Chau Chak Wing

Up to 2016, Chau, through his Kingold group, had donated a total of A$500,000 to the Australian War Museum and its Kingold Education and Media Centre was so named in recognition thereof.

In the four years from 2014 to 2018, Chau donated about A$4 million to the two major Australian political parties.

He was awarded another honorary doctorate by UTS in 2014, shortly after completion of the UTS building bearing his name.

Chau was named in an FBI investigation in the case of bribery of the former president of the United Nations General Assembly, John Ashe. The FBI alleged Dr. Chau paid John Ashe $200,000 in November 2013 via Sheri Yan, an Australian-Chinese suspected by Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) of Chinese intelligence activity on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Chau denied being a member of the Chinese Communist Party but is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, its foremost advisory body consisting of staunch loyalists. Chau has also had documented ties to the United Front Work Department since at least 2007. In February 2019, he obtained judgment in an action against Fairfax Media in New South Wales, establishing he had been defamed in The Sydney Morning Herald in a 2015 article about the affair. Fairfax Media said it would appeal.

Chau undertook in 2010 to contribute A$20 million, in instalments over ten years, towards the A$150 million construction cost of the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building (completed in 2013), part of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), together with an ancillary A$5 million scholarship fund, and, in 2015, another A$15 million for the construction of the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney. The museum is expected to open in 2020.

In May 2009, Chau, then still domiciled in Guangzhou, donated 3 million yuan to a PRC Public Security Bureau police training centre in order that society "be well managed".

In 2004, Chau established the pro-Beijing The Australian New Express Daily (Chinese: 澳洲新快网 ), a simplified character Chinese-language newspaper published in Australia under the management of his daughter Winky Chow, a former ethnic policy affairs adviser to New South Wales State Premier Bob Carr. Carr presided over its official launch. The newspaper has engaged directly in promotion of Chinese Communist Party interests in Australia.

In 2001, Chau joint-ventured with the Guangzhou, PRC, provincial government's Yangcheng Evening News to commence publishing the New Express Daily there.

A joint Four Corners and Fairfax Media investigation claimed that Chau, among others, was the subject of a briefing by ASIO warning of Chinese government influence over the Australian political system. In a follow-up media story in The Australian, Chau said that claims he was an agent of Chinese soft power were "irrational". He said successive governments since the Howard era had sought his help in promoting Australian interests in China, including being asked to lobby for Australia to win a $150 billion LNG deal with China in 2001: "In relation to Australian companies, if Australian businesses needed my assistance for development in China, I have been quietly helping them ... this has been recognised by the Australian government. I have promoted trade, Australia tourism, business and education without seeking personal gain or any favour in return. In fact it has been more a case of exercising Australian soft power in China."

Chau was born in Guangdong Province, PRC, of Chaozhou heritage, but emigrated to Hong Kong as a child in the 1970s. After further emigrating to Australia in the 1980s, he returned to live in Guangdong in 1988. Eight years later, he established the Kingold Group there.