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Alyssa Chen

Urgent priorities for advancing China’s philanthropy sector include fostering a favourable legal environment and overhauling the nation’s social service industry, according to leading policy experts at a forum in Hong Kong on Tuesday.
Mainland charitable organisations could learn from Hong Kong’s experience to increase their professional expertise, while the Greater Bay Area city cluster plan could be leveraged as a catalyst to boost the sector, they said.
The panel discussion – part of the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s Philanthropy for Better Cities Forum – examined China’s philanthropic landscape, with each speaker outlining their priorities for the sector over the next decade.
“We need to create a more favourable legal and policy environment for the development of charity organisations – that is good laws and sound governance,” Jin Jinping, associate professor at Peking University law school, told the panel.
Wang Zhenyao, a former senior official who spent more than 22 years at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said Beijing should draw on Hong Kong’s mature philanthropy sector to “drive a major upgrade of the entire social service sector”.
Wang is the founding dean of the China Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal University.

Philanthropy is undergoing a profound transformation in China, where historically it has been viewed mainly as an emergency relief tool for natural disasters or basic poverty alleviation.
Over the past decade, Beijing has explicitly redefined philanthropy as an integral component of national social governance, tasked with bridging public welfare gaps and delivering social services.
This elevated status has come with heightened state oversight, domestic economic headwinds, squeezed corporate margins and changing public expectations. “All of which are driving a broader structural reshaping of the sector,” said Wang Xiangwei, the panel’s moderator.
The senior visiting scholar at Harvard Kennedy School is also a former editor-in-chief of the South China Morning Post.
As corporate budgets tighten amid economic uncertainty, Chinese businesses are fundamentally rethinking their philanthropic approach, moving beyond cash donations towards leveraging their operational strengths to address social challenges.
“For logistics firms, for instance, it is more effective to deploy their well-established logistics systems to build supply chains for disaster-stricken areas rather than simply donating money,” Jin said.
Companies were increasingly adopting a sustained approach to social issues, with pharmaceutical firms making the conquest of rare diseases a core objective, while consumer technology companies treated elderly care challenges as potential business growth opportunities, she added.
According to Jin, this shift reflects an evolution in corporate thinking – from passive compliance to active corporate social responsibility, and now towards rethinking the fundamental social value of businesses.
“Only when money is tight can the companies’ true spirit of volunteer service and social value really shine through,” she said.


Wang Zhenyao echoed Jin’s view, stressing that modern sustainable business success required a deep alignment with societal needs.
“For enterprises to truly thrive, they must closely integrate with society … and with the objective needs of national welfare and people’s livelihoods,” he said.
Looking ahead, the experts regarded cross-border collaboration in the Greater Bay Area – the integrated economic and business hub linking Hong Kong and Macau with cities in Guangdong province – as the main driver for the sector’s transformation.
Hailing Hong Kong’s “irreplaceable strengths” – including its mature social work systems and advanced infrastructure – Wang Zhenyao suggested that cross-border integration could catalyse “a new social service industry employing millions of people, with an output value in the tens of trillions of yuan”.
However, the panel acknowledged that there were practical hurdles to the proposal under China’s Foreign NGO Law, the main regulatory framework that governs cross-border philanthropy.
The legislation requires overseas non-governmental organisations to secure a government or government-affiliated sponsor – known as a professional supervisory unit – to establish a permanent representative office on the mainland or partner with a domestic entity for temporary activities.
The law – which also prohibits foreign NGOs from raising funds publicly or recruiting Chinese citizens as members, while subjecting them to stringent financial oversight – had created practical friction for Hong Kong organisations, Jin said.
These included what she described as difficulties in securing mainland supervisory units and restrictions on cross-border fund transfers.
To overcome these roadblocks, the panellists advocated leveraging the city cluster of the Greater Bay Area to connect Guangdong in southern China with Macau and Hong Kong as “a policy sandbox”.
Wang Ming, founding dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute for Philanthropy, said Hong Kong delegates to the political advisory body and national legislature should propose targeted relaxations or special arrangements, rather than pushing for statutory changes.
Jin agreed, noting that pilot schemes could also serve cross-border integration. “Starting with the GBA to test and refine these regulations through public participation channels is feasible,” she said.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}City’s experience could ‘drive a major upgrade’ of the philanthropic landscape, experts tell Jockey Club forum

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