A commentary website announced on Sunday it stands ready to defend itself for questioning the handling of donations by movie star Jet Li and his charity.

M4.cn, formerly the anti-CNN website set up in 2008, aims to help Chinese youth establish values of "patriotism, unity and rationalism."

The official Sina Weibo account of m4.cn made the announcement through an open letter on Sunday night, three days after Li and One Foundation sent legal letters to the Beijing-based website demanding an apology and deletion of related posts.

"We are only raising questions based on figures disclosed by professional agencies," the open letter said.

The questioning might "lack propriety," but it was only seeking truth based on facts, the website argued.

The website's attorney Wu Danhong told the Global Times on Monday that m4.cn won't comply with Li or the One Foundation and was ready to face a defamation lawsuit for "simply exercising its supervision rights."

The April 22 post "So angry, did Jet Li embezzle 300 million yuan ($48 million) of donations for victims of the 2013 Ya'an earthquake?" alleged that One Foundation had received nearly 400 million yuan in donations for the earthquake, but spent 40 million yuan, or 9 percent.

Regulations require a charity spend no less than 70 percent of its total revenue from the previous year, Wu said.

The funds would be allocated after the tendering and bidding process for several projects was completed, explained One Foundation Secretary-General Yang Peng on Wednesday.

"The post showed no evidence of embezzlement by Jet Li except figures for donations and expenditure by charity foundations on the earthquake," read the attorney's letter.

By naming Li in the headline the website had damaged his reputation, the letter said.

Li responded in an apparently humorous way on Wednesday with a microblog post suggesting that while he obviously wanted to pocket the cash, he lacked the required seal of authority to obtain the funds.

Xia Jun, the attorney representing the charity founded by Li in April 2007, told the Global Times on Monday that he hadn't received any response from the website after sending them the letter.

Xia said that he was not authorized to remark on further moves.

One Foundation could not be reached for comment as of press time.

The dispute has focused official media and public attention on the transparency and trustworthiness of private versus State fundraising charities.

During the 2013 Ya'an earthquake, official charities suffered a crisis in credibility left over from the 2011 Guo Meimei Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) scandal, with the public increasingly preferring to trust non-governmental organizations.

The RCSC said it has spent 994 million of 1.2 billion yuan in donations in the year since the April 20 earthquake.