We are used to a mental picture of social entrepreneurs as social workers who, however, also speak the language of business.

We understand by “entrepreneurship” that they are trying to be financially sustainable. We also expect some special aspect they display to make what we have mentally categorised as “social” as in ”social work.”

So we are not surprised by an Indian medical doctor who has created a very efficient clinic where the poor get what is normally expensive treatment.

A famous instance is where standard eye operations, for cataracts, are performed at a low price because the procedure has been made very efficient and mass scale. We understand that the service is rendered by “socially” motivated persons.

We are not surprised by a young girl in an advanced country who organises healthy well-to-do younger persons to visit and give company to elderly persons unable to get around much. She does so by harnessing persons with free time and a social conscience.

Many social entrepreneurs utilise IT to give a service to the poor that hitherto was the preserve of the middle class or wealthy.

Social entrepreneurs have been organised and given a movement by some outstanding persons who have set up institutions in mainly the US, though the present government of the UK has now raised the bar with Cameron’s Big Society.

The doyen of the intellectuals shaping the “social entrepreneur” movement is Bill Drayton, who founded the largest organisation in this field in Washington, DC, called “Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.”

Ashoka had its inspiration in India, Vinoba Bhave in particular. Yet it is quintessentially an American organisation with a US locus. As may be expected, Drayton does not give a sentimental story. Rather, he bases his work and vision on hard theory and historic analysis.

Drayton and the US intellectuals in this field see social entrepreneurship as a kind of business enterprise that will be at least equal in size to regular capitalist profit-driven business quite soon in time. Drayton sees history marching forward to making this the business model of the future.

Moreover, through Ashoka, he has given the world a well worked out model of business chains, which at the first approximation will be what they call hybrid value chains.

Drayton has kept increasing the ante as it were. He and Ashoka have found empathy to be the basic ingredient of social entrepreneurship and indeed all social enterprise. They declare that everyone by the time they reach 21 should be aware of empathy and have practical experience in social enterprise.

And now the Chinese have plunged into social entrepreneurship, with what are now customary vigour and zeal. The young educated Chinese, now emerging in a vast outpouring from colleges, want to be part of modern social entrepreneurship.

Moreover, now China has many academic departments in this field, replete with professors of social innovation.

I have seen among the well-to-do of Manila and in the US, similar ventures. But China is different. It is very large and has a powerful inner drive.

Further, China is rich. Disparities, misconduct, wrong management and corruption are global attributes. They exist in China too. There are relatively very poor persons in China. Yet the country has advanced a great deal over the past decades. It is not a Third World poor country.

As countries may be classified, China is rich. Its people have access to services and food, clothing and housing that are a far cry from the real poor of the world.

Generally, poverty and poor communities resemble each other, and there is a universal poverty culture and level at the bottom. Yet there are also differences between regions.

The very poor in Bangkok may be in technical assessment poorer than the African average, despite high average incomes. Still there is a tangible difference between poverty in these two areas.

In the case of China, social entrepreneurs are educated, by and large, and at least have the support of very educated technical persons.

Social enterprises differ by the economic conditions of their societies. So China is going to bring out lots of enterprises that may not seem to be for real in other countries.

And this is where we come in.

We, in Africa and South Asia, can offer a field where young social entrepreneurs of a rich and technologically advanced country, China, could work with our own social entrepreneurs.

It is a rich field. The theory is known to all. We start with empathy at the core. And Africans are very open to empathy. Then come the hybrid value chains.

We in South Asia and Africa are throttled by supply chains, both national and international. The improvements that can provide outstanding value return are easy to find. And the teams, Drayton’s Teams of Teams, are also what can be formed by complementary Third World-Chinese partnerships.

Last May, China held its Fourth Annual Social Innovation Week, supported by a state firm, Cinnovate. It had features sponsored by German, American, British, and Japanese organisations.

But its success lay in the very large numbers of Chinese innovators, entrepreneurs and those wanting to be the same.

Chinese delegations from all the leading growth cities were present. It was clearly a movement. China has appointed a Minister for Poverty Alleviation and Housing. China recognises the movement.

The innovations shown easily fall into the economic and cultural human rights as declared by the United Nations. In character, we have here a very “human movement.” It represents the future of China and probably the new social entrepreneurship that will flood the world.

Darin Gunesekera is a former advisor of the Capital Markets Authority, Kenya, and is also a member of “African Journalists for Social Entrepreneurship”.