More than 300,000 internet users have donated about 20 million yuan (US$2.3 million) to a struggling Beijing-based charity hospital which treats children with cleft lips.

The Beijing Smile Angel Children’s Hospital, in the Chinese capital’s Chaoyang District, is a comprehensive paediatric centre.

It focuses on providing treatment for children born with a cleft lip or palate.

Since it opened in May 2012, it has carried out 16,000 free operations on children with these congenital defects.

Many of those children came from poor families in northwestern and southwestern parts of China, according to one of its founders, Li Yapeng.