Following the Sichuan earthquake of 12 May 2008, hundreds of thousands of volunteers spontaneously joined the relief effort – a loosely organized grassroots movement that caught both the Chinese government and international observers by surprise. A few months later, at the Beijing Olympic games, over 100,000 well-organized volunteers efficiently catered to the needs of visitors. With these two events, volunteerism became visible as a mass phenomenon in China. From then on, the state gave volunteering an increased level of support and legitimacy, in order to promote and channel volunteering as a form of social service. The Communist Party Youth League and the Ministry of Civil Affairs, with their networks reaching down to student cells in schools and residents’ committees in the neighbourhoods, developed increasingly comprehensive and systematic programmes to recruit and deploy volunteers to care for the elderly, help out at major sporting and diplomatic events, give tutoring support for migrant children, engage in environmental cleanups, or travel as volunteer teachers to remote rural and ethnic minority regions.