Philanthropy is weak. The state is strong. Safety has to work the system to survive - Nick Corvino (China Talk)

Filantropia na China, segundo China Talk, um Substack que eu sigo (não pago).
Um dos sinais da prosperidade e do espírito americano, como sabemos, é a filantropia, ou seja, as doações de milionários e bilionários para o bem público, em museus, universidades, instituições não governamentais e até governamentais.
Como é na China? Aqui algumas informações:

Philanthropy is weak. The state is strong. Safety has to work the system to survive.
NICK CORVINO
China Talk, October 5, 2025

A Brief Overview of Chinese Philanthropy

China has plenty of billionaires. Forbes puts the number at 539 billionaires in China worth $2.2 trillion. (The US counts 989 billionaires worth $8.4 trillion.)

It would take only one or two of them getting really into AI safety to finance a sizable funding ecosystem. So why has no Chinese equivalent of Coefficient Giving emerged?

The answer is related to the strange structure of Chinese philanthropy.

The modern Chinese charitable sector as it exists today expanded rapidly after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, but it was plagued from the start by corruption scandals, inconsistent regulation, and government concerns about grassroots organizations operating outside of the state’s purview.

To streamline the system, the 2016 Charity Law 慈善法 clarified the legal status of domestic philanthropy, tax incentives, and fundraising. Charities would have to register, disclose their finances, and accept government supervision.

The goal wasn’t to reduce or get rid of philanthropy. Beijing still wanted private money to support education, health, poverty relief, and other social services. But it wanted civil society to help deliver state-approved public goods, rather than become an independent source of political organization or agenda-setting. Article 4 of the Charity Law made this principle explicit enough by stating that “charity work shall be conducted under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.”³

Scholars Angela Bies and Scott Kennedy write:

“There exists a current paradox of philanthropy and the state in China: a stronger social sector accompanied with growth in philanthropy is desired, but such strength and growth must also contend with the state’s own policy agenda and desire to limit aspects of advocacy and civil society typically associated with the third sector.”

The Charity Law may have legitimized the sector, but it has not erased longstanding distrust. China has long ranked near the bottom of the Charities Aid Foundation’s World Giving Index, which measures behaviors including donating money and volunteering. In off-the-record conversations for this piece, I likewise heard skepticism about donating due to corruption."