The Study On Shanghai International Committee Of The Red Cross Society Of China

Shanghai International Committee of the Red Cross Society of China, referred to the Shanghai International Red Cross, is a non-governmental charitable organization with great integration abilities in the Anti-Japanese war. It was formally established on October 2,1937, and it was authorized by the Chinese Red Cross to conduct rescue activities independently in the Anti-Japanese War under the guidance of humanitarian spirit.Shanghai International Red Cross was organized with the help of the Chinese and foreigners from the philanthropic field who lived in Shanghai. When the war erupted, all walks of life from Shanghai rallied to rescue. With the front constantly moving backward and the number of wounded soldiers and refugees continuing to increase, however, the charitable relief groups encountered many difficulties such as lack of funds. In order to organize both the wounded rescue work and relief work more effectively in a wider range, Chinese and foreign philanthropists who lived in Shanghai appealed to Yan Huiqing, the former president of the Red Cross Society of China for an "International Committee of the Red Cross". Thanks to Yan Huiqing who supported the proposal and contacted social forces actively, the Shanghai International Red Cross was set up successfully. It built an effective organization system with the executive committee the highest organ, the work allocate being precise and with a long-term internal and external liaison mechanism. Besides, it also widely absorbed Chinese and foreign philanthropists living in Shanghai as members of the committee, so that it could quickly organized the rescue operations. In particular, foreign philanthropists’ active participation provided a lot of convenience for its external liaison and communication.Shanghai International Red Cross carried out rescue work to the best of its ability and dared to break the routine and bring about many creative thoughts on charity relief. In view of the importance of funds, it set a goal of raising ten million yuan in the first place through a series of social fundraising activities both at home and abroad such as holding the Red Cross Donation Week and founding Save a Life a Mouth Club, which opened the fund-raising situation and won the strong support of Nanjing National Government, overseas Chinese, the International Red Cross organizations in Europe and the United States and other charitable organizations and individuals. All these efforts laid a good economic foundation for carrying out rescue operations. But the Shanghai International Red Cross was lack of technical personnel and equipment, which led to quite a difficulty in carrying out the relief work. Therefore, it was necessary to integrate excellent teams and individuals from Shanghai philanthropic field. Consulting with China International Famine Relief Committee, The Director General Office was set up dealing with daily affairs. Shanghai International Red Cross also obtained the medical cooperation with the Chinese Medical Association and the Shanghai branch. On the one hand, they ran the disabled hospitals, set up prosthetics workshops, and taught the skills of making a living for wounded soldiers. On the other hand, for refugees they established a multilevel diversity medical assistance system centered on the refugee hospital refugees, based on refugee camps, the clinic and ambulatory clinic and assisted by other specialized subject hospital. And they promoted refugee health and epidemic prevention work in various forms, like launched campaigns of injecting preventive injection against typhoid fever and cholera. In addition, the commission for refugee education was given to some well-known educators, like Chen Heqin. They taught new words and vocational skills. The work was very fruitful.Because refugee relief was, however, a systematic and complicated work and the relief situation was constantly changing, the focus of work and relief strategy should be adjusted accordingly. At first, it planned to open a refugee shelter under the auspices of the France’s Jacquinot Father. Considering the situation at the time, to avoid repeated work, it decided to give up the idea and turned to assist other charitable relief organizations, mainly to help the latter improve the environmental sanitation. However, because there is no direct administrative authority, the effect is poor. Therefore, it restructured inspection agencies and other measures to strengthen supervision. However, the charitable relief organizations were gradually unable to maintain a regular operation due to lack of funds and applied for assistance. For humanitarian relief, the Shanghai International Red Cross began to bear the rations of all refugees in Shanghai alone since January,1938 and actively developed refugee subsistence standards to improve the diet of refugees, which resulted in the heavy burden of rations even if it raised a good funding before. Thus the committee took measures such as lowering the standards and transferring the refugees, to reduce the number of refugees but received tiny effects. It failed to reverse the decline even though the measure of organizing the refugee to product achieved certain results. Adding insult to injury, the owner forced the refugee shelters to move in Shanghai International Settlement. Since the Municipal Council tried to circumvent the duty, the Shanghai International Red Cross had to set aside a part of the human and financial resources for renting suitable venues and establishing new refugee camps. These pressures caused the outbreak of internal conflicts, which forced all direct relief work to stop in advance.In short, the Shanghai International Red Cross supported the Shanghai refugee relief work alone during the most difficult time and it also concerned about and supported the rest of the country’s relief work. It did make a great contribution to the ambulance and the Anti-Japanese War. Also it promoted the practice of the concept of security region in China, making "the Jacquinot Zone" a successful example of protecting civilians in time of war written into the Fourth Geneva Convention, which exerted an impact on the formulation of the International Humanitarian Law. However, due to differences in the concept of relief work between Chinese and foreign members of the committee, it resulted in early termination of direct relief work and brought about adverse effects on the Shanghai refugee relief work that had not been fully improved.