Charity With Chinese Characteristics

This thought-provoking book explores the functions of charitable foundations in the People's Republic of China. Using both empirical fieldwork and extensive textual analysis, it examines the role of foundations in Chinese society and their relationship with the Chinese government, and provides a new, functional perspective on the role of foundations, complementing mainstream civil society and corporatist perspectives.

Describes Chinese Philanthropy in thought and practice, and interprets its characteristics and ideas.

This book analyzes the positive changes, challenges, and corresponding solutions regarding charitable donation in China. It discusses a number of issues, including donors and their modes of donation, donation intermediaries and their behavioral characteristics, cultural and social factors influencing charitable donation, methods of raising charitable funds, ways of providing charitable assistance and innovation, and trends in the development of charitable donation mechanisms in China. Confirming previous findings and integrating theoretical and applied studies, the book draws new conclusions and offers fresh insights into the research questions. It also includes a multi-dimensional analysis of the behavioral patterns of the donors and the charitable donation mechanisms in contemporary China from integrated perspectives, with a systematic generalization of their key features and trends. Further topics explored include the community-based charity promotion mechanism and the trends in the mechanism development in China, which have seldom been touched on by other scholars in the field.

Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 sheds new light on the history of charity among Chinese overseas and its place in the history of charity in China and in the wider history of global philanthropy. It finds that diaspora charity, besides serving traditional functions of helping the sick and destitute and supporting development in China, helped to build trust among dispersed hometown networks while challenging color boundaries in host societies by contributing to wider social causes. The book shows that charitable activities among the “Gold Rush” communities of the Pacific rim—a loosely integrated émigré network from Guangdong Province perhaps better known for its business acumen and hard work among English-speaking settler societies in North America and Australasia—also led the way with social innovations that helped to shape modern charity in China. Fitzgerald and Yip’s volume demonstrates that charity lay at the heart of community life among Chinese communities overseas. From remittances accompanying letters to contributions to benevolent organizations, emigrants transferred funds in many different ways to meet urgent requirements such as disaster relief while also contributing to long-term initiatives like building schools or hospitals. By drawing attention to diaspora contributions to their host societies, the contributors correct a common misunderstanding of the historical Chinese diaspora which is often perceived by host communities as self-interested or disengaged. This important study also reappraises the value of charitable donations in the maintenance of networks, an essential feature of diaspora life across the Cantonese Pacific. “Fitzgerald and Yip’s fascinating collection is a major contribution to the growing study of charity and its relationship to social welfare. The essays show how remittances were used for much more than family support. The book fills a large gap on the almost unrecognized importance of charity among Cantonese communities in the Chinese diaspora.” —Diana Lary, University of British Columbia “This collection is a great contribution to our understanding of how important charity became among overseas Chinese in the early stages of the diaspora—between 1850 and 1949. Philanthropy was crucial in the creation of trust networks among the diasporic communities that earned Chinese recognition to the overseas communities both in China and in their host countries.” —Sue Fawn Chung, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Arthur Henderson Smith (1845 – 1932) spent 54 years as a missionary in China. During his residence there, he wrote a series of books which interpreted China to foreign readers: Chinese Characteristics, Village Life in China and The Uplift of China.

This study explores how Chinese foundations interact with grassroots social organisations (SO) and why Chinese foundations act the way they do. In addition to involving well-documented empirical investigations in China, the study was conducted using anecdotal evidence accumulated over a 10-year period from 2008 to 2019, when Chinese foundations started their interaction with other SOs.The findings show that Chinese foundations interact with grassroots SOs in six different ways, namely special funds, joint fundraising, high-engagement grantmaking, and awarding grants to projects, organisations and individuals. However, Chinese foundations' grantmaking logic does not overlap with the needs of grassroots SOs, because they do not fully understand each other's difficulties and because their focus and development paths are not the same, which results in less interaction.This book provides new and inspiring insights for scholars and students of China's emerging and flourishing third sector. It will not only interest those in academia, but will also appeal to those working in China's third sector.