After dragging its feet for months, Wal-Mart has finally decided to make good on its promise to donate to the earthquake relief in Sichuan, China by actually donating something!  On October 26, Wal-Mart held a donation ceremony (pictured on the right) to donate 2,566,000RMB (about $375,000) worth of ambulances and medical supplies to 20 different organizations in several cities throughout Sichuan.  And never one to miss out on publicity, Wal-Mart has even tagged the ambulances with the Wal-Mart brand (pictured after the jump).

Since the 8.0 magnitude earthquake devastated Sichuan in May, Wal-Mart has been plagued by criticism for its relatively low donation to the earthquake relief and Wal-Mart’s failure to live up to said donations.  Wal-Mart China’s PR director, Jonathan Dong, has been working overtime defending the company’s image - even writing to Wal-Mart Watch, imploring us not to spread negative stories about Wal-Mart’s donation fiasco. Asked why Wal-Mart hadn’t fulfilled its donation pledge, Dong stated that spending money is difficult! Fortunately for Mr. Dong, it looks like this problem may finally be ending.

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You might recall several posts we did regarding Wal-Mart’s donations to China’s earthquake relief efforts.  Those posts all cited numerous articles which detailed not only Wal-Mart’s meager donation pledges, but also that Wal-Mart had largely failed to follow through on their donations.  Worse, another story surfaced about how Wal-Mart would potentially profit off the earthquake victims by building stores in the earthquake region.

All these posts were a bit too much for Wal-Mart China’s director of public relations Jonathan Dong.  He even wrote us a strongly worded letter to express his dismay.  Unfortunately for Jonathan Dong, this story just won’t end.

According to a recent article from Beibu Gulf ASEAN Economic Web, Wal-Mart STILL has not met its donation targets!  Luckily, Jonathan has prepared a response:  “Spending money is hard.”

Public relations director Jonathan Dong (董玉国) explained “contributing money is easy; spending money is difficult. On May 23, Wal-Mart decided to give away an additional 17 million .  The company immediately looked for projects to aid, looking at subsidizing schools, orphanages, etc.  But Wal-Mart found out that many [companies] were financing the same projects.” At present time, Wal-Mart is in the process of seeking suitable projects to support.

Imagine that.