China
Philanthropists in China: Maneuvering Within the Party-State Framework
Chinese philanthropy has gained significant scale, experience and sophistication in recent decades, drawing comparisons to the philanthropists of the Gilded Age in the United States. Yet Carnegie and Rockefeller built institutions largely beyond the state’s reach. China’s largest donors today work in a landscape built and increasingly guided by the party-state.
Enacted in 2016, China’s first Charity Law shaped elite giving by channelling it, prioritising control over growth and resulting in more regulation and less autonomy for charitable organisations. The law reserved public fundraising for accredited organisations, a privilege increasingly concentrated among state-linked bodies. Amendments in 2023 legally mandated Party leadership and required governments at the county level and above to ‘guide and supervise’ charities.
This greater institutionalisation of charitable activities reflects the current government’s emphasis on maintaining strong party-state oversight of organised social activity. The structure of elite giving is strikingly concentrated, with the largest gifts flowing through a small number of sanctioned channels, notably university foundations. Forbes China has tallied 155 disclosed university gifts of at least 10 million RMB (US$1.5 million) since 2023. The 10 largest donors accounted for 62.8 per cent of the value. Only 5 per cent of the 229 large university donation projects implemented in 2024 included a permanent endowment structure, down from 22 per cent in 2019.
The education sector shows how party-state priorities are increasingly integrated with guidance on philanthropic giving. The 2025 Education Powerhouse Plan, issued by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee and the State Council, outlines how money should be channelled through education foundations that ‘guide and regulate’ donations, while asking universities to align disciplines with ‘national strategic needs’. President Xi Jinping’s 2020 call for ‘novel research-type universities’ and for donations to fund basic research endorsed a model already taking shape.
Billionaire Cao Dewang used 10 billion RMB (US$1.5 billion) in 2025 to found Fuyao University of Science and Technology, which has been described as ‘privately run, publicly assisted’. Technology tycoon Yu Renrong’s Eastern Institute of Technology in Ningbo was built jointly with the provincial and city governments. Both universities admitted their first undergraduates in 2025.
