‘It’s harder to donate money to Chinese charities than earn it,’ says Alibaba billionaire Jack Ma
Mainland philanthropist - criticised for not giving money to help victims of August's blasts in Tianjin - says entrepreneurs should make good investments and 'blind donations' do no good
Chinese billionaire Jack Ma Yun, chairman of e-commerce company Alibaba, believes donating money on the mainland is harder than earning it.
Charitable organisations have often been criticised for being inefficient and a lack of transparency in the way they are run.
The primary responsibility of entrepreneurs is making good investments to create jobs and wealth – blind donations will do no good
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“The primary responsibility of entrepreneurs is making good investments to create jobs and wealth – blind donations will do no good,” he told students at Peking University in Beijing on Tuesday.
Chinese business leaders and celebrities rallied to donate money in August to support the rescue efforts.
However, when it was pointed out online that Ma had not announced any intention to donate money, his Weibo account was flooded by tens of thousands of critical comments.
On Tuesday he told a ceremony marking the start of the university’s master’s degree programme on social enterprise management – the first of its kind on the mainland – that potential donors in China shared a common problem of deciding where they should donate their money.
READ MORE: Alibaba billionaire Jack Ma attacked online for not donating money to victims of Tianjin blast
He said many charities lacked adequate support from infrastructure, legal system and human resources – all things that needed time to develop.
“Chinese entrepreneurs have limited resources – the money should not be donated stupidly.
“Donations can be made only when these fundamentals [infrastructure, legal system and human resources] are all in place. That’s why I think giving donations to charities is more difficult than earning money,” he said.
There has been greater awareness about public welfare and interest in making charitable donations on the mainland – especially among the middle and upper classes – since the devastating earthquake in Sichuan in 2008, which killed more than 69,000 people, left more than 370,000 others injured and at least 4.8 million people homeless.
The management of [mainland] charities lack credibility, which has deterred many people from giving support
However, Shen said China’s charities had often been criticised for their inefficiency and lack of transparency – largely because there were not enough professional managers to run the organisations.
“There is not a good level of management at these charities, so they lack credibility, which has deterred many caring people from giving support, even though they want to donate, because they don’t know to whom they should be giving their money.” Shen said.
“We need someone to build a system on the mainland so that people can feel confident about taking part and donating.”
Both Shen and Ma, who come from China’s eastern province of Zhejiang, have been active philanthropists on the mainland.
Shen, who is ranked as the 63rd richest mainlander, according to the World’s Billionaires list compiled by Forbes magazine, co-founded Ai You Foundation in 2004, the mainland’s first officially registered private foundation, to provide medical aid to impoverished children.
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Ma, together with Joe Tsai, Alibaba’s vice-chairman and co-founder, set up a charitable trust last year before his company went public in New York. The trust, which was valued at roughly US$3 billion, focuses mainly on environmental protection, health care, education and culture.
Ma said on Tuesday that his trust’s first project had been to sponsor 100 teachers every year in rural China – 10,000 yuan each – to support their efforts providing rural education in the country.
Ma said his recent US$23 million purchase for a 11,371-hectare conservation area in New York state – including rolling hills and forests, lakes, a 14km-stretch of river and trout streams – would help him to gain experience about overcoming environmental threats in China.
The land, called Brandon Park, was once owned by the US Rockefeller industrial and banking family.
It is now part of Adirondack Park, which was created in 1982 to protect water and timber resources in the region.
“I bought that land with the hope of learning what [people in the US have done [to conserve their environment],” Ma said.
