ONE YUAN, ONE VISION

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A film star has a new role: selling philanthropy to the Chinese. Jet Li talks to Matthew Bishop and Michael Green ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE Magazine, Summer 2009

Jet Li is not the first celebrity to have his own charitable foundation. But he is surely the first who, to make it work, has to build a culture of charity among a population of a billion.

Li, 46, is a movie star whose roles have ranged from the Chinese folk hero Nameless in “Hero” to the villain in the Hollywood blockbuster “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor”. Before that he was a martial artist who won several gold medals in China’s national championships. Now he has a third career as a philanthropist.

He beams as he talks about how we should all give out of our common humanity, which is the reason he called his foundation One. His giving is based on simple family values: “everybody”, he says, “wants to take care of his wife, children, dog”. Yet behind his simple message is a sophisticated and businesslike approach to deploying his celebrity to change his country’s attitude.

His own attitude changed when the Asian tsunami of 2004 struck while he was on holiday in the Maldives with his family—he has been married twice and has two children from each marriage. “Water is here,” he says, raising his hand to his chin. “My younger daughter’s taken by the water, someone saved her.”

The experience left him with an injured foot and a conviction that it was time to “pay back to society, to the world”. He spent two years studying how to build an effective foundation, seeking out advice from the best in the giving business, Bill Gates among them, and officially launched the One Foundation in 2007.

Another natural disaster, the huge earthquake that struck China in May 2008, proved catalytic—both for One and for Chinese philanthropy in general. Many of China’s super-rich felt that they had a civic duty plus the all-important government approval to give publicly for the first time. Meanwhile, Li provided the vehicle for China’s emerging middle class to give smaller amounts to help their compatriots. In response to his text message, One received 50m yuan ($10m) in a week.

He now believes that giving should be an integral part of “the 21st-century beliefs” of China and indeed the world. Already, he sees signs of it catching on in China, where the state suppressed charity until the past couple of years. His fame and likeability seem to have helped reassure the government, which has often been wary of civil groups. So far, over 1m people have given to the One Foundation, mostly through its website. It also offers the options of giving by mobile phone or by automatic monthly deductions from a credit card—areas in which China is now arguably further advanced than many more developed countries.

One will take money from anyone, however little they have: Li’s mantra is that everyone can afford to give a yuan (15 cents) a month, “whether the economy is good or bad”. The tagline on One’s website says, “1 person + 1 dollar + 1 month = 1 big family”. If you wait until you are wealthy enough before you start giving, Li says, you may never get around to it. “If you don’t want to donate a yuan today or one hour today, if in the future you have a million dollars you will say I have got to have more, another billion.”

Li is a philanthrocapitalist who talks fluently about the business model for his foundation. He calls the One Foundation the “Alibaba of giving”—alibaba.com is the Chinese eBay. The goal is to be the main marketplace where the many NGOs operating in China—especially in the fields of health, poverty reduction, environment and education—can pitch for money to the new army of donors. Currently, he says, there are “millions of NGOs in China, but nobody knows who they can trust”. He aims to build a platform based on providing information, “so we can all get to know each other better”.

Given the massive corruption and lack of transparency in China, Li has turned outwards to ensure high standards of ethics and governance. The foundation is based in Singapore because of the low-corruption culture and effective legal system; it issues quarterly reports, and is audited by the accounting giant Deloitte.

Li has rallied some 500 other celebrities to the cause and signed up 1,000 chief executives—although, he says with a smile, some were initially reluctant to part with even a yuan a month. There is growing interest in One from foreign companies operating in China; they have been encouraged to give by the Chinese government as an implicit price of doing business there, but have in the past found it hard to judge whether the NGOs they partner with are genuine. The foundation’s partners include Disney and Microsoft.

Jet Li now seems more interested in philanthropy than in films. When he launched One, he says ruefully, “it only got reported in the entertainment pages”. Keen to be taken more seriously, he turned down some lucrative roles to work full-time on his philanthropy. He has just resumed the day job in a Sylvester Stallone film, “The Expendables”–largely, it seems, because he has been advised that his celebrity status is essential to his mission of turning China into a nation of givers. The tail is wagging the panda.

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(Matthew Bishop is New York City bureau chief of The Economist; Michael Green is a consultant. They are the authors of "Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World", published by Bloomsbury.)

Picture Credit: Russ Street