UC Irvine

The large-scale migration that resulted in the rapid growth of Shanghai during the early twentieth century brought wealth and international recognition to the city, but also created a number of social problems that reformers and philanthropists struggled to address. These social problems included several issues related to child welfare, and both foreign and Chinese residents of the city attempted to save children from kidnapping, abuse, poor living conditions, and poverty. Working together and in parallel, expatriate and Chinese advocates created a child welfare system that was private, fragmented, and voluntary.

After the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, child welfare work focused on addressing the needs of young refugees and homeless children; resolving these social problems stood as the primary goal of private charities and the local government throughout the civil war (1945-1949) and into the early years of the People's Republic of China. Although private charity institutions, both foreign and Chinese, continued to operate in the city after the communist government took over, by 1953, they had been consolidated under the auspices of the Shanghai Municipal Government.

This dissertation traces the history of child welfare work in Shanghai from the beginning of the twentieth century until 1953. It presents child aid efforts in the city as a site of Chinese-foreign cooperation, and examines the attitudes that foreigners and Chinese displayed toward Chinese children, their lives, and their futures. Through this research, we can gain a better understanding of the history of children and childhood in China during decades of great change, as well as see the ways that Shanghai's Chinese and foreign communities worked together to improve the welfare of the city's smallest and most vulnerable residents. The examination of popular culture materials produced for children offers insight into how social ills like child homelessness and poverty were explained to a juvenile audience, and how that message changed after the implementation of communist rule in 1949. Child welfare work in Shanghai reflected discourses about children and society's obligations toward them that circulated far beyond China in the first decades of the twentieth century.