Yang Guoqiang

A foundation established by Yang Guoqiang, founder and Chairman of the real estate giant Country Garde, donated 2.2 billion yuan ($317 million) to Tsinghua University on October 22, the largest donation a Chinese university has ever received.

The aim of the organization, co-founded by Yang with his daughter Yang Huiyan in 2013, is to support the development of education, science, culture, healthcare and sports in China.

Yang said at the donation ceremony at Tsinghua University that as a farmer-turned-entrepreneur, he felt honored to support educational development thus rewarding both society and the country at large.

Born to a rural family in Shunde City of south China's Guangdong Province in 1954, Yang was a construction contractor before developing the first Country Garden project in 1992. Country Garden went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007, raising $1.6 billion. In 2008, Yang purchased 75 percent of the shares of TVB, a commercial television station in Hong Kong.

Yang has won a number of awards for his contribution to eradicating poverty in China previously.