China Red Cross Blames Irregularities on Accounting Slips

The Red Cross Society of China, which has come in for heavy criticism in the country after a government audit alleged it misused funds, said accounting errors were to blame for the irregularities, Bloomberg writes.

The June 27 report by the National Audit Office said the charity had spent $650,000 more on medical training dummies than authorized in its budget.

In a statement the following day, the Red Cross attributed the 34 percent overrun to accounting mistakes. The charity’s finance director told Bloomberg it is adopting an online tracking system so donors can see how it is using their money.

Chinese charities, which are largely government-run, are not required to disclose financial information, which fuels public distrust of their operations, said Deng Guosheng, head of the NGO Research Center at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.