1. Breaking News and Background: Trust Comes from Transparency
After yesterday’s program aired, I made phone calls to several heads of public welfare organizations in China. They told me a lot about the industry situation they knew. One of them, who has a very close relationship with the Red Cross Society, said that the Smile Angel Foundation has basically been a series of transfers in recent years. Oh, it’s hard to say.
Then someone else gave me some details about the Angel Children’s Hospital. What I heard was quite shocking, and I was half-believing. Of course, when we make a program, we need to speak with evidence. Although they gave me the news, if I can’t verify it, I won’t directly talk about it in the program. But in the past two days, I have collected a lot of data, and based on the analysis of these data, I have more questions about Li Yapeng’s Smile Angel Children’s Foundation, including the operation of this children’s hospital.
What are these data mainly? Let me introduce them to you: One is that I have obtained the audit reports of the Smile Angel Foundation over the years; another is that I have also obtained the list of surgeries for children they have funded over the years; another is the donation data of the children’s hospital over the years, including the use of the donation data. Of course, these data are all public. You can go to the website of the Red Cross Society, as well as the website of the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital, to download and query them.
2. Latest Developments: 20 Million Donations and Li Yapeng’s Live Broadcast
Before analyzing these data, let’s talk about the latest developments in this news in the past two days.
First of all, the first development is that Li Yapeng said that everyone should not donate money to the Smile Angel Foundation and closed it. Why? Too much has been donated in the past two days, more than 20 million yuan, and this foundation may not be able to handle it now, so it is temporarily closed. Didn’t Li Yapeng say that? Because the Smile Angel Hospital is not qualified to publicly raise funds, so we cannot publicly disclose the fundraising path or channel of the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital on the Internet. If you really want to contribute to the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital, you can only contact the children’s hospital yourself.
In fact, it is not the foundation that is in trouble now, but the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital that owes rent, owing more than 20 million yuan. So many people understood, so they rushed to the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital to donate money. I saw someone on the spot took an envelope with tens of thousands of yuan and gave it directly to the president: “President, President, thank you for 50,000 yuan in cash, and then transfer 100,000 yuan.” Oh, for this thank you directly, and also expressed that they will continue to fund the surgeries of these children.
I saw the data, and the number of donations to this children’s hospital has also been soaring these days. The highest in the data is all 1 million, and I have seen several cases of 1 million, saying that the total has exceeded 10 million. So the financial crisis of the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital should be said to have been greatly alleviated. The Chinese people’s support for charity is always very touching.
Another thing is that Li Yapeng has been doing live broadcasts these two days, selling goods. During the process of selling goods, someone gave him a reward, and the reward said: “Support you to do a good job in this children’s hospital.” The other day when I was live, I promised that all the gifts given to me in the live broadcast room would be donated to the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital on behalf of everyone. Now I will report this work to you: I have done two content broadcasts, two live broadcasts to sell goods, and four statistics. The platform’s share of the money I received is 291,083.35 yuan. Because this part still has to pay personal income tax, the tax part will be borne by Li Yapeng himself, and I will donate all the money I withdraw to the children’s hospital.
3. Call for Financial Transparency: Hematopoiesis or Blood Loss?
I think Li Yapeng’s behavior is still quite good. You think people are transparent. But, in fact, I am calling here, Li Yapeng should announce all the financial reports of the children’s hospital from its establishment in 2012 to 2025. Because this children’s hospital is a non-enterprise run by the people, it should be supervised by the public, and the most important thing for supervision is the supervision of financial data.
According to the laws of our country, for these non-enterprises run by the people, you must submit your annual financial statements and audit reports to the local civil affairs department, but there is no requirement to disclose them to the public. The audit report I see now is only the conclusion of the audit report, but the financial statements before the audit report are not available. But in fact, it should be disclosed.
Didn’t Li Yapeng always say that he is devoted to charity, and this hospital itself is taken from the people and used for the people? Then, in principle, the financial statement data of your hospital should be disclosed to the public, which is only good and not bad. Why am I interested in the data of these financial statements?
First of all, I want to know, for example, how much does the president earn, and what is the salary? Secondly, what is the salary of your doctors? Because his doctors are divided into two categories: one is those from big hospitals in Beijing who fly knives and have multiple jobs; and the other is some of their own full-time doctors. Also, for example, he now has 13 departments in this hospital, among which the cleft lip and palate center is related to charity and public welfare, and the other 12, such as internal medicine, dentistry, dermatology, etc., how much is the income of these departments? How much does the cleft lip and palate center earn in a year?
