Charity programme for rural teachers : a case study of the I-fly project

Abstract

China has a long history of charitable practices. However, in the first four decades since the Communist Party of China (CPC) came into power in 1949, charitable practices experienced little development under a planned economy and collectivist ideology. It was not until 1989 that the state began to promote state-led charity on a national scale with the iconic Hope Project which was in response to market transformations and social turbulences. Over the past decade, the Chinese charity sector has experienced rapid development, with a growing number of innovative charitable practices delivered by grassroots organisations. This research uses the ‘Shanghai I-Fly Project for Training Rural Teachers’ case study to investigate how these grassroots charitable practices for rural education are emerging in China nowadays, as well as how they reshape individual-society-state relations by launching innovative charitable projects for rural education. This research combines qualitative research methods, including secondary literature review, policy analysis, participant observations, semi-structured interviews and self-administered questionnaires. The fieldwork research was conducted during three consecutive periods: between May and October 2012, January and August 2013, as well as December 2013 and February 2014 in three places, including Shanghai, Liming County and Lankang County.

The research finds that there are three trends in the emerging charitable practices for rural education. First, charity spaces have shifted from rural to urban areas. Second, philanthropic targets have changed from rural students to rural teachers. Third, benevolent projects have shown increasing interest in promoting ‘soft’, instead of ‘hard’ aspects of rural education. Both the state and social elites have promoted these transformations. On the one hand, state policies for social organisations, charitable practices and rural education have exerted a large influence over various forms of philanthropy. On the other hand, local elites have been playing an active role in promoting innovative charitable practices in order to rebuild the social morality of the next generation and reproduce existing hierarchical structure in the non-profitable world. Emerging innovative benevolent acts seem to have been promoted for urban people more than rural participants.