主 题：Responsibility, legitimacy, morality: Chinese humanitarianism in historical perspective
主讲人：Hanna Bianca Krebs Research Officer
Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute
时 间：9月26日（星期五）12:00-14:00
地 点：302会议室
Humanitarianism as a concept and practice is deeply ingrained in China’s history, starting with hydraulic systems for flood control in ancient China, through to civil mutual aid societies, ancestral halls, or Buddhist monasteries in the following centuries. Western humanitarian actors came to supplement China’s rich, indigenous philanthropy for centuries, mutually shaping their cultures of care.
The present paper seeks to shed some light on China’s understanding of humanitarianism in a historical perspective. It argues that although there has always been a kaleidoscope of divergent cultural influences in China, no other philosophy has influenced China’s state and people as consistently, sustainably and fundamentally as Confucianism. Throughout imperial times, the Republican era, and even during the height of Maoist years, it was the Confucian concept of responsibility and legitimacy which has shaped China’s understanding of humanitarianism.
