¹ See, for example, Associated Press, “Yao to donate money, create foundation to aid earthquake victims.” ESPN, June 10, 2008. Xinhua News, “Stars Swing into Action to Help China Quake Victims,” China Daily, May 20, 2008.

² Xinhua News, “Humanitarian emotion glitters in China earthquake relief,” May 15, 2008.

³ Xinhua News, “Virtual community mobilizes, mourns for quake victims,” May 17, 2008. Qu Yan, Philip Wei Wu and Xiaoqing Wang, “Online community response to major disaster: A study of Tianya Forum in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake” (University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2009).

⁴ Brian Hoyer, “Lessons from the Sichuan earthquake,” Humanitarian Exchange Magazine (2009): 14–17.

⁵ Jim Yardley and David Barboza, “Many hands, not held by China, aid in quake,” New York Times, May 20, 2008.

⁶ Maureen Fan, “Citizens' groups step up in China,” Washington Post, May 29, 2008.

⁷ Xinhua News, “Humanitarian emotion glitters in China earthquake relief,” May 15, 2008.

⁸ Guobin Yang, “A civil society emerges from the earthquake rubble,” Yale Global Online, June 5, 2008.

⁹ Yan, Wu, and Wang, “Online community response to major disaster.”

¹⁰ Shawn Shieh and Guosheng Deng, “An emerging civil society: The impact of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake on grassroots associations in China,” The China Journal no. 65 (2011): 181–194.

¹¹ Fan, “Citizens' Groups Step up in China.”

¹² Ibid.

¹³ Yardley and Barboza, “Many hands, not held by China.”

¹⁴ Smith, The Art of Doing Good; J.H. Smith, “Chinese philanthropy as seen through a case of famine relief in the 1640's,” in W. Ilchman, S. Katz, and E. Queen (Eds.), Philanthropy in the World's Traditions (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 133–168.

¹⁵ Vivienne Shue, “State power and the philanthropic impulse in China today,” in W. Ilchman, S. Katz, and E. Queen (Eds.), Philanthropy in the World's Traditions (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 332–354.

¹⁶ The 1556 earthquake in Shaanxi, China, ranks as the deadliest in world history, with 830,000 casualties. The 1920 Haiyuan earthquake in Ningxia, China, killed about 200,000. An earthquake in Jili, China in 1290 killed around 100,000. “Earthquakes with 1,000 or more deaths,” US Geological Survey.

¹⁷ After the Tangshan Earthquake: How the Chinese People Overcame a Major Natural Disaster (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1976).

¹⁸ Jonathan D. Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), 650.

¹⁹ In 2007, China's national savings rate was 54 percent of gross national income. For comparison, the savings rate in the United States was under 15 percent. Juann H. Hung and Rong Qian, Why is China Savings Rate so High? A Comparative Study of Cross-Country Panel Data (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, 2010).

²⁰ Roger L. Martin and Sally Osberg, “Social entrepreneurship: The case for definition,” Stanford Social Innovation Review (2007): 28–39.

²¹ Shieh and Deng, “An emerging civil society,” 188; Yang, “A civil society emerges from the earthquake rubble.”

²² In 1988, there were 4,446 NGOs registered with the Ministry of Civil Affairs. See Anthony J. Spires, Tao Lin Lin, and Kin-man Chan, “Societal support for China's grassroots NGOs: Evidence from Yunnan, Guangdong, in Beijing,” The China Journal, no. 71 (2014): 65–90. However, in the political crackdown that followed the 1989 Tiananmen Protests, most organizations were suppressed or failed. Jude Howell, “NGO-state relations in post-Mao China,” in D. Hulme and M. Edwards (Eds.), NGOs, States and Donors (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), 202–215.

²³ Shieh and Deng, “An emerging civil society,” 185; Spires, Lin and Chan, “Societal support for China's grassroots NGOs,” 74.

²⁴ In China, the term “NGO” (fei zhenfu zuzhi) does not have a clear or consistent definition, legally or popularly. It is used interchangeably with “social organization” (shehui zuzhi), “public benefit organization” (gongyi zuzhi), “charitable organization” (cishan zuzhi), and “popular organization” (minjian zuzhi). In 2016, the Ministry of Civil Affairs reported that there were over 660,000 organizations registered as shehui zuzhi, which included foundations (jijinghui) and non-profit service providers called “public non-enterprise institutions” (minban fei qiye danwei). See Xinhua News, “Over 660,000 social organizations registered in China,” Asia Pacific Daily, May 1, 2016.

²⁵ Depending on the method of calculation, these numbers may or may not include mass organizations and GONGOs (government-organized NGOs), student clubs, community-based organizations, virtual organizations that exist only online, or neighborhood and village committees. Nor is it clear, given the lack of data, how many of these organizations have public interest missions. See Shawn Shieh et al., Chinese NGO Directory (251 NGO Profiles and Special Report): China's Civil Society in the Making (Beijing: China Development Brief, 2013), xii; Karla W. Simon, Civil Society in China: The Legal Framework from Ancient Times to the “New Reform Era” (Oxford University Press, 2013), xxxiv.

²⁶ Shieh et al., Chinese NGO Directory, xvi.

²⁷ See, for example, Anthony Jerome Spires, China's Un-Official Society: The Development of Grassroots NGOs in an Authoritarian State (Yale University, 2007); Jessica C. Teets, “Let many civil societies bloom: The rise of consultative authoritarianism in China,” The China Quarterly 213 (2013): 19–38; Qiusha Ma, Non-Governmental Organizations in Contemporary China (New York: Routledge, 2006); Yongnian Zheng and Joseph Fewsmith, China's Opening Society: The Non-State Sector and Governance, Vol. 2 (London, New York: Routledge, 2008), 244; Jude Howell, “New directions in civil society: Organizing around marginalized interests,” in J. Howell (Ed.), Governance in China (Oxford, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), 143–171.

²⁸ Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Perennial Library, 1988); Richard Madsen, “The public sphere, civil society and moral community: A research agenda for contemporary China studies,” Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 183–198; Carolyn L. Hsu, “Beyond civil society: An organizational perspective on state–NGO relations in the People's Republic of China,” Journal of Civil Society 6, no. 3 (2010): 259–278.

²⁹ Jennifer Alexander, Renee Nank, and Camilla Stivers, “Implications of welfare reform: Do nonprofit survival strategies threaten civil society?” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 28, no. 4 (December 1, 1999): 452–475.

³⁰ Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: The Free Press, 1995); Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

³¹ Ma, Non-Governmental Organizations in Contemporary China, 18–22.

³² Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic (Eds.), Civil Society in China (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1997); Xiaoguang Kang and Heng Han, “Graduated controls: The state- society relationship in contemporary China,” Modern China 34, no. 1 (2008): 36–55.

³³ Elizabeth J. Perry, “The populist dream of Chinese democracy,” Journal of Asian Studies 74, no. 4 (2015): 903–915, 907.

³⁴ Ann Anagnost, “The corporeal politics of quality (Suzhi),” Public Culture 16, no. 2 (2004): 189–208; Carolyn L. Hsu, Creating Market Socialism: How Ordinary People are Shaping Class and Status in China (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2007); Andrew Kipnis, “Suzhi: A keyword approach,” The China Quarterly 186 (2006): 295–313; Andrew Kipnis, “Homo Hierarchicus or Homo Neo-Liberalis? Suzhi discourse in the PRC” (Berkeley, CA, 2004).