About Red Cross Society of China

Red Cross Society of China

The Red Cross Society of China (RCSC) is the national Red Cross society of the People's Republic of China and one of the largest humanitarian organisations in the country. Headquartered in Beijing, with branches in every province-level division, it is a member of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, recognised by the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1912 and a member of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies since 1919, when it was among the Federation's first members. Its official website is redcross.org.cn.

The society reports some 7.5 million individual members, around 100 corporate members and about 310,000 volunteers, with some 70,000 employees recorded in reference entries. Its work spans emergency assistance and disaster relief, health services, first-aid training, blood and organ donation promotion and humanitarian aid both inside China and internationally. It is governed under the Red Cross Law of the People's Republic of China, first adopted in 1993 and revised in 2017. Its honorary president is Han Zheng, its president He Wei, and its executive vice president Wang Ke, according to current reference listings.

Founding in Shanghai in 1904

The Red Cross Society of China was founded in Shanghai on 10 March 1904 as the Shanghai International Red Cross Committee, during the Russo-Japanese War. Its founders were a group of Chinese business and political leaders led by the Shanghai tea merchant Shen Dunhe, with the Qing official Sheng Xuanhuai among its founding figures. Shen chose the Red Cross emblem deliberately: the neutrality symbolised by the Red Cross allowed Chinese relief teams to enter the Manchurian war zones, where Russian forces had refused Chinese entry, in order to aid Chinese civilians caught in the fighting between Japan and Russia on Chinese soil.

The new society drew support from government officials, Chinese elites and Western medical workers resident in China, and its relief operation in the northeast aided more than a quarter of a million people. From the beginning it combined Chinese traditions of local charitable organisation with the international Red Cross framework, an origin examined in Harvard Fairbank Center scholarship on the society's first century. The founding in wartime, by civic initiative rather than state decree, gave the Chinese Red Cross a distinctive place among the country's early modern voluntary organisations.

Expansion and international recognition before 1949

After the Russo-Japanese War the society expanded rapidly into peacetime relief. It opened Red Cross hospitals in Shanghai and other cities, and local chapters multiplied as Chinese citizens joined an organisation that carried international connections and an aura of modernity. By the 1920s there were more than 300 local Red Cross chapters across China. The International Committee of the Red Cross recognised the society in 1912, following the establishment of the Republic of China, and the society formally joined the International Federation in 1919 as one of its first members.

The young society also acted internationally. In 1906, after the San Francisco earthquake and fire, the Chinese Red Cross sent 20,000 silver taels to its San Francisco counterpart for relief work. In 1923, after the Great Kantō earthquake in Tokyo, it sent a relief team, crates of medicines and almost 20,000 Chinese dollars to Japan. During the Second Sino-Japanese War the society ran wartime medical relief under difficult conditions, and in 1937 administrative rules renamed the body the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China — a society that continues to exist separately today, based in Taiwan. The leadership of the Chinese Red Cross in the 1920s to 1940s was closely tied to the American and British Red Cross societies, the Nationalist government and the Shanghai business community.

Reorganisation after 1949

After the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, the Red Cross organisation was reorganised in Beijing under the name Red Cross Society of China, and it was admitted to the International Federation in 1950. The reorganised society became the recognised national society for the People's Republic of China within the international movement, while the Republic of China society continued on Taiwan. Since the early 1990s the two societies have negotiated arrangements to facilitate exchanges of individuals across the Taiwan Strait, including cases involving migrants and fugitives, giving the RCSC a practical humanitarian role in cross-strait affairs.

The Hong Kong Red Cross and the Macau Red Cross became autonomous branches of the Red Cross Society of China after the handovers of Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau in 1999. Both retain their own identities and histories — the Hong Kong branch traces its own origins to 1950 — while forming part of the national society's structure. The society's headquarters and national leadership are in Beijing, and its branch network covers every province-level division of the country, extending down through municipal and county-level societies.

