During the period, donations including 780 million yuan (about94 million US dollars) in cash, 199 million items of clothing and quilts and other articles worth 193 million yuan (about 23.3 million US dollars) have been collected from all walks of life.

According to Wang Zhenyao, a ministry official in charge of disaster and poverty relief, most beneficiaries are disaster victims, people living in poverty-stricken areas, laid-off workers from State-owned enterprises and other urban poor suffering from illness or lacking their children's schooling fees after receiving the government's basic living allowance.

Apart from the grain ration for disaster victims, the donated goods and funds have also been used on post-disaster reconstruction and storage for disaster-relief materials.

"Compared with the past few years," said Yang Yanyin, vice-minister of Civil Affairs, "a large share of this year's relief fund and goods come from charity networks across the country."

To uphold the country's reputation for solidarity and taking care of the vulnerable, and to make it easier for the well-to-do to give to the poor, China started setting up permanent donation stations in 1996.

To date, the country has more than 18,000 such stations, large and small, scattered across its land area of 9.6 million square kilometers.

In northeast China's Liaoning Province, the only pilot province for social security system reforms, some 93.8 percent of neighborhood committees have set up their own donation centers.

In some cities like Beijing and Shanghai, contribution boxes have been moved into state executive departments, large-scale enterprises, residential centers, supermarkets and shopping malls.

In Zhongnanhai, the compound of the Central Government, two separate donation stations have been established for officials either with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China or the State Council, China's Cabinet.

This year, contributions from these high-profile Chinese have been continuously taken to poverty and disaster stricken areas like Guizhou and Jiangxi provinces.

In Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, over 10,000 orphans, handicapped children, destitute laid-off workers and senior citizens, and 5,000 poverty-stricken households have received financial and material assistance with the help of both charities and neighborhood committees.

To let donors know where their contributions end up, the Ministry of Civil Affairs has mapped out a system which requires the tracking of relief funds and goods and a regular check on their distribution and use.

(Xinhua News Agency November 1, 2002)