PHILANTHROPY AND PUBLIC WELFARE IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA (CANTON, KWANGTUNG, CHARITY)

Charity and welfare in traditional Chinese society were properly the responsibility of families and lineages, and yet there were in China any number of indigent people who did not have recourse to those traditional sources of aid.; In the nineteenth century native Chinese welfare institutions and organized local philanthropies frequently operated practically side-by-side with charities run by foreign Christian missionaries. Those missionaries often took a dim view of the "heathen" welfare measures, claiming that only Christian charity could motivate "true benevolence." Some missionaries castigated the Chinese for what they did for the relief of suffering, while others praised them and hoped only that they would be enlightened by Christian truths.; Both views were widely published in China and "at home" and helped form and perpetuate the popular image of the backwards, selfish heathen who needed to be guided by Christian morals and, implicitly, Western values. In regard to Chinese relief efforts, those views have gone largely unchallenged for nearly a century, yet Chinese written records can be used to refute the idea that the Chinese lacked any sense of "true benevolence" expressed through action.; This thesis examines certain permanent, non-emergency relief activities of the Chinese state and private organized philanthropies in the nineteenth century. It focuses on Canton, a treaty port with a large number of foreign residents and a large number of indigent Chinese, and makes reference to other locations in Kwangtung Province and southeast China.; This paper uses both Chinese and Western missionary accounts to trace the development and reveal the functions of Chinese agencies to care for the poor, the aged, the orphaned, the widowed, the sick and the blind. It looks for reasons beyond religion for the founding of non-kin relief organizations and attempts to show and evaluate the kinds of native Chinese relief that were available to the truly indigent and helpless.