Ordinary Chinese do not use calculus to figure out which school needs donations the most, but we do have two colorful sayings that correspond to the rule of microeconomics: "Adding flowers to a big bouquet", and "Sending charcoal to someone trapped in snow." You get more bang for your buck if you do the latter, but that will require independent thinking.
Most investors, professional or otherwise, would follow the herd mentality and chase objects everyone else is already hotly pursuing. You would feel you have rubbed off some of the glitter if you give money to Harvard or Tsinghua University in China. In fact, the top universities in China get proportionately much more in both private donations and public funding. They are the largest, most-prominent bouquets in the garden of higher education, and throwing roses or petals at them would probably yield more psychological returns than tangible ones.
By this yardstick, the problem with charity recipients is not their nationality, but rather which is in dire need of such help. Harvard may have a much larger budget than Tsinghua, which, in turn, is much better funded than a regular college in China. The ones most worthy of such financial assistance, as the logic goes, are those in poverty-stricken areas that cater to the lowest-income families.
As I gather from empirical evidence, this social stratum is given short shrift and deserves a strong and consistent inflow of funding. Education, if it be the great equalizer, should give students from underprivileged families equal opportunities so they can make a fresh start with their lives. But philanthropy alone is unable to solve this problem. It has to be from the State, which is implementing all kinds of programs for that purpose, but there is still great room for improvement.
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