Sept. 30: After a night of wining and dining 50 of China’s richest people in the name of promoting philanthropy, Mr Warren Buffett and Mr Bill Gates told a horde of journalists on Thursday that the biggest difference between eating with Chinese tycoons and Western ones was the food.
Thus ended the two billionaires’ mission to promote charity in China, a journey, which provoked weeks of breathless speculation here about whether this nation’s much-resented class of super-rich was too miserly to measure up to Western philanthropic standards. At a news conference, Messrs. Mr Buffett and Mr Gates said the answer was an emphatic “no.”
“I was amazed last night, really, at how similar the questions and discussions and all that was to the dinners we had in the US,” Mr Buffett, who had wisecracked about the food, said. “The same motivations tend to exist. The mechanism for manifesting those motivations may differ from country to country.”
Mr Buffett and Mr Gates, two of the best known and most admired Westerners here, announced last month that they planned to invite 50 wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs to dinner in Beijing to encourage philanthropy among this nation’s newly minted rich.
The mission became the object of feverish news coverage — and something of a litmus test of Chinese generosity — after it was reported that some tycoons were turning down the invitation because they feared they would be pressed to donate money.
The two men have made headlines worldwide for enlisting Western tycoons in a public promise to give away their fortunes either during their lifetimes or in bequests after their deaths. To date, 40 people have taken the pledge, and at least one Chinese multimillionaire has said he will join them.
On Thursday, the two men pronounced the dinner an unqualified success, saying that two-thirds of those who were invited showed up, and that more than half of those at the dinner offered their own ideas on how Chinese philanthropy should work.
The guest list was not made public, but Chinese news media reported that it included a Chinese film star, Mr Jet Li, Niu Gensheng, the founder of a Chinese dairy business, and Mr Pan Shiyi and Mr Zhang Xin, who control the SOHO China real estate empire.