New generation of Chinese tycoons putting good causes before money
We begin a fortnightly series profiling the mainland's economic elite by looking at the China Entrepreneur Club, where their voices can be heard
Jack Ma Yun is about to make history. If Alibaba beats the US$20 billion prediction that analysts have laid out, it will become the biggest initial public offering ever seen. Yet Ma is in a group of Chinese businessmen whose success is no longer measured purely in monetary terms.
Besides trailblazing e-commerce IPOs, Ma also chairs the Nature Conservancy, an environmental non-profit group, and Alibaba's own philanthropic trust, which represents 2 per cent of the company's equity.
He is also a member of one of the richest non-profit organisations on the mainland - the China Entrepreneur Club (CEC). Its 45 members have a combined annual income exceeding two trillion yuan (HK$2.52 trillion), or roughly 4 per cent of the mainland's gross domestic product.
"The creation of wealth and social responsibility cannot be separated," said Maggie Cheng, secretary general of the CEC. "If this group of entrepreneurs were simply aiming for financial gain, they could have quit a long time ago. The reason they are still on this path no longer has much to do with monetary success."
Monetary success is indeed not a concern for the star-studded collection of CEC entrepreneurs. Its members include Chinese business heavyweights, such as Lenovo founder Liu Chuanzhi, and the man responsible for Weibo, Charles Chao.