ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses charity and charitable undertakings in China within the framework. Charities and charitable organizations have a long history in China. Charitable activities in Chinese history took various forms such as: mending roads, building bridges, and setting up schools by individual philanthropists. Charities became the starting point of municipal administration and were incorporated into social undertakings. This trend of development continued throughout the era of the Republic of China, and did not differ much from the development of charities in other parts of the world. Contemporary charities in China only began in the 1980s. Between 1949 and 1978 there was a period of suspension of charities in China. The process of establishment of political power by the Communist Party of China (CPC) was also a process of dissolution of civil society organizations. The development of charities in China since 1978 can be roughly divided into three stages: the beginning stage, the expansion stage, and the all-round development stage.
