http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1820&Itemid=206
China's Philanthropist
Written by Mark O'Neill
Monday, 13 April 2009
Rags to riches to rags to riches to rags to riches
In a new China largely preoccupied with getting and spending after
decades and perhaps centuries of poverty, Yu Panglin, an 87-year-old real
estate developer and hotelier, stands out as a welcome anomaly.
Yu, according to a publication called th Hurun Report, is the most
generous philanthropist in China, with 2007 donations totaling US$420 million,
more than double the US$158 million given by Zhu Mengyi, a real estate
developer, in second place. Yu has given HK$20-30 billion to charity, including
schools, universities, hospitals, disaster relief and a program that has
provided free cataract operations to 138,000 poor people.
He is wary of giving money to China's government to be handed on, and if
he were in charge, would scrap the country's budding manned space program and
the upcoming Shanghai Exhibition, meant to be the country's latest showcase for
the world.
"In China, most charitable money is given to the government and much is
lost before it reaches those for whom it is intended. I want to be an example
and inspire other business people to donate," said Yu in an interview in the
penthouse of his five-star Panlin Hotel in Shenzhen, his principal residence.
"In the past five years, private donations by mainland businessmen have
increased more than ten-fold."
A Hollywood scriptwriter couldn't have written Yu's biography, from
poverty to riches on the streets of Shanghai to disgrace at the hands of the
Cultural Revolution to being wiped out in the stock market to ultimate
restoration of his wealth. He was born in 1922, the son of a businessman, in a
poor village in Hunan, the province of Chairman Mao. To escape poverty, he went
in 1945 to Shanghai, where he pulled rickshaws and sold goods on a street
stall.
In 1953, he was arrested for being 'a runaway landlord' and sentenced to
three years of reform through labor in Anhui. He won an appeal against the
sentence, saying that he was not a landlord. On his release, he returned to
Shanghai and showed a police officer a letter from a friend in Hong Kong. "I
have no job and no home. Please let me go to Hong Kong." The officer took pity
on him and approved the application. "I had no party affiliation and nothing
against me."
In 1957, he went to Hong Kong. With no money and connections and speaking
neither Cantonese nor English, he earned HK$80-100 a month sweeping the
streets, working on building sites and odd jobs. He didn't drink, smoke, gamble
or visit prostitutes and squirreled his money.
A Shanghainese in a real estate firm gave him a job as manager and he
began to learn the trade. Then he went into business on his own, buying and
selling homes, and grew his fortune.
In 1973, he mortgaged everything and gambled it on the stock market. "I
bought everything, including junk stocks, but the market turned against me and
I lost everything." The loss made him stop buying stocks -- and ban his staff
from doing so -- for the next 36 years. That is until March this year, when he
purchased HSBC, Sun Hung Kai and Cheung Kong shares. "The chance is too good to
miss."
His first venture into charity came in 1982 when he returned to his native
place and donated 10 ambulances. "I am not religious but remembered the
hospital in the labor camp. It had no proper doctor but peasants came because
they had no hospital at all. Without transport, some came too late and died
along the way."
Of the ambulances, only one remained in the village and the other nine were
taken to the provincial capital, Changsha, where officials took them for their
personal use.
"I learnt the lesson that you do not give anything to the government. You
manage everything yourself and give to people directly. It is harder than doing
business. It is easy to do bad things but hard to do good things.
"This means funding a school one storey at a time: when you see it completed,
then you give the money for the next storey. Before, 50-60 per cent of what I
gave disappeared. Now the proportion is much lower."
His charity includes schools, hospitals, scholarships and disaster relief in
Hunan and other provinces.
His biggest project is the "Movement of Light", five mobile clinics that
provide free cataract operations to poor residents of 18 provinces, including
Tibet, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia and Gansu. Yu pays the entire cost, including
the services of qualified eye surgeons from a Beijing hospital. They receive
from him a second salary equal to that they are given by the hospital, as well
as travel, living expenses and a holiday.
"I had this operation myself 10 years ago: I could not sign my own name. In the
mainland, it costs 4,000-10,000 yuan, beyond the reach of many people." He
regularly travels to see the clinics in action, to ensure that his money is
being well spent.
He has written a will that leaves nothing to his children and grandchildren.
His assets will be administered by HSBC Private Bank. His principal asset is
the hotel and office block in central Shenzhen, which is worth HK$2 billion and
earns an annual profit of HK$30 million: all of this goes to charity.
He works a full day, with a one-hour walk in the morning and a two-hour nap
after lunch. He sleeps six hours a night. "I devote 40 percent of my time to my
businesses and 60 percent to charity, especially Movement of Light.
"The government is rich now. It should do more and encourage others to do
charity. Why does it spend so much on the Shanghai World Expo and the manned
space program? It would have been better to spend that money on the poor."
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