China's largest private charity elects new chiefs

GUANGZHOU - Ma Weihua, the former governor of China Merchants Bank, will take the helm of One Foundation, China's largest private charity, it announced on Monday.

The charity's board of directors on Monday voted that Ma should succeed economist Zhou Qiren as the new chairman of One Foundation, while Du Peng, head of Shenzhen's civil affairs bureau, won the vote to become head of the board of supervisors.

The foundation was established in 2010 in Shenzhen of south China's Guangdong Province with a registered capital of 50 million yuan (8.25 million U.S. dollars). It has brought together funding from several separate charities headed by leading Chinese entrepreneurs, including the one founded by actor Jet Li in 2007 along with the Red Cross Society of China.

Donations to the fund topped 470 million yuan in the first nine months of last year, a financial report issued in the third quarter of 2013 showed.

The foundation said it will continue to focus on disaster relief in the next three years, with special attention dedicated to enhanced disaster preparedness and response in southwest China and ongoing reconstruction of the quake-hit Ya'an in Sichuan Province.

One Foundation's board of director boasts many senior Chinese private businessmen including Jack Ma from e-commerce giant Alibaba, Liu Chuanzhi from Lenovo, the world's largest PC maker, and Wang Shi from China's biggest real estate firm Vanke.