Jesuit missions in Ming-Qing China developed practices of intercultural accommodation to address ethical, political, and cultural asymmetries. This article argues that such modes of mediation persisted into the twentieth century, reconfigured in Father Robert Jacquinot de Besange's humanitarian negotiations during Shanghai's crises between 1927 and the 1937 Battle of Shanghai. Focusing on Jacquinot's sustained dialogue with Japanese military authorities, Chinese Nationalist officials, French Concession administrators, and the International Red Cross, the study examines the creation of a demilitarized safety zone that sheltered over 250,000 Chinese civilians. It further explores Jacquinot's underexamined initiatives for European refugees, particularly Jewish individuals fleeing Nazi persecution, situating Shanghai within global circuits of displacement and refuge. Drawing on Jesuit archival collections in Rome and Vanves alongside Shanghai sources, the article situates Jacquinot within a long Jesuit tradition of mediation, while emphasizing how early modern Jesuit practices of elite diplomacy were reconfigured into forms of mass civilian protection supported by administrative and material infrastructures. This "Shanghai model" anticipated later civilian protection zones in wartime China and resonated with emerging postwar international humanitarian norms.