The 2008 Sichuan earthquake killed 87,000 people and left 5 million
homeless. In response to the devastation, an unprecedented wave of
volunteers and civic associations streamed into Sichuan to offer help.
The Politics of Compassion examines how civically engaged citizens
acted on the ground, how they understood the meaning of their actions,
and how the political climate shaped their actions and understandings.
Using extensive data from interviews, observations, and textual
materials, Bin Xu shows that the large-scale civic engagement was not
just a natural outpouring of compassion, but also a complex social
process, both enabled and constrained by the authoritarian political
context. While volunteers expressed their sympathy toward the affected
people's suffering, many avoided explicitly talking about the causes of
the suffering-particularly in the case of the collapse of thousands of
schools. Xu shows that this silence and apathy is explained by a general
inability to discuss politically sensitive issues while living in a
repressive state. This book is a powerful account of how the widespread
death and suffering caused by the earthquake illuminates the
moral-political dilemma faced by Chinese citizens and provides a window
into the world of civic engagement in contemporary China.
