(LI SHIGONG)

Chen Tianqiao, a billionaire and founder of the Shanda Group, a global investment firm, together with his wife, Chrissy Luo, donated $115 million in December 2016 to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the United States to help further research into the fundamental principles that underlie brain function.

Chen has been credited with having pioneered the online game industry in China. He was ranked No.2 on the Hurun Midas Rich List 2015 for the wealthiest investors from China. The donation will fund a neuroscience research institute that will integrate biology, engineering, chemistry, physics, computer science and the social sciences.

While donations from billionaires in China are not a new thing, donating abroad rather than in China causes controversy, as Chen's case shows. This event has not only divided opinion among China's scientists, but also stirred up debate in society at large.

Some people have hailed the couple's concern for scientific research, praising their broad vision and pursuit of what's significant for humanity as a whole. They believe that Caltech's strong scientific research capabilities will produce results more quickly than less developed institutions. Besides, they argue that China lacks well-developed donation mechanisms and transparency in associated procedures.

Others, however, think it is questionable to direct the donation to the United States, given that China desperately needs financial support to push forward its research in neuroscience and other scientific areas. The donation, one of the largest ever received at Caltech, would have given a great boost to China's scientific research.

A magnanimous act

Wang Kai (www.eastday.com): After their donation to Caltech, Chen and Luo have been labeled as traitors, defectors, spies and the like by some people, who cannot accept that the couple have donated money earned in China to the United States. These people, though, need not be so sensitive about a Chinese billionaire's donation to a U.S. university. Actually, there are also examples of U.S. billionaires donating to Chinese universities. It's not about defection or treason. Donations to other countries occur widely around the world.

The purpose of the couple's donation is to help research that will benefit the whole of mankind, including the Chinese. They chose Caltech not because it is a U.S. university, but because of this university's academic and scientific research capabilities in this area. Those who oppose the donation are demonstrating a nationalistic mentality as part of which they consistently see China and the United States as rivals.

The citizens of an emerging country undergoing revitalization ought to possess a broad vision. It's unwise and improper to attack people who donate to other countries as betrayal of their motherland. When the general public is able to treat such things rationally, China will genuinely be a powerful nation.

Zhu Changjun (www.zjol.com.cn): There must have been serious considerations before this generous Caltech donation. It's reported that Chen made the final decision after inspecting many universities at home and abroad during a period of three years. Rather than blaming Chen for donating to a U.S. university, people should ask: Why did he choose Caltech instead of a university in China?

Apart from personal preferences, donations are also largely affected by a society's charity culture and donation mechanisms. China accommodates numerous billionaires, yet they contribute only 1 percent of their incomes to society, a level which is much lower than those in developed countries.

Some attribute this scarcity of donations to the meanness of China's wealthy. However, this alone cannot explain the issue entirely. To a large extent, it is underdeveloped donation mechanisms that prevent wealthy people from doing such good deeds. Only when incentive policies such as tax reliefs are made more readily available to donors can we expect to see more charitable giving.

Apart from the overall charity environment in a country, Chen's interest in the prospects for brain research prompted him to opt for Caltech. Indeed, scientists in China have made progress in brain research in recent years. Currently and in the near future, though, U.S. scientific institutions with strong research capabilities are more likely to produce the scientific results that Chen wishes to see.

Besides, as donations have long been part of the funding of scientific institutions in the United States, a comprehensive and well-established process for managing such donations already exists, including how to allocate and use the money. In China, scientific research institutions depend heavily on government-allocated funding and do not actively seek donations from society. It should be admitted that we still lack a full-fledged system to arrange donations to fund scientific endeavors. Worse still, the alleged lack of transparency in how donations are spent also discourages donors from contributing money to research institutions.

Charity begins at home

Qiu Zilong (China Business News): Chen believes that China still lags behind the United States in terms of brain and neurology research. But, in the past decade, China has made great headway in this area, building a number of high-caliber brain research institutions equipped with world-class capabilities, such as the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the IDG McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Peking University.

More importantly, China has a large number of excellent young scientists, most of whom have been trained at top international research institutions. Their careers are in primary stages of development and urgently need financial support. If Chen had donated to scientific research institutions in China, similar achievements could have been made, from the perspective of scientific development.

I do hope Chen's charitable act will stimulate China to develop a better donation system and increase the transparency of associated procedures. For China's scientific and academic circles, $100 million is an enormous amount. At the CAS, the annual financial allocation for a research team seldom exceeds 2 million yuan ($287,800), so even a 1-million-yuan ($143,900) donation would help a great deal.

Today, the scientists engaged in China's cranial nerve research are a thriving new generation, who are completely capable of making good use of donations. Still, I want to stress that apart from favorable tax policies for donors, it's also necessary for China's scientific research institutions to make efforts to improve current research systems and to make the whole scientific research community stronger. With a more transparent and efficient donation mechanism, it's likely that institutes in China would also receive large donations.

Copyedited by Chris Surtees

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