ABSTRACT
The boom of internet philanthropy and artificial intelligence has fundamentally transformed China’s non-profit sector. As the authoritarian Party-state has cracked down on independent civil society organizations and philanthropic funding from foreign donors and international NGOs has plummeted, crowdfunding and small-scale online donations have become a critical source of revenue for many non-profit organizations.
The digitization of philanthropy aligns with the Chinese Communist Party and state’s “internet+” strategy, which bets on digital innovation and big data applications to improve socio-economic governance. Tech platform providers and their corporate philanthropic foundations advance the use of “charitable big data” and integrate charity projects into their existing, widely used social media or e-commerce applications such as WeChat/Weixin, Alipay, or Taobao. Philanthropic, corporate social responsibility and business activities are closely entangled in tech giants’ “smart philanthropy” models. These trends have been reinforced by Tencent’s annual “99 Giving Day”, which focuses on gamification and user participation.
Charity regulation by the authoritarian Party-state, namely the 2016 Charity Law, has contributed to professionalization and increased transparency standards but also reinforced corporate oligopolies by mandating “internet fundraising information platforms” to be used by all fundraising NGOs.
Artificial intelligence is also directly applied in philanthropic projects, including controversial technologies such as facial recognition. Alibaba even uses philanthropy to recruit “AI trainers” and improve its generative AI models.
Given China’s international norm-shaping ambitions in the sphere of internet governance, Chinese AI philanthropy innovations have global implications and are already diffusing to countries in the Global South.