Didn’t Li Yapeng repeatedly say that it is his own hospital, and you have to use the hematopoietic function to better do charity? Then the hematopoietic function, you mainly have these 12 departments, right? How much do these 12 departments actually earn in a year? Have they supplemented and created blood for the cleft lip and palate center? If these 12 departments cannot maintain themselves, if they cannot support themselves, then you not only have no blood creation but also blood loss, right? Become a leukemia patient. Then you can actually run a clinic with this hospital, you don’t necessarily have to run a hospital. So I especially want to see his financial analysis report.
But now, because I don’t have this data, I have no way to analyze it. So I especially hope that Li Yapeng can release this data. For charity, trust comes from transparency, and the more transparent you are, the more the public will trust you.
4. The Mystery of Sequence Treatment: What is the Value of a Specialized Hospital?
Although we haven’t seen the data of the children’s hospital, I have seen some other data.
First of all, Li Yapeng, when talking about why he built this Smile Angel Children’s Hospital, he repeatedly said that their hospital actually performs what is called sequence treatment. What does that mean? Don’t look at this cleft lip and palate, it includes our maxillofacial surgery, orthodontics, and otolaryngology, and pediatrics, and speech correction, including psychological counseling. It is a multi-departmental cooperation. Because psychological counseling is extremely important for this disease. You know that many children with cleft lip and palate are directly abandoned, that is, their parents directly abandon them, so psychological counseling is also very important.
In short, cleft lip and palate involves the cooperation of multiple departments. This cannot be achieved in our domestic medical system. Today, if you go to any hospital, you can only go to maxillofacial surgery. Unless you have acquaintances in the hospital, you can have all the experts from maxillofacial surgery, dentistry, and all departments consult for your child. Of course, this is not realistic for most people, it is impossible. You can do cleft lip and palate surgery in a dental hospital, a Xiehe Hospital, or a children’s hospital, but you cannot do sequence treatment. My hospital is a specialized hospital, and I can do sequence treatment. From the age of one to 19, I can keep doing surgeries for him, not only doing surgeries, but also doing psychological intervention, and also doing speech correction. Right, that’s very good, very advanced, this concept.
So after I read this theory, I looked at these specific data, and I had some questions.
5. Data Doubts: Abnormal Decline in Surgery Ratio
What are these data? First of all, I found the surgical practice locations and surgical locations of all the children funded by the Smile Angel Foundation from 2012 to 2021.
Let me tell you again: The Smile Angel Children’s Hospital was established in Beijing on July 1, 2012. After its establishment, the Smile Angel Foundation funded a total of 564 surgeries this year. Before the establishment of the children’s hospital, all these 564 surgeries were performed by Yimeier. At that time, it was questioned by many media, saying that Yimeier was a cosmetic surgery hospital, and its reputation in the market was not very good. Why do you have surgery in this hospital?
So after July 1, a large number of surgeries began to be transferred to Beijing Smile Angel Hospital, with a total of 349 cases, accounting for 61.9%. This gives people the feeling that it reflects Li Yapeng’s concept, that this specialized hospital is advanced, that is, sequence treatment.
- 2013: The number of surgeries performed by Beijing Smile Angel Hospital was 653, and the total number of surgeries funded by the Smile Angel Foundation for the whole year was 1141, accounting for 57.2%. The proportion is also relatively high, that is, more than half of the children are operated on in this hospital.
- 2017: In the following years, the number of surgeries decreased. Of course, the number of surgeries they funded also decreased. In 2017, the Smile Angel Foundation funded only 373 surgeries, and 249 surgeries were performed at Beijing Smile Angel Hospital, accounting for 66.8%. Although the total number decreased, the proportion did not decrease.
- Changes occurred after 2018: In 2018, the Smile Angel Foundation funded 334 surgeries, and the number of surgeries at Beijing Smile Angel Hospital was only 96, and the proportion suddenly dropped to 28.7%.
- 2020: The number of surgeries funded by the Smile Angel Foundation was 458, and the number of surgeries performed at Beijing Smile Angel Hospital was only 72, and this proportion had already dropped to 15.7%.
