Red Cross Society of China: Noble Causes
Text by Ru Yuan
Alongside rapid social and economic development, charity work has gained increasing attention in China, and more diversified philanthropic organizations have emerged. However, to the general public, the Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) remains the most visible and venerable.
As a member of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, RCSC was established in March 1904. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, RCSC became the only non-governmental organization in China’s planned economy period. For much of the time since its establishment, RCSC has focused on the medical field. However, with rapid social progress and its own development, RCSC now is also very active in fields of emergency rescue, treatment, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, non-remunerated blood donation, public education on health and disease prevention, and youth programs. At the same time, with the growing strength of China, RCSC is accelerating its pace in international exchange and international humanitarian aid.
Innovating Disaster Relief
“In terms of disaster relief, RCSC has developed a multifaceted operation, growing from merely relief material distribution to an operational mode with rescue, relief, and reconstruction as major missions, and disaster prevention, alleviation, and preparedness as their foundation,” opines RCSC vice president Wang Haijing. And all these changes sprung from efforts in the wake of the massive 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake.
According to Wang, two months after the earthquake, a large number of relief materials were still piled up at airports and hadn’t been delivered to disaster-stricken areas. Plentiful poorlyorganized volunteers swarmed disaster-hit areas with empty hands, exposing gaps in RCSC’s emergency rescue efficiency. Since 2009, RCSC has placed more emphasis on constructing a standard scientific rescue system. In 2011, the “Love Homeland” program was implemented in areas affected by the Wenchuan Earthquake, including parts of Sichuan, Gansu, Shaanxi, Chongqing, Yunnan, and Ningxia.
A community-based comprehensive developmental program, “Love Homeland” focuses on organizational development, software and hardware construction, and livelihood development in communities. By establishing RCSC agencies at grassroots levels, the project aims to provide services with Red Cross features such as healthcare, disaster prevention and mitigation, constructing basic facilities and reinforcing communities’ comprehensive ability for self-development. “Communities are cells of society,” illustrates Wang Haijing. “With communities as our platform, we hope to promote humanitarian concepts, first-aid knowledge and skills, and skills in some other fields that will benefit the general public. Actually, humanitarian demand is quite high in many communities, providing RCSC a great opportunity to flex its strength.”
As for why areas affected by the Wenchuan Earthquake were chosen as pilot zones for the program, Wang outlined three reasons: First, RCSC was engaging in post-disaster reconstruction of these areas at that time, which fostered convenience for project implementation. Second, Red Cross organizations were established in most communities requiring post-disaster reconstruction at grassroots levels, facilitating project implementation. Third, software and hardware construction, and livelihood development, major tasks of the program, were urgently needed in those areas.
During its disaster relief efforts, RCSC has been attaching great importance to channeling social resources to children and rural areas, with the goal of reducing or even eliminating medical costs for poverty-stricken people injured in disasters. RCSC is also actively spreading first-aid knowledge to enhance the general public’s abilities and mutual-relief capacities.
Youth Work
Three attentive and worried Chinese students carry a “victim” onto a stretcher, and amidst applause, they swiftly take the “wounded” to receive medical treatment. It’s all part of an exercise to promote international humanitarian law, an activity organized by RCSC for its youth summer camp. The victim was just a dummy and the hospital a tent labeled with a piece of paper. The international education program exploring international humanitarian law aims to promote the emergency awareness among teenagers aged 13 to 18 as well as probing related humanitarian issues. RCSC has been sponsoring such activities in China for more than 10 years in a number of cities.
Other times, medical and first-aid training and community service remain the major activities carried out by RCSC among Chinese youth. RCSC sponsors youth activities to train them to help the elderly and the disabled and launches educational campaigns on environmental protection, science popularization, law, and healthcare. To promote voluntary service in communities, much focus has been placed on promoting social responsibility in youth and enhancing their capabilities to perform social service. Moreover, summer and winter cross-Straits exchange camps are held to enhance mutual trust and friendship.
New Challenges
Nowadays, even in “downtime”, RCSC faces both challenges and opportunities. At home, it shoulders strenuous tasks of disaster preparedness as well as social assistance. Compared with Red Cross Societies in developed Western countries, RCSC lags far behind in terms of scale, influence, and hardware and software power. Weak organization, inadequate legal framework, and poor fundraising abilities also contribute to RCSC’s deficiencies. In recent years, the time-honored organization experienced a credibility crisis among the general public. And because of its strong governmental background, as well as gigantic and complicated institutional framework, RCSC is considered by some a “staterun charitable organization.” All these problems require RCSC to make better efforts to improve its management, strengthen discipline, accelerate the elimination of unnecessary administration, and most importantly, adopt open and transparent operations.
Clearly, RCSC is also facing a more complicated international environment. With new emerging demands and challenges in realms of international humanitarian work, considerable efforts today are now closely related to security, environment, resources, and other issues concerning sustainable development. New challenges emerging from unconventional humanitarian fields like energy, climate, and counterterrorism need to be addressed. Against this backdrop, RCSC will cooperate with more countries and organizations involved in humanitarianism, expand international exchange, and make better efforts to rise to international standards.
Profile
The Red Cross Society of China was founded as the “Shanghai International Red Cross Committee” in March 1904 by patriotic Chinese merchants and philanthropists joining hands with representatives from the four Western countries of Britain, Germany, France, and the United States. The society was established during the Russo-Japanese War (19041905) to aid northeastern Chinese refugees caught in the conflict between Japan and Russia. After the war, the society was independently operated by private leadership of Chinese elites and expanded exponentially, becoming the longest-standing social organization in modern Chinese history.