20.09.2016 - 11:57

Presentation by Anna Shpakovskaya

Anna Shpakovskaya presented her paper at the International Red Cross Conference at Flinders University, Australia (Sept. 9–11, 2016)

In her paper entitled “De-administratizing the Chinese Red Cross (2011–2014): a ‘tiger head and snake tail’ reform?” Anna offers an alternative explanation to why the ‘tigerish’ attempt to de-administratize the Chinese Red Cross in 2011–2014 did not gain momentum. Anna mainly argues that the reform attempt to de-administratize the Chinese Red Cross failed due to a fundamental divergence between how the CRC has been conceived by the China’s top leaders and how it was conceptualized in the reform proposal of 2011.

The conference acknowledges the growing number of historians and researchers working in the rapidly expanding area of the history of the international Red Cross Movement. With its origins in the mid-nineteenth century, this global humanitarian organisation includes the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) originally formed in Geneva in 1863, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) created in 1919, as well as the 189 (at last count) national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.