Abstract

China has substantially increased its contributions to a range of areas of global governance in recent years, like humanitarian affairs. While greater commitments from China to humanitarian work can help narrow the widening gap between the surging humanitarian needs and donations, this development has also led to the debates on its implications for the humanitarian world as China’s approach seemingly differs from the dominant paradigm underpinning the international humanitarian system. it is timely and necessary to examine how China defines and uses the concept of humanitarianism and identify the factors that facilitate and limit China’s influence in this field. This article argues that while the state-centric and development-oriented approach has enabled China to materialize its comparative advantage in capacity and resources, it faces challenges to prove its approach as a robust alternative to the existing ones.

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