Yale donation sets tongues wagging


By Wu Zhong, China Editor
Asia Times
January 14, 2010


HONG KONG - A Chinese millionaire's record-setting donation of nearly US$9 million to his graduate school at Yale University has become explosive news in China, sparking a nationwide debate on whether he should have instead given the money to a Chinese school.

Following a Yale announcement, one of China's state-run newspapers, the Global Times, broke the story on January 8 that Zhang Lei, a graduate from Yale's School of Management and the founder and managing partner of Hillhouse Capital Management - a New York-registered, Beijing-based company - would donate $8,888,888 to his alumni school. Sounding like "fortune", eight is an auspicious number in Chinese numerology. Other major Chinese media such as the Xinhua News Agency, China Central Television and China Daily immediately carried follow-up reports.

According to Yale's official website, the Yale president, Richard C Levin, announced on January 4, "Lei Zhang has pledged the largest gift ever to the Yale School of Management by a graduate of the school. Zhang's pledge, made less than 10 years after his graduation from Yale, also represents the largest gift to date from a young Yale University alumnus."

The Yale school seeks to raise $300 million by 2011 to ensure its "leadership in 21st century management education", according to its website. Another ethnic Chinese donor listed on the site is Laura Cha, a member of Hong Kong's executive council who in the late 1990s worked as a vice chairwoman of Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission, and was also vice chairwoman of the China Securities Regulation Commission, from 2001-2004.

As Zhang is relatively little-known in China, curious reporters and bloggers immediately began to dig up information about him. Some bloggers even launched a so-called "renrou shousuo", literally "human flesh search", meaning a cyber relay to find information about a specific person.

According to Dahe Daily, a sister publication of the Henan Daily - the official newspaper of the Henan provincial Communist Party committee - Zhang, 38, was born and grew up in Zhumadian city in the central province of Henan.

In 1989, he passed entrance exams with excellent scores and was admitted to the Beijing-based Renmin University of China to study international finance. In 1998, he went to Yale to pursue his graduate studies. Through his high school mate, Liang Yu, Zhang told Dahe Daily that he chose Yale because it was at that time the only foreign school known to his parents.

"Yale SOM [School of Management] has changed my life. This is not an exaggeration," Zhang was quoted as saying. He said Yale once financially supported him when he started his own business. Coming back to invest in China in 2005 with a capital of $30 million, Hillhouse Capital Management now manages $2.5 billion total assets, Zhang said. (The Dahe Daily report said some suspect that Hillhouse manages Yale's investment fund in China, but no evidence was given).

On his broader vision, Zhang said another reason for his decision to donate to Yale was because it is a well-known and respected school in China. Yale has helped China for more than a century. Many Chinese officials have been educated at Yale. "But for a long time, such help was one-way. So I wanted to change this," Zhang said.

Information about Zhang's background as well as his explanation have fueled fierce debate.

On the Global Times website, a few bloggers criticized Zhang's claim that Yale had changed his life. "You have attended Chinese schools for more than a decade. You would have been nothing without education in China!" one said.

"The current situation of tertiary education in China is worrisome. Many university graduates cannot find employment. You, however, give money away to a foreign school rather then helping China's education. This is really hard to understand.," said another. "We did not see Hillhouse Capital Management donate such a huge sum for disaster relief after the Sichuan earthquake [in May 2008]."

One blogger simply called him a "national traitor. Trash."

On the website of Zhang's alma mater, Renmin University, many asked why Zhang had not donated to that university.

However, on both websites, many supported Zhang, saying it was up to him what he did with his own money. They pointed out problems with China's education system, saying Zhang's move might provoke reflection on problems affecting China's education system, such as corruption, exam cheating, fake degrees being awarded and high levels of graduate unemployment. "A Chinese student with excellent scores in the national entrance exams said Yale has changed his life. Isn't it a big failure of China's tertiary education?" one person asked on the Global Times website.

Significantly, commentaries in the state-run media have come to Zhang's defense.

A signed commentary in the Guangzhou Daily said that since Chinese universities were still run by officials, it was doubtful whether donations would help the education system. "When people have suspicions and doubts about how such donations would be spent, their enthusiasm to donate would inevitably be hurt."

A signed commentary on the Securities Times, one of the three leading financial dailies in China, cautioned against linking Zhang's donation with nationalism. "As a Yale graduate, Mr Zhang Lei made a donation to his alma mater out of gratitude. What's wrong with that? What has this anything to do with patriotism? If a donation to Yale is not a patriotic move, then what can we call those foreigners who have donated to Chinese schools?

"Education is no boundary. A donation to help education has nothing to do with nationality ... In 1919, American John Leighton Stuart (1876-1962) was assigned to raise funds to set up Yenching University in Beijing. By 1937 he had raised some $2.5 million in the United States. In 1927, warlord Sun Chuanfang curiously asked him: 'Why do you foreigners want to donate to a university in China?' Stuart replied: 'Civilization is not national but international.' If one follows the logic [of calling Zhang's donation traitorous], then John Leighton Stuart should have been called an American traitor."

Apparently, the Chinese authorities want to rein in irrational nationalistic anger over Zhang's donation. After all, the move is legal. Moreover, the harsh accusations will only damage China's international image.

Observers have countered Zhang's critics by saying that Chinese should take pride in Zhang's gesture to Yale - the first such large donation any Chinese person has ever made to a foreign school. After all, they say, this is evidence that Chinese are now so much better off that some are able to make large donations - even to a foreign school. In the final analysis, isn't it a sign of China's rise?

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/LA14Ad01.html