CHINA'S MOST GENEROUS

The rise of private wealth is one of the most important developments in modern China, with implications for the country’s social, economic, and political arenas. How individuals choose to deploy such resources will shape the relationships between the individual and the state, between the state and business, and between the state and the social sector.

This project aims to strengthen understanding of China’s philanthropic landscape by analyzing the makeup and choices of China’s most generous individuals. We hope the introduction of a metric on level of generosity, while imperfect, will add a new dimension to the discussion on how China’s wealthy choose to support charitable causes. We welcome comments and suggestions on our analysis and methodology through the email address listed below. The findings compile data from a variety of sources including media reports, government databases, foundation annual reports, university websites and so on. 

Tony Saich – Ash Center Director. Tony directs a range of programs at the Harvard Kennedy School and teaches courses on comparative political institutions, democratic governance, and transitional economies with a focus on China. A former Chief Representative of the Ford Foundation in China, he also teaches and researches topics related to the development of China’s civil society and philanthropic sector.

Yunxin Li – Research Data Analyst. Yunxin is in charge of the data team and responsible for our project's data validation, analysis, and visualization. She develops the project plans, manages the project operation and oversees the overall project workflow. Yunxin received her M.S. in Business Analytics from Bentley University and a B.A. in Business Administration from Beijing Normal University.

Xiangyue Chen – Research Assistant. Xiangyue Chen involved in the Chinese donation data analysis in this project. She participated in the data collection, cleaning, validation and visualization of Chinese charity foundations. Xiangyue Chen is a Master of Science in Business Analytics candidate at Bentley University. She received her B.S. in Economics from Nanjing University.

Zhengyun Zhu - Research Assistant. Zhengyun Zhu participated in the Chinese and US donation data analysis in this project. She collected Chinese data from different resources and helped build the Chinese donation database. Zhengyun Zhu is a Master of Science in Business Analytics candidate at Bentley University. She received her B.S. in Mathematics from Fudan University.

Yifu Dong – Research Assistant. Yifu writes the blog posts on current and historical issues in Chinese philanthropy. He received a B.A. in History from Yale University. Yifu’s work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The New York Times, The New York Times (Chinese edition), and Caixin.

Qunchao Fu – Research Assistant. Qunchao works on data cleaning and data visualization. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University and is now a Ph.D. student at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

David Li - China Programs Research Associate. David manages the operations of the project's various pillars - methodology, data collection via internet search and web crawler, website design, and data visualizations. David received his M.A. in International Development from Johns Hopkins SAIS and was a teacher with Teach For China.

John McKenna - Research Assistant. A Boston native, John collected and analyzed US philanthropic data from a range of sources for comparison with the project’s data on Chinese giving. John is a Bentley University MBA graduate with a concentration in Business Analytics.

Qi Tan—Research Fellow. Qi researches the history of Chinese philanthropy, putting current policies in a historical context. Qi has extensive experience in China’s rule of law issues in the area of public interests lawyering, open government information, public participation, and disability rights and advocacy.

Yawei Sun – Research Assistant. Yawei is responsible for extracting donation entity names and Chinese language semantic labeling. He is a graduate student at the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, studying textual categories, information extraction, and semantic labeling.

Xiaoxin Xu – Research Coordinator. Xiaoxin maps out strategies for data analysis, integrates knowledge on data and philanthropy, and coordinates the data science and the social science teams. He is an assistant professor at the Beijing Normal University and also a visiting Rajawali Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center.

Bo Zhao - Technical Advisor. Bo collected data by setting up and running our web crawler, which conducted automated searches for relevant donation news. He also provided advice on data geovisualization. Bo is an Assistant Professor at Oregon State University in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.