No place for farce in charity

By Raymond Zhou (China Daily) Updated: 2014-07-19 08:53

Those who endorsed Mo said he did nothing wrong. They pointed out he did not steal, rob or cheat. All he wanted was to borrow money from a rich businesswoman and he promised to return it by working for her all his life. They insisted he didn't cross any legal or ethical line.

Mo's choice of seeking help was gimmicky, to say the least, but if you take his perspective, he didn't have many choices.

His family is not well-off and he had used up his parents' money for treatment.

Actually, his mother died shortly after he was born and his father lost his sanity. He was brought up by adoptive parents who are unable to support him financially through this difficult time.

His school had organized a variety of fundraisers, collecting an impressive 60,000 yuan - but that was hardly sufficient.

He had even resorted to laying on a public lawn to "scorch to death all the cancerous cells in my body". That attracted some local press, but less than 10,000 yuan more trickled in.

"I just want to survive," Mo says.

But the majority of feedback, as evidenced online, was critical.

Many suggested Mo's efforts amounted to little more than "moral blackmail".

Others viewed Mo's targeting of a business leader as cheap and contemptible.

It was the metaphorical cornering of a rich person to demand money for survival, they said, with the only difference being he felt he was on the moral high ground simply because he was a victim of poverty. Give him nothing, they added.

New Hope and its chairwoman never issued a statement, maybe thinking it would not be wise for them to give Mo money even if they wanted to, at least not publicly.

Maybe they thought it would be seen as caving in to blackmail, and soon legions of money seekers, with or without legitimate reasons, would be surrounding their offices.

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