Charity in China

“In the United States, [charitable] giving represents about 2.1 percent of gross domestic product; in China, it's closer to 0.35 percent.”

The movie star Jet Li, among others, is trying to expand philanthropy in China, where civil society is much smaller and less active than in western countries. Charitable giving was one of the silver linings in the Sichuan earthquake last May. The natural disaster triggered a flood of donations from people around the country. For the wealthy urban residents and corporations who contributed large sums of money, it was a significant development because private philanthropy had been almost non-existent before then.