Abstract: The social assistance legislation is an important social legislation in the contemporary era. During the period of the Republic of China, the social relief legislation was increasingly perfected, symbolizing the burgeoning of China’s social relief system transiting from the traditional one into the modern legal one. The social relief legislation that started from the period of the Republic of China made some meaningful explorations in such areas as changing the legal rules and ideas to normalize the rescue routine, breaking the gifted thinking to emphasize the government responsibilities, innovating the rescue methods to give full play to the hematopoietic function, and advocating the standardized rescue management, which played an important role in the protection of the rights and interests of the people in the times of war, the mitigation of social conflicts, and the maintenance of the national unanimous attitude towards the outside situation. All of these can offer some valuable reference to the construction and perfection of China’s social assistance legislation during the transitional period. The current social assistance legalization and the system construction should pay serious attention to them.

Key words: social assistance; the Social Relief Act of the Republic of China; state responsibility; rescue program