Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

With about 17 million followers on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, real estate tycoon Pan Shiyi has never ceased to be a frequent contributor to hot social topics.

Pan and his wife Zhang Xin stated on July 16 that on behalf of the SOHO China Foundation, they had signed a $15 million donation agreement with Harvard University. This sum, the equivalent of about 100 million yuan, has soon sparked a public debate especially on the Internet.

Pan soon explained that the scholarship was exclusively established for "underprivileged" Chinese students who study at Harvard. Zhang also stated that their foundation would set up such scholarships at other US universities to help others.

But a storm of queries and speculations continued to be dumped to the Pans, whose good intentions are suspected from a wide range of perspectives.

Yao Shujie, a professor of contemporary Chinese studies at the University of Nottingham, wrote a critical commentary on his blog, asking why Pan didn't use such money to help poor children with their education in China. He even suggested Pan's vast fortune is connected to what he calls the "original sin" of real estate, a reference to the industry's notorious corruption.

Many voices called into question the intent of the donation. Some said Pan was trying to gin up publicity for his company or buy a way for his son into Harvard.

Some others believed that given the resources needed to apply overseas in the first place, "impoverished" Chinese students at Harvard do not need this large sum of money as badly as the pupils who live in poverty-stricken areas in China.

But Pan doesn't lack supporters in the public debate. They defended Pan's action, arguing it is his right and freedom to decide where to donate his money. Some critics went a bit further, envisioning a scenario where if Pan's money was donated to Chinese schools and charity organizations, it would probably be embezzled.

This dust-up is familiar. In 2010, Zhang Lei, a Chinese fund manager who earned an MBA at Yale University, donated about $9 million to his alma mater. His action triggered a fiery debate among Chinese public over his national loyalties. Now the same controversy fell on Pan, who might have not expected the uproar his decision could cause.

Pan's case has revealed the split of public opinion on certain issues. In the age of "everyone can be a voice," so many different perspectives are waiting for them to choose if they want to express their own ideas.

There hardly can be a dominant force to confine online voices within a spectrum, and it is also impossible to reach a "consensus" on many issues any more. The Internet is full of various opinions and emotions, and it can no longer be defined from a specific dimension. The public discourse is rife with doubts, complaints and blame.

The Internet, for the first time in history, has managed to found a platform where people from all walks of life can perform. It evokes a boom of ideas, but breeds disorder in people's minds, even drawing near to the bottom line of morality and rule of law.

In Pan's case, many comments on the Internet, especially social media, are based on presumptions and even evil intentions, which have turned to be rumors and slanders. It has gradually evolved to be a pool where people vented their feelings about populism, cynicism, real estate profiteering, and the corruption of Chinese philanthropy.

Chinese society needs constructive confrontation, which is based on a variety of voices. But recklessness cannot be the driver of these voices, only responsibility and caution can.

The author is a Global Times reporter. liuzhun@globaltimes.com.cn