Rich entrepreneurs loosen purse strings for charitable efforts

He Xiangjian, founder and chairman of Foshan, Guangdong province-based home appliance-maker Midea Group, topped a list of the 100 biggest individual donors in the country last year with contributions totaling 6.79 billion yuan ($1.08 billion), according to a report released this week by the China Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal University.

The second-largest donor was Xu Jiayin, chairman of Evergrande Group, China's second-largest property developer by sales. He donated 3.4 billion yuan to help with poverty alleviation in Guangdong and Guizhou provinces. Lu Zhiqiang, chairman of China Oceanwide Holdings Group, contributed 1.26 billion yuan and came in third.

Starting in 2011, the list reveals that large donations have become a major trend among Chinese philanthropists. Last year, 39 percent of the individual donations were worth more than 100 million yuan each, setting the record in the past seven years.