TENCENT co-founder Chen Yidan became China’s leading philanthropist making cash donations totaling 2.37 billion yuan (US$344 million) last year, according to Forbes’s China Charity list, which was released last week.

Last year, Tencent’s Ma Huateng topped the list.

Among those on the list, 25 entrepreneurs and enterprises donated more than 100 million yuan, accounting for 87.2 percent of the total donations. The number of entrepreneurs from Shenzhen made up 23.8 percent of the total donors, surpassing the 21.2 percent of donors from Beijing. Most of the funds were donated to universities as special funds for education and research.

A fellow student of Ma’s at Shenzhen University, Chen, 46, is very fond of education. He was born in Chaoyang, Guangdong. He majored in applied chemistry at Shenzhen University where he received his bachelor’s degree, and later received his master’s degree in economic laws from Nanjing University. He worked in Shenzhen Municipal Entry & Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau for several years after graduation.

After the creation of Tencent, Chen was the company’s chief administrative officer (CAO), responsible for legal and policy development, human resources and charity funds, as well as government relations.

Chen institutionalized a certain percentage of Tencent’s annual contributions to the Tencent Foundation and in 2013, Chen retired from the post of CAO. He invested 2 billion yuan to set up a private school called Wuhan College at the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, Hubei Province. The college was upgraded to a private nonprofit university offering bachelor’s degrees in 2015.

In 2016, Chen set up The Yidan Prize Foundation, which governs HK$2.5 billion (US$321 million) to recognize and support innovators in the education system. There will be two annual awards — The Yidan Prize for Education Research and The Yidan Prize for Education Development. Winners of each prize will receive a gold medal, a cash prize of HK$15 million and a project fund of HK$15 million based on the principle of impact investment.

(Han Ximin)