order to ensure the credibility of the information, the platform only allows verified users to access charity programs.

The Alipay platform works differently. It simply offers a platform for the recipients and the charity organizations to call for help and provides a payment platform for donors.

Although Sina Micro-charities and Alipay are separate companies, they cooperate with one another. Other organizations, as opposed to just individuals, have begun to make arrangements with them as well.

"We switched to these charity platforms for fundraising from 2012, as it can help improve the transparency of the charity programs," Chen Mingcai, the president of Chongqing Small Animal Protection Association, told the Global Times, adding that after the changeover donations increased rapidly.

The development of charity platforms and charity groups rely heavily on public trust, Chen added.

Deng Guosheng, director of the NGO Research Center at Tsinghua University, echoed Chen's opinion, saying that public supervision is pushing charity groups to ensure transparency.