The fifteenth China Charity Ranking was officially released in a ceremony held in the famed Water Cube of Beijing’s Olympic Park. A total of 172 philanthropists made it into the list, with total donations of more than 7.6 billion yuan. 721 philanthropic entrepreneurs are also on the list, with donations of more then 12 billion yuan. Compared with 2016, the donations in 2017 witnessed a remarkable increase.
The China Foundations List and the China Philanthropic Celebrities List were also released, with 50 public-fundraising foundations, 50 non-public fundraising foundations and 50 celebrities making their entries into the respective lists. Lin Chi-ling, a famous Taiwanese model and actress, was awarded with the title of the most influential philanthropic celebrity.
The statistics that made up the lists were mainly collected from six sources: donation statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, donation statistics gathered by donors, donation statistics from public interest organizations, annual reports of listed companies, donation statistics gathered in public media reports, and the statistics from the public archives of the China Philanthropy Times.
As one of the speakers explained during the ceremony, Chinese philanthropy has made great progress over the past fifteen years. For instance, the total donations by the top 50 philanthropists in the 2017 list amounted to 9 billion yuan, in comparison to 1.029 billion yuan for the 2004 list. In addition 70 philanthropists have donated more than 10 million yuan, out of which twenty-three have made donations of more than 100 million yuan. China’s “reform and opening up” process was recognized as the main contributor to the remarkable progress of Chinese philanthropy, due to the growing resources and development of the economy.