Legal framework and governance

The modern RCSC operates under the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Red Cross Society, adopted in 1993 and revised in 2017. The law defines the society's duties, which include preparing for and participating in disaster relief, promoting first-aid knowledge and training, organising blood donation and related public-health work, and carrying out humanitarian assistance in line with the principles of the international movement. The society is funded by public and private donations, and reference sources record donation revenue on the order of US$220 million in the cited reporting year.

Governance is headed by a national congress and council. Han Zheng serves as honorary president, He Wei as president and Wang Ke as executive vice president. The society's scale — millions of individual members, hundreds of thousands of volunteers and tens of thousands of staff — makes it one of the largest national societies in the International Federation, and its branch structure gives it a presence in communities across China that few other social organisations match.

Disaster relief work

Disaster relief is the society's most visible function. It maintains emergency-response teams, warehouses and relief-supply systems through its branch network and deploys them after earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters in China. In the 2008 Sichuan earthquake year the society received 1.537 billion yuan in donations for relief work, a figure recorded in its published history, reflecting the surge of public giving that followed that disaster. Alongside the China Charity Federation, the RCSC is one of the few national social organisations authorised to receive public disaster donations, a status that places it at the centre of China's emergency philanthropy.

The society also provides international humanitarian aid as a member of the International Federation, cooperating with sister societies worldwide in response to disasters and emergencies abroad — a role that continues the outward-looking relief tradition begun with San Francisco in 1906 and Tokyo in 1923. Within China, its local chapters run community-level preparedness, sanitation and first-aid station work of the kind documented in archival collections of its operational reports held by the United States National Library of Medicine.

Health, first aid and donation programmes

Beyond disaster response, the society organises blood drives and medical services in urban and rural areas, promotes first-aid training, health education and disease prevention, and supports voluntary blood, stem-cell and organ donation work. Its named charitable programmes include the Red Cross Angel medical-aid programme, which assists patients with serious illnesses such as leukaemia, and Bo'ai — universal love — programmes directed at vulnerable communities. First-aid training for the public, including in schools, workplaces and transport settings, is a longstanding part of its mandate under the Red Cross Law.

The society's health work extends to community sanitation campaigns, the establishment of community first-aid stations and trainings, and public-health education. Its combination of a nationwide branch network, a legal mandate and a large volunteer base makes it a delivery partner for public-health initiatives that reach below the level of the state hospital system, into villages, schools and neighbourhoods.

The Guo Meimei affair and public trust

In 2011 the society's public standing was damaged by the Guo Meimei scandal, in which a young woman who falsely claimed a connection to a Red Cross-linked commercial organisation displayed a lavish lifestyle online, triggering a national controversy about how charitable donations were managed. Donations to the society fell, and the affair became a landmark case in Chinese debates about charity transparency. The society responded with measures on disclosure and oversight, and the episode is routinely cited in scholarship on Chinese philanthropy — including Caroline Reeves's history of the society's first century — as a turning point in public expectations of charitable governance in China.

The revised Red Cross Law of 2017 formed part of the broader legal response to that era's concerns, strengthening provisions on the management and supervision of donations. The society continues to publish accounts of its donation income and relief operations, conscious that its authority to receive public disaster donations depends on maintaining public trust.

The society today

Today the Red Cross Society of China operates from Beijing as the country's national Red Cross society, with branches in every province-level division, the Hong Kong and Macau societies as autonomous branches, millions of members and an official web presence at redcross.org.cn. It marked more than 120 years since its 1904 founding as a civic relief committee in wartime Shanghai — a history that has carried it, uninterrupted in some form, through the Qing dynasty's fall, the republican era, war, and the People's Republic.

For researchers and directory users, the RCSC should be distinguished from the Red Cross Society of the Republic of China in Taiwan, from its own Hong Kong and Macau branches, and from China Red Cross News, a newspaper title profiled separately in this directory. The society itself remains what its founders made it in 1904: China's national organisation for Red Cross relief, health and humanitarian work, operating under the red cross emblem within the worldwide movement.