- 2021: The number of surgeries for children funded by the Smile Angel Foundation was 391, and the number of surgeries performed at Beijing Smile Angel Hospital was only 56, accounting for only 14.3% (Note: estimated proportion).
After I finished reading this data, I had doubts. Why the doubts? If the Beijing Smile Angel Hospital is doing sequence surgery, according to Li Yapeng’s advanced concept, you can’t do it in other places. Then why after 2018, the proportion of surgeries for children funded by the Smile Angel Foundation performed at Beijing Smile Angel Hospital will drop significantly? It dropped by half, or even twice? From the original 50% to 60%, it suddenly dropped to 20%, or even 15% in 2020 and 2021.
2021 and 2020 may be explained, because it is not easy to get to Beijing due to the epidemic. But there was no epidemic in 2018 and 2019, and it also dropped by 20%. At the same time, surgeries in other places began to grow rapidly. Why? You can’t do surgeries in other places, and those hospitals can’t do this sequence surgery, so why do you do this? This is one of my major questions.
6. The “Angel Journey” and the Questioning of Cost-Effectiveness
At the same time, I also want to see where the Smile Angel Foundation has focused its surgeries in recent years. It is no longer done in the Beijing Smile Angel Hospital. I found that from 2019 and 2020, they began to carry out an action called “Angel Journey” in various parts of the country, including some summer camp activities.
This “Angel Journey” is actually the Smile Angel Foundation, which finds some experts from Beijing and Shanghai to go to various parts of the country to perform surgeries for patients. For example: Tibet trip, Xinjiang trip, Inner Mongolia trip, Qinghai trip, Guizhou trip, Henan trip. Some are combined with local experts, and some are with these experts from Beijing. This proportion is very high. You can search online, search for the “Angel Journey” of the Smile Angel Foundation.
This action should be said to have largely replaced the past way of sending children to Beijing Smile Angel Hospital. Then I was a little strange: I checked in Anhui, and there were more than a dozen people who went there, and only… You think about it, that proportion, in my opinion, is very uneconomical. So many experts went there, and then in Anhui, there was another time when 53 cases were done, and more than a dozen medical staff went there. Then, the travel expenses of the experts, and then your various accommodations and meals, the cost is high. Then this approach itself makes its cost-effectiveness greatly reduced.
I will give you a statistic here: For example, the Smile Angel Foundation, how much did it spend in 2020? That is, the public welfare project, the procurement project spent 750,000 yuan, accounting for the proportion of its entire expenditure is 22%. This is in 2020, that is, sending experts out to do the “Angel Journey” in that place.
- 2021: Spent 1.56 million yuan, and this proportion went up, and this proportion spent 33.41% (in the entire public welfare expenditure).
- 2022: Spent 1.12 million yuan, accounting for 32.64%.
- 2023: Spent 1.68 million yuan, accounting for 32.15%.
- 2024: Spent 4.22 million yuan, accounting for 47%.
This is very exaggerated. What does that mean? In this year, 2024, the cost of surgery subsidies for children was only more than 5 million yuan, but the travel expenses, that is to say, the travel expenses for the “Angel Journey” cost 4.22 million yuan. If you add some project management funds and so on, then your total proportion will exceed 50%.
That makes the cost of subsidizing children, in fact, the real cost is the cost of the funds for the surgery subsidy multiplied by 2, which is its real cost. The real cost multiplied by 2 is all more than 10,000 yuan. That 10,000 yuan is quite expensive. You should know that he is actually going to do surgery below now, and in some places, the surgery for children with cleft lip and palate is included in the medical insurance. The surgery expenses he subsidizes are all paid after the medical insurance reimbursement. In other words, the Smile Angel Foundation needs to pay for the surgery expenses of the children, and in fact, these expenses have decreased in some places in recent years. But you calculate its entire subsidy expenses, which actually amount to more than 10,000 yuan each time. What is the reason?
In Beijing, you say that your Smile Angel Children’s Hospital is sequence surgery, which is very advanced. Then why are you now cooperating with the hospitals in Tibet and Urumqi to do surgery there? Why don’t you let those children go to the Angel Children’s Hospital in Beijing for surgery? In fact, there are three kinds of surgery methods for this kind of surgery: one is to send an expert group to the local area to perform surgery; the second is to find a cooperative hospital in the local area and let the local doctors perform the surgery; the third is to invite the children to Beijing for surgery.
