In 1970, before he became a tycoon, Chan Ting-wah initiated the establishment of a charitable foundation in Hong Kong. Through the foundation, he made annual donations to charitable organizations in Hong Kong and overseas, and after the 1980s, Mr. Chan expanded his giving to the mainland. According to the management of the foundation, the prerequisite for Mr. Chan Ting-wah to donate money is that his name and the names of his family members should not be in the newspaper, or else they will not get any donation from him next time. For this reason, Mr. Chen's many donations in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Zhejiang are often referred to as "John Doe". It is roughly estimated that the total amount of donations made by Chen Tinghua and his foundations in the decades since their founding is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Before the end of 1986, he donated money to his hometown Ningbo for culture, education, medical care, health and public welfare and charity, with an accumulated amount of 11.23 million yuan. 1987, Chen Tinghua donated 1.65 million yuan to his alma mater, Siyanshiqi Elementary School, for two times, to help build a teaching building and a comprehensive experimental building; he also helped to build a middle school in Siyanshiqi, kindergarten in Yunlong Town of Yin County, Donghai Primary School in Yunlong Town, and Donghai Primary School in Xu Village, Yunlong Town, which are located at the front of the school. Xu Village Donghai Primary School, Yunlong Town Middle School, as well as the library of Ningbo Xiushi Middle School, the hospitalization building of Ningbo Third Hospital, Ningbo Swimming Club, etc.; he also presented a large number of medical instruments and equipments and ambulances to Ningbo BaoLi Hospital, Women's and Children's Hospital, the Second Hospital, the Third Hospital, etc.; in order to facilitate the production and life of the people of his hometown, he contributed several times to the construction of the Nanfeng Bridge and Miyan Bridge of Yinxian County. At the same time, Chen Tinghua has also donated huge sums of money to his hometown, Ningbo, in a timely manner under the name of "John Doe", which is often used in his donations, through Ningbo and Hong Kong Ningbo-Hong Kong Friendship Association, Ningbo Fellowship Association, and other civic organizations in Ningbo and Hong Kong to provide relief to the disaster-stricken areas and to help the poor and the needy. Only the above items, the cumulative total has exceeded 30 million yuan.
Besides Ningbo, Chen Tinghua has also made a number of donations in other parts of Zhejiang Province, including the construction of Hope Primary School and Nanfeng High-tech Building of Zhejiang University.
In his place of residence, Hong Kong, Mr. Chan has made donations to Shue Yan College (scholarships), the Hong Kong Retinitis Pigmentosa Society (support for retinal degenerative disease research), the Po Leung Kuk Wai Yen Academy (operating expenses), the Friends of Tongji (support for teaching facilities), the Hong Kong Red Cross (disaster relief), and the Hong Kong Legislative Council (support for the construction of a library of Hong Kong's Basic Law), to name but a few.
At the same time, Chen Tinghua also donated huge sums of money to the Project Hope in the Mainland and the Shanghai Charity Federation through the Chen Tinghua Foundation of Hong Kong. 1993, the Chen Tinghua Foundation began to donate to the China Youth Development Foundation for the "Project Hope", and donated 600 elementary school of hope for four consecutive batches, with a donation amounting to 120 million yuan! The donation amounted to 120 million yuan, accounting for one-fifteenth of the total amount of Project Hope donated to the whole country at that time. The 600 Hope Schools donated by Chen Tinghua Foundation are distributed in 28 provinces, districts and cities, which is very rare in the whole Project Hope program in China, and since 1998, Chen Tinghua Foundation has also financed 36 training courses and trained 446 principals and backbones of Fuhua Hope Primary Schools. Chen Tinghua is very fond of his second hometown, Shanghai. By April 1999, the Chen Tinghua Foundation had donated more than 47 million RMB to the Shanghai Charity Federation for the "elderly, poverty alleviation, schooling, and relief of the poor".
In Qiandongnan Prefecture of Guizhou Province, thanks to the generous donations of the Hong Kong Chen Tinghua Foundation and Chen Hua himself, the backward education situation in one poor mountainous township after another has been fundamentally improved, and one school building after another has sprung up like bamboo shoots in the mountains, and children who have not been out of school have gone back to school, so the poor mountainous areas have also seen the hope.
Chen Tinghua was also a keen supporter of the development of culture and art. He contributed to the prosperity of Peking Opera in China, and personally served as the honorary head of the China Junior Peking Opera Art Troupe.