For weeks, an army has striven mightily to fend off the floodwaters of an angry Yangtze River. Thousands of soldiers from the People's Liberation Army--joined at the dikes by countless villagers--have filled sandbags, evacuated homes, retrieved the dead. At one point, when the rising waters raced toward the central Chinese city of Wuhan, some nearby hamlets even volunteered to have their lands buried under the current if the sacrifice would save the larger town.

Charity is clearly not a foreign concept to China, but charitable organizations are. After decades of communist rule, Chinese are used to letting the government take care of disaster relief, as well as social needs generally. But now home-grown charities are trying to tackle China's considerable social problems. Recently Chinese TV viewers were treated to a first--a telethon, cosponsored by the Chinese Charity Foundation (CCF) and the China Red Cross Society, to raise funds for this year's flood victims. The three and a half-hour broadcast brought in an astounding $72 million in donations from individuals and large institutions like the PLA, and that's only the tip of the iceberg. Founded in 1994, the CCF now has 72 branches that undertake everything from building water tanks in arid Gansu province to arranging corrective surgery for children with harelips and cleft palates. "Disasters come one after another, and China is so big," laments Yan Mingfu, CCF's founder. "There are too many things that need to be done."

This year in particular has provided much work for Yan's organization. Flood damage has been estimated at $24 billion, and that figure is likely to rise. Already 14 million people have been displaced, and many will join the 65 million Chinese who already live below the poverty line (which Beijing sets at a yearly income of $72). According to a 1997 United Nations report, a shocking 97% of rural folk lack access to adequate sanitation; nearly a third do not have enough drinking water. Only about 15 million peasants have been raised out of those dire circumstances in the past three years. Yet Beijing, which has pledged to eliminate absolute poverty by 2000, is spending only about $3.8 billion this year on poverty relief.

Yan, 67, saw the result of that contradiction first-hand when he served in the Ministry of Civil Affairs in the early 1990s. "There was no water, no food and no schools for kids in mountainous areas of Guizhou," he recalls of a trip to China's most threadbare province. To build more schools, orphanages and hospitals, officials had to beg for funding from the tight-fisted Ministry of Finance. Yan chose a different tactic, taking $1.6 million in donations and building up the CCF as an extra-governmental force. Staffed mostly by volunteers--including several other retired bureaucrats--the organization now survives on donations that total just over $4.8 million a year. Most of that comes from state companies and wealthy overseas Chinese. Even foreign multinationals have contributed: Exxon donated more than $250,000 to a CCF project funding surgery for children.

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