Here, in fact, the first kind of surgery method is the most uneconomical. I introduced the “Smile Train” project in the program yesterday. Do you remember? The American foundation did it in China. They also sent expert groups to go down to perform surgery for children in the early days, but later they found that this method was uneconomical, and these expert groups left after they finished, and the children’s medical records could not be tracked for a long time. So they later selected more than 300 hospitals across the country to cooperate with them, and performed surgery directly with the children locally.
Since Li Yapeng thinks that the sequence treatment of the Beijing Smile Angel Children’s Hospital is so advanced, why has the proportion of surgeries for children he subsidizes performed at the Beijing Smile Angel Children’s Hospital decreased year by year in these years?
7. The Effectiveness of Sequence Treatment and Onlineization
In addition, this so-called sequence surgery is that a child has repeated surgeries in one hospital. I also made statistics. In the surgeries performed at the Beijing Smile Angel Children’s Hospital, we have counted the children who have had more than four surgeries. Basically, the proportion seems to be a dozen or twenty cases, which is not particularly high. We have counted the same names, about 59%, that is, about 60% of the children have had multiple surgeries here.
But I found that the surgeries performed in these hospitals in other places also have 40% of the cases. That is to say, these children have also undergone multiple surgeries. That gives people the feeling that the gap between 60% is not particularly obvious. Is it possible that the hospitals in other places can also complete this sequence surgery?
And I also noticed a piece of information: in the sequence surgery he mentioned, isn’t there both the so-called correction and speech correction? And psychological comfort? Then how does he reflect this sequence surgery when he goes to other places to do the “Angel Journey”? I saw in one of his projects that they developed a way to allow experts to communicate with the children online for a long time, and then they can also do speech correction, etc. Does that mean that this so-called sequence treatment can also be achieved without a specialized hospital, and only through the Internet? If this reason is valid, then what is the value of the existence of the children’s hospital?
8. Data Doesn’t Match: The Disappearance of 7 Million and the Donation Black Hole
The second major question is the children’s hospital itself. This children’s hospital, as I said just now, they have not announced their own financial reports over the years. But they announced on their website: the amount of donations they have received over the years, and the use of expenditures. I compared it with the audit report of Smile Angel and found some problems.
- Data discrepancy in 2012: In 2012, the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital announced that it received 34.37 million yuan in donations from the China Red Cross Foundation. I went to check the figures of the Red Cross Foundation. The China Red Cross Foundation did write in its major project announcement that it allocated funds to the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital. How much money is this? It is 41.73 million yuan. But what is more interesting is that the figures in the middle have a discrepancy. The figure announced by the Red Cross Foundation is 41.73 million yuan, while the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital said that I only received 34.37 million yuan from the China Red Cross Foundation. More than 7 million yuan is missing in the middle. Where did this 7 million yuan go? Someone told me that it seemed to have been allocated to Yimeier. In order to build this children’s hospital, from 2010 to 2011, 9 million yuan and 7 million yuan were allocated from the China Red Cross Foundation, but this money was all allocated to Yimeier Hospital. At that time, someone questioned why you allocated 16 million yuan to Yimeier to build this hospital? And we haven’t seen the final report for this money now. Then someone said that in fact, in 2012, Yimeier also took away more than 7 million yuan. We don’t know, but we think that someone needs to explain: why did the China Red Cross Foundation allocate 41.73 million yuan to this children’s hospital, while the children’s hospital said that I only received 34.37 million yuan? Where did the more than 7 million yuan go? I think Li Yapeng should explain it.
- Donation doubts in 2013: The children’s hospital said in 2013 that it received 2.6 million yuan from the Red Cross Foundation. But I checked, and the Smile Angel Foundation said that we gave 2 million yuan to this children’s hospital, but we can’t see this 2 million yuan on the website of the children’s hospital, and it is not reflected that the Smile Angel Hospital received it.
