Red Cross Society of China
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| Founded | March 10, 1904 |
|---|---|
| Founder |
Sheng Xuanhuai Shen Dunhe |
| Type | Aid agency |
| Focus | Helping the refugees in times of conflict and providing assistance to disaster victims |
| Location | |
| Origins | Shanghai |
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Area served
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People's Republic of China |
| Product | Humanitarian Aid |
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Members
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100 corporate members, 7,500,000 individual members and 310,000 volunteers |
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Key people
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Li Yuanchao (honorary President), Chen Zhu (President), Xu Ke (Chinese: 徐科) (Executive Vice President) |
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Revenue
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US$ 220 million (donations) |
| Endowment | Public and private donations |
|
Employees
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70,000 |
| Website | www |
| Red Cross Society of China | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | |||||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | |||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Zhōngguó Hóngshízìhuì |
| Wade–Giles | Chung-kuo Hung-shih-tzu-hui |
The Red Cross Society of China (Chinese: 中国红十字会) is the national Red Cross Society in the People's Republic of China.
The Red Cross Society of China was founded as the "Shanghai International Red Cross Committee" on March 10, 1904. It was established during the Russo-Japanese War. The founders of the Chinese Red Cross were a group of Chinese business and political leaders, led by Shanghai tea merchant Shen Dunhe. Shen chose to use the Red Cross aegis for his group because the neutrality provided by the Red Cross symbol allowed Chinese relief teams into the Manchurian war zones to aid Chinese civilians caught in the conflict between Japan and Russia. Shen created a Red Cross organization made up of wealthy Chinese and prominent Westerners living in China. This new Red Cross Society, supported by government officials, Chinese elites and Western medical workers provided aid to more than a quarter of a million people in China's northeast.
After the Russo-Japanese War, the Chinese Red Cross Society expanded exponentially, now providing peacetime relief as well. There was no shortage of natural disasters in China for the new group to work on. Floods, famine and fire were endemic in the first half of China's 20th century, along with the outbreak of civil war. The Society opened Red Cross hospitals in Shanghai and in other cities, while local Red Cross chapters blossomed throughout the country, staffed and funded by Chinese eager to participate in patriotic activities, particularly as part of an organization with international connections and an aura of "modernity." By the 1920s, there were over 300 Red Cross chapters in China.
The ICRC recognized the Red Cross Society of China in 1912 after the establishment of the Republic of China. The Red Cross Society of China formally joined the International Federation in 1919 and was one of the first members. During the 1920s, the Red Cross Society of China contributed to help other countries hit by natural disasters. In 1906, during the San Francisco earthquake and fire that killed 3,000 and destroyed the city, the Chinese Red Cross sent 20,000 silver taels to its San Francisco counterpart to help with relief efforts. In 1923, after the great Tokyo earthquake, the Chinese Red Cross sent a relief team, crates of medicines, and almost $20,000 (in 1923 Chinese dollars) to Japan. The Society's leadership from the 1920s-1940s was closely tied with the American and British Red Cross societies, the Kuomintang government and the Shanghai business community. In 1937, while the Second Sino-Japanese War was raging on, the Act of Administrative Rules and Procedures of the Republic of China Red Cross Society (中華民國紅十字會管理條例施行細則) was passed, and the society was renamed Red Cross Society of the Republic of China, a society that still exists today, but located in Taiwan.
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