The report also showed that more than 80 percent of the giving went to the education sector.

The mainland's new tycoons from the property, energy, high-tech, construction and financial sectors made the most contributions in large donations.

Deng Guosheng, director of the NGO Research Center at Tsinghua University, said large charitable giving became a significant trend in China after the devastating earthquake in 2008 aroused public passion to donate for disaster relief work.

"However, our research also found that many rich Chinese people assumed philanthropy was a simple task and few have a clear strategy in charitable giving or making sustainable efforts to help solve some social problems such as aging," he said.

"It resulted in overlapping donations in a few fields, including education," he said.

Wang Zhenyao, director of the China Philanthropy Research Institute at Beijing Normal University, said that rapidly accumulated wealth in the charitable sector also calls for better management and transparency in spending.

hedan@chinadaily.com.cn

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