China's rich showed increasing enthusiasm about making big donations to the nonprofit sector and most of their donations, including pledges, went to universities in 2012, according to a new report.

Last year saw charitable gifts of 4.9 billion yuan ($787 million) and pledges of 60 billion yuan from the country's top 100 individual donors, according to the China Philanthropy Research Institute of Beijing Normal University.

The total value was five times that of the previous year, it said.