Racer Zhang Xue Reneges on a Public Charity Pledge, and a Lawyer Says China's Charity Law Says He Can't
Zhang Xue promised in May to auction his championship race car and give the proceeds to the Han Hong foundation. This week he redirected the money, and the internet is arguing about whether China's Charity Law lets him.
A Chinese racer has publicly backed out of his own charity pledge, and the internet is treating it as a test case for how much weight a promise made on camera carries.
The Han Hong Love Charity Foundation, founded by the singer Han Hong, is one of China's most visible charities, known for its monthly-giving program and for disaster relief — and the reneging landed just as the foundation published its own numbers.
Zhang Xue, a professional racing driver, announced in May that he would auction the No. 53 race car — the car driven by Derby — and give the proceeds to the Han Hong Love Charity Foundation, one of China's best-known charity organizations. On November 10, he posted a video announcing the auction will go ahead at a carnival event on November 22, but the money will now go to "helping young Chinese drivers grow" instead. His explanation: "后面发生了一些事情，其实我内心是有些质疑的" — some things happened afterward, and I have some doubts in my heart.
The backlash was immediate. A lawyer argued on Weibo that under Article 41 of China's Charity Law, a public donation pledge forms a de facto donation contract, and the charity can demand payment or sue. A public pledge is not a suggestion; in the lawyer's reading, "inner doubts" is not one of the legal grounds for withdrawing a public donation. The only statutory escape — a donor's economic situation deteriorating so severely that fulfilling the pledge would wreck his own life or business — clearly does not apply to a professional racer.
Zhang has not named what he doubts. The foundation's numbers, published last week, made the timing awkward: 433 million yuan in recurring monthly-giving donations from January to September, of which 160 million yuan has been spent. The trend is the interesting part: third-quarter monthly donations fell more than 40 percent from the first half of the year, a drop that arrived on the foundation's own disclosure.
The foundation has not yet responded to the reneging. The question is now open: whether the charity will exercise the right the law gives it, and whether a public promise made on camera in China carries the weight the law says it does. One motorsport commentator put the other side — that monitoring charity is legitimate, but tarring a foundation with vague innuendo is too casual — and the split between the two camps is exactly the argument the law was written for.