Thousands of much-needed books have been pouring into China's universities and libraries from abroad, thanks to the efforts of a kind-hearted 86-year-old Chinese American scholar.

In a drive to turn around the country's shortage of study books, former librarian John T. Ma launched the Books-for-China Fund in 2004.

Since then, thanks to generous donations, a staggering 30,000 tomes have been shipped to China from the States. A container carrying a further 20,000 is expected to reach China this spring.

Ma says his efforts are inspired by his desire to aid China's development. "Studying is very hard work. I hope that young Chinese students could work hard and help build a stronger China in the future," said Ma, who emigrated to the U.S. 60 years ago.

Ma, who will celebrate his 87th birthday this month, obtained 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 Mideast affairs at New York public library before retiring.

It was during his career as a librarian, that he became aware that Chinese universities were short of old books due to historical events such as the Cultural Revolution and a shortage of funds. The situation has seriously hindered important research work.

Ma launched the Books-for-China Fund in November 2004, quickly gaining the support of several retired Chinese American scholars.

Within the space of a year, the first container of 10,000 books was shipped to the Ocean University of China. The books were then handed out to a number of universities and municipal libraries.

The public library of Wenzhou City, Ma's hometown, received a donation of around 6,000 books from the program.

Zhang Yongsu, a librarian at Wenzhou public city library, was delighted with the donation and described Ma as a "very generous" person. He said, "From 2000 to 2005, we have every edition of `Who's who in America` and they are almost new."

Zhang added that the library would never have been able to get its hands on these books had it not been for Ma's fund.

"Each one was priced at over 100 dollars. They were absolutely unaffordable for us," said Zhang.

Despite its success, the Books-for-China Fund has not been without problems, struggling to attract financing and manpower.

During the past two years, the fund has only received 20,000 U.S. dollars in donations, which barely meets the cost of collecting, listing and transporting the books.

As for the manpower aspect, 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 aged over 60, these are onerous tasks.

Nevertheless, the fund managed to send its second container of 20,000 books to China last August.

Ma believes thousands more books could be collected by the fund, as there are around 100,000 Chinese-born scholars and professors in North America. If these resources are tapped, that will mean a huge amount of books for China.

The third container of a further 20,000 books was expected to be shipped this March or April, Ma said.

Editor: Wing