Bill Gates has urged China’s extraordinarily wealthy business elite to shed its aversion to philanthropy and donate to the poor, a potent message in one of the world’s most economically divided societies.
“Only when we help poor people break away from destitution and illness can the whole world achieve sustainable development,” Gates wrote in the People’s Daily, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “Investing in poor people requires the involvement of every social strata. I believe that the returns from investing in poor people are just as great as [returns] from investing in the business world, and have even more meaning.”
China had 358 billionaires at the end of last year — a rise of 41 over the previous year and the second-most of any country in the world, after the US. Yet in terms of charitable giving, it ranks among the world’s worst.
According to the World Giving Index 2013, an annual survey by the NGO Charities Aid Foundation, China ranked 115 among 135 countries for donating money and last for volunteering.
Income inequality counts among the country’s most pressing social ills. According to a 2012 survey by Peking University, families in China’s cities and coastal provinces earn significantly more than their rural and inland counterparts.
While handfuls of individuals have profited enormously from China’s economic boom, few have shown willing to share their wealth. In 2010, Gates, who runs the US$38 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the US business magnate Warren Buffett asked 50 of China’s richest people to join a charity dinner in Beijing. Many turned down the invitation, reportedly because they were uncomfortable being asked for donations.
Yet the country’s philanthropic record is slowly improving.
On Friday last week, Jack Ma (馬雲) and Joe Tsai (蔡崇信), cofounders of Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce company, announced plans to fund a US$3 billion foundation. The amount represents about 2 percent of the company’s equity, all of it from the founders’ shares.
According to state media, the foundation will focus on environment, education and healthcare. Other details, such as its name and how the money will be distributed, remain unclear.
Ma, China’s eighth-richest man, stepped down as Alibaba’s chief executive last year and has since dedicated much of his time to charity efforts. He sits on the Nature Conservancy’s board of directors and helps lead kung fu star Jet Li’s (李連杰) One Foundation.
“When you register a new foundation in China you need a supervisory agency, so a lot of people have worried that by registering a private foundation they’d be giving up control over their personal wealth,” said Anthony Spires, a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who researches China’s civil society.
“Many of these folks are used to being in charge — they have very clear issues that concern them — and they don’t want the government to tell them how to spend their money,” he said.
Spires called the size of the promised foundation “staggering.”
“This will be the largest foundation in China, if they really do it,” he said. “It’s on par with Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy.”
Alibaba is preparing an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange. Analysts expect it to be valued at more than US$100 billion.
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS