Bill Gates speaks virtually to the 2021 Pujiang Innovation Forum in Shanghai, June 2021. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is one of a small number of international foundations that still operate in China. Credit: Sun Zifa/China News Service via Getty Images
The Chinese government is trying to get more of the country’s wealthy to give to worthy causes. Yet international foundations that often work on similar social issues have found their efforts increasingly constrained in recent years.
The likes of tech giants Tencent, Alibaba and Pinduoduo have each pledged billions of dollars’ worth to causes like rural economic development and lifting up low-income groups — all in response to Xi Jinping’s renewed “common prosperity” drive.
The story is different, though, for foreign organizations working in such areas, despite the fact that some have had a presence in China for many years.
“The [Chinese] government is putting pressure on big industries to donate, so there is a lot of pressure to set up foundations,” says Min Zhou, a sociology professor at University of California, Los Angeles, who researches Chinese philanthropy. “At the same time, there is a clamp down on foreign foundati
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