File photo: China Daily

Two men, one an employee of Shuidichou and one of Qingsongchou, two online charity fund raising platforms, were shown in a video clip tussling in a hospital in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, on Wednesday.

Reportedly the two men were both trying to lobby a patient to choose their respective company to seek donations from the public and their competition escalated into a fight. The two companies have confirmed the incident involved their employees, yet both pointed a finger at the other for unfair competition.

Although the police investigation has yet to be completed, the fight between the two representatives has revealed the extent to which online charity has become a business, and being poorly regulated is anything but a means to help people in need.

This is only the latest case in a series of unsavory incidents reported in recent years with the rise of the lucrative business model in which the companies select and package patients as leading characters in a heart-wrenching stories that will be made into a sensation through tailor-made public relations endeavors on social media.

People make a donation in most cases without bothering to read the terms and conditions, and donors remain in the dark about how their donations are used. Although the individual donations are generally small, the total amount that the companies can raise with a heartrending "story" can reach millions of yuan within hours thanks to wide internet accessibility in the populous country.

Worse, the "ideal" patients, as a number of past controversial cases has shown, are those from impoverished families in backward remote rural areas who are seriously ill. Since they tend to pass away before their donations are exhausted on their medical treatment, the company involved, protected by their lopsided rules, can pocket the leftover.

To put an end to this misuse of public's largesse, the departments overseeing charity affairs, public health, business and the internet are obliged to join hands to prevent the flawed profiteering model from exploiting both patients and donors, and take concrete actions to play up the advantages of online charity by strengthening regulation over the industry.