Irish businesses work hard and party hard to give generously to good causes in China.

Chinese and Irish businese people enjoying themselves in a good cause at the Irish Ball.

Irish businesses toasted unprecedented activity in China recently in very Irish style, with a party and a big cheque for charity. More than RMB100,000 collected at the Irish Ball in Beijing was handed over to a charity for those left behind by China’s economic boom. Jinde Charities, a charity registered in northeasterly Hebei Province, sends children of impoverished families to school and cares for AIDS patients in a region of China badly hit by the virus.

Endorsed by Business & Finance magazine, the fortnightly Irish business journal, the latest annual black-tie Irish Ball, now in its eighth year, drew an A-star attendance from China’s corporate world to Beijing’s Kerry Center hotel. An evening of Irish food, comedy and music --- two Celtic music groups were flown in from Europe --- organized by the Irish Network China has made the Irish Ball a sell-out event on the Beijing expatriate social calendar.

Far from the black tie glamour of the Irish Ball, cash raised at the event is helping those less well off. Irishman Joe Loftus, a volunteer at the head office of Jinde Charities in Shijiazhuang, capital of populous Hebei Province, sees that the money is appropriately dispensed. Much of the cash from the Irish Ball was spent on scholarships for children whose parents can’t afford to send them to school. “Families for whom it’s too much a burden get stipends to pay school fees and purchase school supplies... School is free but many other fees are levied.”

Jinde helps students all the way up to university. In rural areas, home of China’s poorest citizens, 78 percent of the education budget must be raised from peasants through local taxation and fees, with central state coffers providing about one percent of the funding for rural education. Referrals come from Catholic priests around Hebei province, who can vouch for the needy. “They have to be generally in need of grant and have to prove that.” Donor and recipient names are published in a fortnightly Jinde newspaper to guarantee transparency.

Held at the Kerry Center hotel in Beijing’s central business district, there were toasts all around during the evening for several Irish businesses expanding fast in the Chinese market. One of the corporate sponsors of the Irish Ball, Cement Roadstone Holdings (CRH), recently purchased Harbin Sanling Cement Company in northerly Heilongjiang Province. Dublin-based CRH, one of the top five building supplies producers in the world, “puts CSR very high on the agenda,” says its chief representative in China, Dirk Laermans. “And wherever there’s an Irish presence we want to support it.”

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a buzz word on China’s business scene, as corporations try to match the political establishment’s recent emphasis on a “harmonious society.” Giving cash to build schools and educate impoverished school children in Hebei Province fits with a new urgency in Beijing’s government to assist those who have not done so well off China’s boom. Figures compiled by the World Bank and the Chinese government suggest that less than one percent of Chinese households enjoys more than 60 percent of the country’s wealth (by comparison, five percent of the households in the United States own 60 percent of the country’s wealth).

Others are also in need of assistance from Jinde, which runs programs assisting AIDS victims as well as those of natural disasters. A snow disaster in Inner Mongolia proved a “seminal” event at the charity, says Loftus. An appeal made through the organization’s newspaper was met with an unexpectedly large response, locally and from overseas. Since then Jinde has delivered supplies to victims of floods in south and earthquakes in westerly Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Jinde delivered 140 tonnes of fertilizer after hail storms in the farming region of Nangong. “Every year since there’s been a disaster relief program.”

Loftus, from the west of Ireland, assists part time at the charity, which was established by JB Zhang, a local Catholic priest and academic, in 1997. Loftus is proud that Jinde was recently approved by government as an officially recognized charity. In spirit with a new sense of purpose, the charity recently introduced professional management systems which make more efficient use of cash. “Every project has a number and money coming in and out is going to specific programs, and the annual report details this. This means programs can grow consistently.” Drawing on donations from the Irish Ball and other sources, Jinde recently established a home for elderly people, built a primary school in an impoverished mountain area of Hebei, and has built several water towers for poor villages in the region.

Loftus’ experience of working with AIDS patients in London in the 1980s was also of help when Jinde launched its AIDS program in 2004. Several villages in Hebei were hit by the virus through people coming for medication being given infected blood at a blood transfusion center. The awareness and acceptance which happened in the UK is gradually taking hold in China. “I remember the Diana handshake [when Britain’s Princess Diana publicly shook hands with an AIDS patient] and then in China there was the Wen Jiabao handshake in 2003, which had a similar effect… Since then AIDS has become an issue for society which had to be talked about.”

Most of Jinde’s work is focused on rural regions which have not enjoyed the kind of prosperity visible in China’s major cities. WTO accession generated an estimated 13 million jobs in China but gains from accession favored urban areas. To spread the wealth around China’s 770 million-person labor force, the government, advises the World Bank, should “…stimulate demand for these services by investing in schools and hospitals and by providing or organizing financing in the form of health-care insurance options, tuition relief and social safety nets.”

Those are sentiments Jinde would agree with. The charity could be in for more cash from Irish businesses to help its efforts towards a “harmonious society.” Irish businesses are expanding fast in China and commit themselves to a bigger and more generous Irish Ball in 2008, says Paul O’Driscoll, current chairman of the Irish Network China. Internet firm Keyland acquired several Chinese recruitment websites in 2006 while Irish property developer Treasury Holdings is developing several commercial properties in Shanghai. Two of Ireland’s largest food groups, Kerry and Glanbia, both have factories in the southeast of the country supplying food ingredients for China’s baby foods and dairy product makers.

Ireland, itself a recently prosperous country, has a long tradition of giving aid to developing countries --- per capita aid donations are among the highest in the world --- while Irish natives Bono and Bob Geldof have emerged as popular champions of development issues. Irish aid agency Trocaire has assisted several Chinese charities, including Jinde, to build schools and wells in poorer regions of the country.