FROM PHILANTHROPY TO REFORM: THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN CHINA, 1906-1930

American Red Cross papers and State Department records were examined against the backdrop of (1) American foreign policy in East Asia, (2) American missionary and popular interest in China, (3) events in China from the late Ch'ing to the Nationalist revolution. The American Red Cross, a private voluntary agency tied closely to the U.S. government, was an instrument for the American compulsion to reform China. This impulse was a motivating force in shaping Chinese-American relations. After twenty-five years of participation in Chinese affairs, the Red Cross, refusing to support China famine relief, issued a public report rejecting reform concepts that they had introduced into China: work-relief and engineering projects for flood and famine prevention. Red Cross participation in famine relief in 1906-07 and 1911-12 culminated in the development of the Huai River conservancy and flood prevention project. Completion of this project was frustrated by conflict with Chang Chien, the Chinese official responsible for conservancy projects. The Red Cross, fearing failure due to Chinese graft and ineptitude, acquired the support of Taft and Wilson. Acting as agent fo the Chinese government, the society struggled to obtain American financial backing despite its connections with prominent New York bankers. The Red Cross supported the State Department's Open Door policy during the plague in Manchuria, and in World War I when it organized American chapters in the treaty ports. Because many Chinese supported them, Americans in China began to see the chapters as a stimulus and model for Chinese public service activities. Disaster and civilian relief in Tientsin in 1917 and in Shantung in 1920-21, encouraged a corps of Americans in China to work for public health and flood and famine prevention programs through joint American-Chinese organizations, including the Chinese Red Cross. Although work with the Chinese Red Cross failed, Americans in China continued to effect reform. They pressed for increasing Red Cross support for China, but the society's interests in overseas commitments dwindled with declining post-war membership. The debate over Red Cross refusal to support famine relief in 1929 helped create an American China lobby which campaigned for American aid to China during the later thirties.