Internet Philanthropy in China by Yidan Chen

Author:Yidan Chen
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9789811625664
Publisher: Springer Singapore

Strengthening Social Ties: Protecting and Revitalizing China’s Countryside via the Internet

China is a large agricultural country and its countryside is an important social component. However, with the rapid progress of economic development and urbanization, a large number of villages, especially the ancient ones, continue to wither and disappear from the country’s map. According to statistics from 2000 to 2010, the number of China’s villages dropped from 3.63 million to 2.71 million, with a shocking decrease of over 900,000 in just over ten years. On average, 80 to 100 villages cease to exist every day. (Feng & Song, 2016) With the disappearance of these villages, a large amount of cultural information and patterns are getting lost, causing irreparable social losses.

Zhou Yin, mayor of Heshang Town, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou in 2013 had such sentiments during a visit to a village named Fengwu in his town. The village had once been the headquarters of the Xiaoshan County government during the war of resistance against Japanese aggression. Many sites and relics remained but most of the architectural structures were in ruins. The county government site, an old building with over 100 years of history, was in danger of collapsing. Next to it was a dilapidated old house that had once housed the Flying Tigers, a group of US pilots who supported China during WWII. Amazed by the historical significance of these two old buildings, Zhou had intended to turn them into museums but failed due to lack of funds. Later on, he came up with the idea of crowd-funding and established a public crowd-funding platform with the help of the Zhejiang Provincial Love Charitable Foundation. Finally, after a series of online and offline marketing events, he was able to receive help from teachers, students, war veterans, social celebrities, and even local villagers. From 2015 to 2017 a total sum of RMB 1 million was raised to establish two museums, namely the Xiaoshan Memorial Hall for the Anti-Japanese War and the Memorial Hall for Sino-US Cooperation in the Anti-Japanese War (See Fig. 4.9).

Fig. 4.9The memorial hall for Sino-US cooperation in the Anti-Japanese War Crowd-Funded by Heshang Town

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