Mao’s Children in the New China: Child Welfare Organizations in the Early People’s Republic of China

Amid the physical destruction and social chaos caused by the Second Sino-Japanese War (World War II) and the Chinese Civil War between 1937 and 1949, thousands of Chinese children were orphaned or abandoned. Many of them found refuge in orphanages established by both Chinese and foreign aid organizations. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the fate of these child welfare organizations, particularly those operated by foreigners, was initially unclear. Would they be allowed to remain in Communist China and continue their work with the country’s displaced children? Or would Mao Zedong’s new government expel them from the country as part of its effort to rid China of bourgeois and capitalist influences? This paper examines the histories of foreign child aid organizations and argues that the early 1950s are best understood as a time of negotiation and consolidation, as child welfare activists sought ways to work with the new PRC government rather than abandon their mission to help Chinese children in need. At the same time, American organizations like China’s Children Fund were fighting a battle at home, as they endeavored to convince potential donors that funding their continued presence in China represented one way to fight the communist influence; withdrawing from the country would be tantamount to handing China’s orphans over to the Chinese Communist Party. By the mid-1950s, though most foreign aid workers had been forced to leave the country, the institutions they had created often survived in different forms, as the government took control and reorganized their operations. Through the history of such organizations, we see one example of the early PRC era as a period of transition, rather than a rupture with the past.