OCR Text |
Show The United State, and China ~ ^ ^ A ^ ^ A A T ^ y~Vé^AC vc^vt^L Hx u r?/ list found China remarkably self-sufficient and spirituai <u>. \0\*~\[ m^a n c e dian ^ verts rather fevv. ; ' privjieged status The opening of the country in the 1860's facilitated ñ,, jdcologically, an< great eíTort to Christianize China. Building on oíd íouii<i,3 jjrivílciíed cu í tur. tions, the Román Catholic establishment totaled by 1894 sfjntf As long as the 750 European missionaries, 400 native priests, and over hall vivid, the penal! million communicants. By 1894 the nevver Protestant nmsio: iru-rlia became < effort supported over 1300 missionaries, mainly British am? lcs>ser states, irad American, and maintained some 500 stations - each wiih .. by smperialist j ehurch, residences, street chapéis, and usually a small school Kussia moved ib and possibly a hospital or dispensary - in about 350 dilTrn m 1 sanee seized A cines and touns. Yet they had made less than 60,000 Ghim •> British took Bun Christian eonverts. Plainly, China was not destined to beconu ' emuse. As these a Christian nation. But the iníluence oí mission schools and auay the Middle hospitals, oi missionary ideáis and aetivities in seeking oui th< Asia, the pressur comiiioii man, translatmg Western literature, initiating wonv but institutíonal eti's education, assisting in ancient tasks of charity and famiht tor was iniminem rclicf and in nevv tasks of modernization, was considerable. No . the < Ihinesc emp¡ doubt futuro historians vvill conclude that this iníluence wa? toried leaschoids highly disrupíive to the oíd Chinese soeiety, even though it were genuino ins; was eminently hclpful to the Chinese people. . ohjccüvc was sti On a small scale, the missionaries were the Communistv' tcnsifird Aselí-stn predecessors, but the Peking fashion today is to belittle th< * be reformen» si good vvorks oí the.missionaries as "cultural imperialism." 1 \v valúes in Chines argument that they were carried on by self-righteous fórcmn- 'bat Ihc laws an< ers uridér the protection of extraterritorial pri'vileges bark«:»t made to takc acó by günbóats is undeniable. So is the fact that there were huís 1 bus the reíon dreds of anti-Christian riots, sometimes with loss oflifc. in< huí ^volimonaries, '1 ing at least fifty cases that required top-level diplomado atw»- ?W(» With gréa don, up to the Boxer massacres of 1900. Yet the fact rcm.iii^ tK1w'd that the i* that the missionary movement, whatever its spiritual-do< uin.ii ,l i u swit iiuxicrii result in this period, was a profound stimulus to China s IIUH. ^ u»st íamous tí ernization. The riots against it seem to have been generalU in • u net, a srhofa spired less by the superstitious fears of the populace in th< Í':"' s%t{h bis study; C>, 178 |