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13 - The Resurrection of Lei Feng

Rebuilding the Chinese Party-State’s Infrastructure of Volunteer Mobilization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2020

By
David A. Palmer  and
Rundong Ning
Edited by
Grzegorz Ekiert ,
Elizabeth J. Perry  and
Xiaojun Yan
Grzegorz Ekiert
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Elizabeth J. Perry
Affiliation:
Harvard University, Massachusetts
Xiaojun Yan
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
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Summary

Following the Sichuan earthquake of 12 May 2008, hundreds of thousands of volunteers spontaneously joined the relief effort – a loosely organized grassroots movement that caught both the Chinese government and international observers by surprise. A few months later, at the Beijing Olympic games, over 100,000 well-organized volunteers efficiently catered to the needs of visitors. With these two events, volunteerism became visible as a mass phenomenon in China. From then on, the state gave volunteering an increased level of support and legitimacy, in order to promote and channel volunteering as a form of social service. The Communist Party Youth League and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, with their networks reaching down to student cells in schools and residents’ committees in the neighbourhoods, developed increasingly comprehensive and systematic programmes to recruit and deploy volunteers to care for the elderly, help out at major sporting and diplomatic events, give tutoring support for migrant children, engage in environmental cleanups, or travel as volunteer teachers to remote rural and ethnic minority regions.

Type
Chapter
Information
Ruling by Other Means
State-Mobilized Movements
 , pp. 314 - 344
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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