American Grant Makers Seek to Deepen Their Involvement in China

China is an economic powerhouse, yet it continues to face vast social, health, and environmental

problems. To help the Asian nation, a growing number of American foundations are making grants to charitable causes there.

China and other nations in the Asia-Pacific region received almost $148-million in foundation grants in 2004, the most recent year data are available. That region receives the second-largest share of international giving after sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Foundation Center.

As the giving grows, charitable organizations are seeking to deepen their work by setting up offices in Beijing.

This year, for example, two of America’s biggest grant makers — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the John C. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation — say they are asking the Chinese government to allow them to set up branches in China.

They will join several other large grant makers, such as the Ford Foundation, the Asia Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which either have offices in the country or operate major China programs.

Both Gates and MacArthur have been working in East Asia for several years.

Gates has primarily focused on preventing HIV/AIDS. The MacArthur foundation has supported wildlife and plant conservation, nuclear-disarmament studies at Chinese universities, and legal services for impoverished villagers.

Jonathan Fanton, president of MacArthur, in Chicago, says the organization wants to broaden such efforts as China becomes a bigger player on the international stage.

“We believe, because of China’s emerging importance to everything we do, we really need to do more there,” he says.

Civil Liberties

The foundation is short on details about the new office, saying it is too early to say whether its grant making in the country, which totaled nearly $6-million in recent years, will change or how many employees will be based abroad.

Aside from its other grant making, MacArthur also has made the occasional contribution to support the touchy subject of Chinese civil liberties.

For example, the foundation gave Human Rights in China, an advocacy group with offices in New York and Hong Kong, $250,000 to raise awareness about the detention of political dissidents and other issues as the world’s attention focuses on Beijing for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games.

“We have made a toe in the water of the delicate issue of human rights,” Mr. Fanton says.

He speculates that such giving does not please the Chinese Communist Party, which runs the government, but that the foundation’s other activities are welcomed by officials.

Andrew Solomon, a MacArthur spokesman, says it is too early to say whether the foundation’s support for human rights will continue when — or if — it is allowed to open an office in the country.

Government Scrutiny

While China probably welcomes an infusion of philanthropic wealth from the MacArthur foundation and others, foundation officials say the country is concerned that American grant makers will back political activists and democracy movements.

Chinese charities receive the bulk of the governmental scrutiny, but foreign grant makers have hoops to jump through as well. For example, as with all nonprofit groups in China, American philanthropies must have a “supervisory organization,” usually a government agency, to sponsor them and keep a watchful eye on their charitable efforts.

Offiicals of the Gates and MacArthur foundations declined to tell The Chronicle whether they have succeeded in lining up such sponsors.

“The legal and regulatory framework governing foreign foundations operating in China — and the Chinese NGO’s who are their potential grantees — is still evolving,” Jonathan Stromseth, the Asia Foundation’s representative in Beijing, writes in an e-mail message.

“There are still unresolved issues affecting such practical matters as local registration of both foreign foundations and their potential grantees, the accountability requirements of foreign foundations, tax issues, and banking procedures.”

Despite these challenges, MacArthur and other charitable organizations consider a physical presence in China crucial to their efforts.

“We need to understand China from the inside,” says Mr. Fanton, “not just try to pick our grantees from here.”