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Bill Gates and Warren Buffett recently called for all billionaires to give away half of their wealth. Here in China a guy called Wang Zhenyao took note. Wang, the head of China’s first philanthropic research institute, is calling on all Chinese billionaires to donate a million yuan, or about $150,000 US dollars a year to charity. Wang says multimillionaires should give the equivalent of about $15,000 US dollars.

Now earlier in our Hot Comments section we mentioned the plans of Chinese philanthropist Chen Guangbiao to donate his wealth to the charity foundation set up by Bill Gates -the founder of Microsoft.

Gates and investor Warren Buffett are behind the Giving Pledge campaign which calls on the most affluent families and inpiduals in the US to donate at least 50 percent of their fortune to philanthropy in their lifetimes or soon after their deaths. So far around 40 American magnates have signed up.

Here in China 50 super-rich Chinese recently received an invitation to a banquet with Buffett and Gates during their visit to Beijing later this month. However, some of them reportedly hesitated about accepting - worried that the cost of the evening would be charity pledges. Our reporter Julia Liu went out on the streets of Beijing and asked some less wealthy Chinese people what they thought about this financial shyness.

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Microblog Travelogue

This is the local government office in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region where a local man burned himself to death last week. According to his family, Ruan Guangrui, a farmer from the rural area of Dongsun near Baise City, committed suicide outside the gates of the district government to protest at grass-roots corruption.

His widow, Deng, said the 49-year-old was angry that officials refused to listen to their complaints about graft.

"It's all because of his report on the corruption case. He said he wanted to use his death to draw the attention of the authorities. He wasn't able to sleep for a month, turning the case over and over in his mind. The report was submitted to the local police department, but it was dismissed."