Abstract: In the later stage of the Boxer Uprising , a group of Jiangnan gentry-merchants mobilized substantial resources to provide relief for refugees displaced by the fighting between Western forces and the Boxers in northern China.This sort of trans-regional relief effort was unprecedented in China.It had its origins in the philanthropic and famine relief traditions of Jiangnan , and it also drew on the example of the Western public welfare like the Red Cross Society.This combination of Chinese regional traditions and Western examples foreshadowed the birth of modern public welfare in China.