The digital life of goodness: National heroes, NGOs, and commercialised charity in China
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis studies a historical redress movement which aims at assisting and honouring the Kuomintang (KMT) veterans who fought in the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45) but, due to contemporary politics, have lived in straitened circumstances in China since 1949. Unlike the World War II veterans of other countries who received support and recognition for their service, the Chinese veterans suffered great injustices for their political identities during the communist period. The majority of surviving veterans—who usually live in impoverished rural areas—continue to struggle through abject poverty. To right those perceived historical wrongs, in the late 1990s, local activists from different regions began to conduct peer-to-peer caregiving programmes in their native setting. The last decade has seen that foundation be developed further by charitable NGOs which brand the KMT veterans as ‘national heroes’ through online platforms. These organisations transform the early scattered grassroots activities into a charity project that receives political support, financial resources, and societal recognition. Foregrounding the institutional production and social networking among different stakeholders, this ethnographic study interrogates a new modality of doing good as featured in the digital turn of Chinese society: the e-commercialised charity. Building on intensive fieldwork focusing on NGOs and activist communities, this dissertation closely examines the social-mediatization and digital-financialization of redress activism in China. After the introduction, chapters 2 and 3 document the historical development of the redress phenomenon with an institutional ethnography. Chapter 4 concentrates on the moral experience of the local activists who consistently provide care to those they consider authentic national heroes in different regions. Chapter 5 shows the regionalization and nativism of the hero-making programme, unpacking a phenomenon of solidarity centred on the…
abstract: This thesis studies a historical redress movement which aims at assisting and honouring the Kuomintang (KMT) veterans who fought in the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45) but, due to contemporary politics, have lived in straitened circumstances in China since 1949. Unlike the World War II veterans of other countries who received support and recognition for their service, the Chinese veterans suffered great injustices for their political identities during the communist period. The majority of surviving veterans—who usually live in impoverished rural areas—continue to struggle through abject poverty. To right those perceived historical wrongs, in the late 1990s, local activists from different regions began to conduct peer-to-peer caregiving programmes in their native setting. The last decade has seen that foundation be developed further by charitable NGOs which brand the KMT veterans as ‘national heroes’ through online platforms. These organisations transform the early scattered grassroots activities into a charity project that receives political support, financial resources, and societal recognition. Foregrounding the institutional production and social networking among different stakeholders, this ethnographic study interrogates a new modality of doing good as featured in the digital turn of Chinese society: the e-commercialised charity. Building on intensive fieldwork focusing on NGOs and activist communities, this dissertation closely examines the social-mediatization and digital-financialization of redress activism in China. After the introduction, chapters 2 and 3 document the historical development of the redress phenomenon with an institutional ethnography. Chapter 4 concentrates on the moral experience of the local activists who consistently provide care to those they consider authentic national heroes in different regions. Chapter 5 shows the regionalization and nativism of the hero-making programme, unpacking a phenomenon of solidarity centred on the…
author: Lin, Zhenru
language: eng
keywords: China, anthropology of charity, NGOs, Chinese e-commerce, Second World War
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/f9aeb20f-3d7c-4461-8e12-bc05348dfb4b/download
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
date published: 2020-09-27
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:14Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.69801