Chinese immigrants increase philanthropy in their new homeland
Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times
Pasadena resident Ming Hsieh made a fortune from fingerprint identification software that helps U.S. authorities catch welfare cheats, guard the border and assist police in cracking cases.
Cyrus Tang built a Las Vegas-based business empire of specialty steel, pharmaceuticals and furniture. And in the heart of Silicon Valley, Jerry Yang developed one of the largest Internet search engines in the world -- Yahoo.
All three wildly successful entrepreneurs are Chinese immigrants, and now they and others like them are giving back to their adopted homeland in a new gold rush of philanthropy that is bringing hundreds of millions of dollars to U.S. universities, think tanks and other nonprofit groups.
"America is built by immigrants, and they all followed the same route," said Hsieh, 52, a survivor of China's Cultural Revolution and near-billionaire who gave $35 million to his alma mater, USC, in 2006. "You come here with a dream, and once you reach your dream, the issue is how to help the next generation fulfill their dream."
Although waves of Chinese migrants came to California 150 years ago as poor laborers lured by reports of gold mountains, many of today's immigrants come for higher education or skilled jobs. Some of them struck gold after launching businesses in engineering, software, finance and other fields and have begun to share their wealth.
The rising force of ethnic Chinese philanthropy is most apparent in major gifts, such as the $75 million to Stanford University last year by Yahoo's Yang and his wife, Akiko Yamazaki. But such large gifts are still relatively rare; the Chronicle of Philanthropy's annual list of biggest American donors -- generally the top 60 or so who contributed at least $10 million -- has included ethnic Chinese contributors just four times since 2000.
Instead, they are making more noticeable marks though gifts of $1 million or less. They are funding academic programs, such as retired banker Wilbur Woo's Greater China annual economic conference and plastics entrepreneurs Shirley and Walter Wang's new program on Chinese Americans and U.S.-China relations, both housed at UCLA. They are supporting medical institutions, such as air freight firm owner Ernie So's annual monetary gifts at the City of Hope medical center.
They are promoting cultural projects, such as the hundreds of ethnic Chinese who have pitched in to help create one of the nation's largest Chinese gardens at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.
