Gratefully giving

Tiens Group chairman and founder Li Jinyuan credits China's market-oriented reform and opening-up policy for his business success, and says he is so grateful that he wants to give something back.

So he has literally put his money where his mouth is.

"Without Deng Xiaoping and the market-oriented reform and opening-up policy he initiated, I would never have had the chance to achieve today's business success, let alone establish myself as somebody," Li says.

More than two decades ago, Li earned only dozens of yuan per month as a State-owned enterprise employee. He was satisfied with his salary, but says he had no opportunity to show his true value and talent.

"Without the overall (reform) environment, I couldn't have made it today," Li adds. "I look forward to paying back what I owe to society."

Li shows his gratitude through sponsoring education, funding disadvantaged groups and supporting public interest programs.

Once he achieved preliminary business success in 1996, Li's initial act of philanthropy was to build a primary and a middle school in his hometown and renovate the roads. It was only the second year after Li opened his Tiens business in Tianjin.

In later years, Li sponsored more charity and education programs in Western China and other provinces, such as Tibet and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions.

Li says his company could never enjoy sound growth without balanced development between the eastern and western parts of China.

In the past decade, Tiens has donated more than 1 billion yuan for charity and public-good projects. About 600 million yuan has been for education.

Tiens has also built a college to cultivate talents who are welcomed by enterprises following graduation.

"Graduates from Tiens College are hot favorites for employment. Above 90 percent of the graduates will be employed. Those majoring in computer science and journalism are employed 100 percent upon graduation," Li says.

Tiens College is a non-profit institution, and Li has spent several million yuan subsidizing it every year.

He is now planning another larger, international university.

It will involve an investment of 5 billion yuan and will cover an area as large as 3,000 mu, with a construction area of 900,000 sq m.

"Education holds the key to our society's future. I will spare no efforts supporting it," Li says.

(China Daily 09/22/2008 page12)