This article is one of the articles specially planned for the 107th issue of "Chinese Social Sciences Journal" on "Chinese Philanthropy Facing the 21st Century".

As we all know, Chinese society is at a very critical stage of development. China's wealth has grown rapidly. In 2009, its GDP reached 33.5 trillion yuan, and per capita GDP reached 25,188 yuan.

If there are no accidents, China will soon surpass the US$4,000 per capita GDP mark and achieve the 2050 development goals set by Comrade Deng Xiaoping 40 years ahead of schedule.

According to general experience in international development, it is entirely possible that China's per capita GDP will reach US$10,000 in the next ten years, initially reaching the threshold of a developed country.

The speed of economic development can fully realize the "three-step" strategy well in advance.

Economic development, on the one hand, has brought about profound changes in the entire social structure. The rapid overlapping development of industrialization, urbanization, informatization, and globalization has posed fundamental challenges to social management.

On the other hand, the large-scale and rapid growth of total wealth requires the public to make new and difficult social choices regarding wealth management.

This enables the rich and the poor to establish brotherhood and live in harmony.

It should be noted that the imbalance of rapid economic development has changed the traditional security management objects, and political management is making great strides towards social management.

The foundation of social management is that there must be a very dynamic civil society, and citizens' comprehensive investment in public welfare undertakings is a basic sign of healthy social development.

In other words, the stable transformation of Chinese society requires the rapid development of public welfare and charity.

Current Situation and Gap Regarding the current status of China's public welfare undertakings, especially the basic understanding of the current status of China's charity development, the most important basic question is, how much space for charity and public welfare is there in contemporary China?

Let's look at three sets of data.

Total annual charitable giving.

In 2009, China's charitable donations reached 50.9 billion yuan, accounting for 0.17% of the more than 30 trillion yuan of GDP that year, and accounting for less than 5% of China's fiscal revenue of 680 billion yuan.

For comparison, the United States donated US$300 billion in 2008, accounting for about 2% of the US$14 trillion GDP that year and 10% of the US$3 trillion fiscal revenue.

To reach the level of the United States, China's annual donation should be 600 billion yuan.

Number of charitable organizations.

In 2009, there were 1,843 foundations in China, more than 1 million charitable organizations in the United States, more than 160,000 active charitable organizations in the United Kingdom, and more than 80,000 Canadian charitable organizations. Compared with developed countries, the number of Chinese charitable organizations

Not enough.

Practitioners of charitable organizations.

In 2009, there were less than 20,000 employees in Chinese charitable organizations, while there were more than 9 million employees in American charitable organizations and 600,000 employees in the United Kingdom.

How big is the space for the development of charity in China? In the next five years, can China's annual donations reach 500 billion yuan, can the number of charitable organizations reach 500,000, and can the number of employees reach 5 million? Learn from the experience of China's economic development.

Our society should also establish clear goals for developing public welfare and charity.

The determination of such specific goals is no longer an incredible fantasy after the economy has met the preliminary conditions. The key is to achieve basic social consciousness before it can be implemented into major social actions.

When did Gates, a philanthropist, appear in China? To develop public welfare and charity, there must be strong social pressure for public welfare and charity. This is a kind of social moral pressure that must originate from society in order to have social influence.

Of course, this kind of pressure cannot only be used as negative condemnation, but more importantly, it is positive promotion.

In Hong Kong, on Charity Day, people have to buy flags for charity. When the whole city buys flags as charity symbols, the few people who don’t buy them will feel very embarrassed.

There are currently 875,000 multi-millionaires in China.

In the current period, a truth must be widely publicized, that is, in the social development pattern where there is a gap between the rich and the poor, the rich and the poor must live in harmony.

More than 100 years ago, Ford Motor Company took the initiative to significantly raise wages for workers in order to ensure that their cars could be sold in the market. Carnegie, on the other hand, thought of his social responsibility on the road to wealth and began a feat of social charity.

Recently, society has been hotly discussing the activities advocated by Gates and Buffett for wealthy people to donate half of their wealth to social welfare during their lifetime.

Now is the time for Chinese society to respond. It is time for China's Bill Gates and China's Buffett to stand up.

Although there are philanthropists with hundreds of millions of donations in Chinese society, the development pattern is still very uneven.

In order to promote the development of social welfare undertakings, we propose that the 55,000 billionaires should set their annual donation at one million. This should become a basic public welfare and charity ethics system, as a basic bottom line of social responsibility, and also

It should become a widespread social activity.

If the annual donation of billionaires reaches one million and the annual donation of multi-millionaires reaches 100,000, the country's public welfare undertakings will soon reach an annual donation of more than 100 billion yuan, or even move toward 200 billion yuan. In this way, China's public welfare undertakings will

Really have the strength to move towards broader development prospects.