Julia Chang Bloch, president of the US China Education Trust, and a Harvard alumnus, said that Harvard will accept a student regardless of their ability to pay, but the SOHO scholarship "will level the playing field for Chinese poor students to go to Harvard."

SOHO China sees 2013 net profits slump

Pan: China's property market, another Titanic

Bloch became the first Chinese-American US ambassador when she was appointed to Nepal.

The US China Education Trust, a nonprofit organization she founded in Washington, promotes US-China relations through education and exchanges. Bloch received her master's in government and East Asia studies from Harvard.

In 1988 she and her husband Stuart Marshall Bloch established the F.Y. Chang Foundation in honor of Bloch's father, Chang Fuyun, the first Chinese national to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Their foundation offers scholarships to Chinese students studying law at Harvard. Launched in 2007, the foundation also provides the Maurice "Hank" Greenberg Scholarship to Chinese students at Yunan University and Shandong University in China.

Bloch said the contribution to Harvard "is terrific, it really shows China's rising power".

"It is an example of China's maturity as a leader, as a major power, the soft power for any major country is philanthropy," she said. "China's changing philanthropy is really in its infancy."