China’s Tencent may double its charity contribution to 2pc of annual profit

Tencent chief executive Pony Ma Huateng said on Friday said that the company may double its contribution towards the Tencent Foundation, the company’s charity organisation, to 2 per cent of its annual profit each year.

China’s internet giant Tencent, which also runs one of the country’s most popular mobile messaging apps WeChat, last year reported a net profit of about 28.8 billion yuan. This means that Tencent had set aside at least 288 million for its charitable efforts, and the figure may double in the near future.

The Tencent Foundation, which was first established in 2007, operates one of the largest public donation platforms in China. Over 1.1 billion yuan in donations from 76 million donations were made through Tencent Foundation’s platforms as of the end of August, according to the company.

“Our platform’s aim is to match thousands of charitable organisations with millions of users. Lots of our users want to donate, but their biggest dilemma is that they don’t know which organisation to donate to. So this platform is able to help solve this problem. Users can choose which causes they want to donate to,” Ma said.

He added that such a platform means that users can make recurring donations, instead of a one-off contribution.

“The amount of charitable donations in China has grown from 10 billion yuan in 2006 to over 100 billion yuan last year – it has grown very quickly,” said Ma.