A Silicon Valley businessman has donated $1 million to support a center for East Asian studies at University of California, Berkeley.

Saul Yeung's gift brings fund raising for the Chang-Lin Tien Center for East Asian Studies to $41.5 million out of a goal of $42 million.

The center, to be constructed near Doe Library on the Berkeley campus, will include two buildings, the C.V. Starr East Asian Library and the East Asian Studies Center.

Yeung's gift is designed to support, in equal parts, construction of the library and to establish a permanent Chinese Collections Endowment Fund to maintain and build the library's holdings.

Library construction is expected to begin in February 2005 with completion expected in 2007. It will be the first free-standing building in the United States entirely dedicated to East Asian collections.

Yeung, who received his master's degree from Berkeley in 1982 and has returned there to study for his doctoral degree, is founder and president of Central Group in Santa Clara.

The company has subsidiaries that specialize in computer systems, real estate, bamboo flooring, automobiles and training.