- Regular data misalignment: The Smile Angel Foundation subsidizes the surgeries of children in the children’s hospital every year, with five or six hundred, six or seven hundred, and a few hundred or dozens of cases. But on the website of the children’s hospital, we often can’t see the donations from the Smile Angel Foundation. For example, in 2019. In this year, in all the donation items of this Angel Children’s Hospital, there are donations from the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation and the China Siyuan Project Poverty Alleviation Foundation. A total of 3.42 million yuan was received this year, but there was no Smile Angel Foundation. But in this year, how many surgeries did the Smile Angel Foundation perform in this children’s hospital? It seems to be 150 cases. This is strange. You think, the Smile Angel Foundation itself announced that the number of children is all done in your hospital, and this is also subsidized by him, but in the table of the children’s hospital that accepts donations, there is no money from the Smile Angel Foundation.
I have finished reading the data statements of the Smile Angel Foundation and the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital, and they don’t match. I don’t know what went wrong in the middle. But I think that the fact that they don’t match at all may indeed be a problem, but this problem needs to be explained by the children’s hospital and the Smile Angel Foundation. If you don’t explain these problems clearly, it will give people the feeling that the use of these donations is particularly casual.
9. Financial Settlement: 140 Million Charitable Cost-Effectiveness
Finally, I also want to say that this Angel Children’s Hospital has been established since 2012, and it has donations every year. The number of donations is quite high. From 2013 to the middle, it has received about 140 million yuan in donations.
140 million! In the middle of this 140 million yuan in donations, of course, there is a four-story building rented, and the decoration cost 27.6 million yuan. 140 million! You think, in these 13 years, your hospital itself has income, and we don’t count your income. 140 million, even if it is according to Li Yapeng’s announcement, there are 7,000 free surgeries in these 13 years, then the average cost per child is also 20,000 yuan. This 20,000 yuan is also far higher than the standards of other public welfare organizations for subsidizing cleft lip and palate. This is the actual charitable cost-effectiveness of the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital.
I think it’s terrible if you calculate it carefully. So now everyone is still donating money to him to get rent, I think this is really irrational. If the rent is increasing, then the surgery cost of a child may be marked up to 30,000 yuan. If there is no such hospital, these 140 million yuan can directly subsidize the surgeries of at least 14,000 children. But now, only 7,000 cases are done in this hospital, so I say that charity itself needs to be calculated, that is the truth.
10. Huge Sum of Money in the Account: Why Can’t It Be Spent?
Another piece of data to share with you: In these years, the Smile Angel Foundation actually has a lot of money in its account. What is the final balance in 2024? It is 17 million yuan. 17 million yuan is lying in this account, and the actual expenditure this year is only a few million.
What does this mean? This means that the Smile Angel Foundation, in recent years, is not actually short of money. It is the promotion of public welfare projects itself that cannot spend these money. As for why these money cannot be spent, I don’t quite understand. Is it because there are fewer children who need surgery at the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital, and they can’t spend it, so they have to go to Xinjiang and Tibet for surgery? Can’t they spend it there? I don’t know.
Of course, I have heard a saying that the Smile Angel Children’s Hospital and the Smile Angel Foundation have been in a very tense relationship in these years, and it is not good. As for the reason why it is not good, I will not explain it to you here. But some people are strange: Li Yapeng is in charge of the Smile Angel Foundation, and isn’t the chairman of the board of directors of this children’s hospital also Li Yapeng? But in fact, the daily operation of this hospital is the responsibility of the president. In short, these two institutions are now in trouble.
But no matter what, the money in the account of the Smile Angel Foundation is sufficient, more than enough. Because of this, I estimate that the donations have been stopped now. Otherwise, if you donate 40 or 50 million, you can’t spend it, don’t you worry? As for why it can’t be spent? I have said several possibilities: one possibility is that there are fewer children who need to be subsidized now, right, because the income level of families has improved now, and some families can donate by themselves, and your subsidy standards are not met? It also includes the fact that the number of children born in these years has also decreased. In addition, the working ability of the foundation itself has deteriorated, and he can’t subsidize the money even if he is given the money, and he can’t find the children who need to be donated.
11. Conclusion: Polish Your Eyes and Rational Charity
So, I personally think that in the face of Li Yapeng’s selling of misery in front of the public this time (he may indeed be miserable, the hospital, the 26 million rent has been forcibly executed by the court to move out), everyone should polish their eyes and carefully examine the financial operation of this public welfare foundation, including the hospital itself, and its charitable operation ability.
Before these information is clarified, I advise you to be cautious when donating, this is a responsible attitude. Okay, I’ll stop here, thank you all.
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