Thanks to the efforts of a kind-hearted Chinese American scholar, aged 86, thousands of much-needed books have been arriving at Chinese universities and libraries from abroad. In a bid to address the country's shortage of study books the former librarian John T. Ma launched the Books-for-China Fund in 2004.

 

And thanks to generous donations a massive 30,000 volumes have been shipped to China from the US. A further delivery of 20,000 books is expected to arrive in the spring.

 

Ma says his efforts are inspired by his desire to assist with China's development. "Studying is very hard work. I hope that young Chinese students can work hard and help build a stronger China in the future," said Ma. He moved to the US 60 years ago.

 

Ma, who'll celebrate his 87th birthday this month, earned a master's degree in journalism at the University of Wisconsin before studying at Columbia University for another master's degree in library science.

 

He then went on to become the curator-librarian at the East Asia Library of the Hoover Institute of Stanford University and a consultant on Asian and Mid-east affairs at New York Public Library before retiring.

 

During his career he became aware that Chinese universities were short of books due to historical events such as the Cultural Revolution and there was a lack of funds. The situation has seriously hindered important research work.

 

Ma launched the Books-for-China Fund in 2004 and quickly gained the support of several retired Chinese American scholars. Within the space of a year 10,000 books were shipped to the Ocean University of China. They were then distributed to a number of universities and municipal libraries.

 

The public library of Wenzhou City, Ma's hometown, received a donation of 6,000 books through the program. Zhang Yongsu, a librarian at Wenzhou public city library, was delighted with the donation and described Ma as a "very generous" man. He said, "From 2000 to 2005 we've every edition of 'Who's Who in America' and they are almost new." Zhang said the library would never have been able to get hold of the books without Ma's fund. "Each one was priced at over US$100. They were absolutely unaffordable for us." 

 

Despite its success the Books-for-China Fund has had problems and struggles to attract financing and manpower. In the past two years the fund has only received US$20,000 in donations. This barely meets the cost of collecting, listing and transporting the books.

 

As for manpower the fund is in serious need of young, energetic people to help with liaison work and the building of a website. For the 12 formal members of the fund, who are all over 60, these are onerous tasks. Nevertheless the fund managed to send its second delivery of 20,000 books to China last August.

 

Ma believes thousands more books could be collected as there are around 100,000 Chinese-born scholars and professors in North America. If these resources were tapped that could result in a huge number of books arriving in China.

 

A third delivery of a further 20,000 books was expected to be shipped in March or April, Ma said.

 

(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2007)