Apple donates $1M to help China cope with flood

Apple is lending a hand to China while the country battles with its worst flood in years. The China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (CFPA), a Chinese non-governmental organization, said on Monday that it has received a 7 million yuan (approximately $1 million) donation from Apple.

Apple is the first U.S. company that has donated to CFPA in this year’s flood, said the organization on its website. The group says it will work closely with Apple to make sure the money is best applied.

“Our thoughts are with all those devastated by the flooding along the Yangtze River,” Apple’s CEO Tim Cook wrote on Weibo, the Chinese social networking site that is similar to Twitter.

South China has been besieged by heavy rain falls and floods since the end of June. By Friday, the disaster had affected 31 million people in more than 500 cities and towns, according to statistics from the nation’s Ministry of Civil Affairs. There have been 164 people killed and 26 missing, 73,000 collapsed buildings and nearly 2 million people have been moved to safer grounds. More than a million people are in need of emergency assistance says the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Apple’s humanitarian aid to its second-largest market in the world comes at a hard time for the company.

For the quarter ended March 26, the company reported a profit of $10.52 billion, down 22.5%. Revenues also suffered a slide of 12.8% with a total of $50.56 billion, marking the company’s first decline in quarterly revenue since 2003. In the Greater China region, the sales also plunged 26% compared to a year ago.

This is not Apple’s first donation to China after a natural disaster. The company, with a philanthropic tradition, has donated 50 million yuan (about $8 million) to victims in the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in China’s Sichuan region, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation.