In December the group created a new asset management unit, China MerchantsCapital, to oversee private equity and alternative investments (Fu is its chairman and CEO).
When community groups send out appeals for help, convince local merchants to volunteer supplies and staff the tables providing coffee and donuts for the volunteers, we create the social capital which the political scientist Robert Putnam has identified as crucial to healthy societies. (His famous example was that of the choral societies of northern Italy).