Li Ka-shing Gives $64 Million to University and Makes Protest Appeal

(Bloomberg) -- Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s richest man, donated HK$500 million ($64 million) to a leading university for a research facility and expressed his faith in the youth, before appealing for an end to the social unrest gripping the city.

The Li Ka Shing Foundation, a charity foundation founded by the tycoon, made a donation to the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology for a building dedicated to synthetic bio-technologies on Thursday, it said in a statement. On Friday, Li called for calm in the city, which is in its 11th week of anti-China protests, with advertisements in major local newspapers.

“I am excited to work with HKUST, and I have faith in our next generation, together, we can contribute to the future wisely, and will stand in the forefront of this new frontier,” Li Ka-shing said in a statement.

The Hong Kong businessman is an ardent philanthropist. Two months ago, his foundation said it would pay tuition for all undergraduates in the incoming class of 2019 for four to five years at Shantou University in Guangdong, the southern Chinese province where Li came from as a refugee to Hong Kong decades ago.

To contact the reporter on this story: Shawna Kwan in Hong Kong at wkwan35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net, Stanley James, Cormac Mullen

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