The Missionary Exodus from China

Abstract

SEVEN YEARS AGO Protestant missionaries in China numbered slightly over four thousand. Though this was less than half the peak number reached a quarter of a century earlier, it represented a substantial achievement in the rehabilitation and support of mission work only three years after an exhausting war. But by 1948 the Chinese Communist forces were on the march; between December of that year and the end of 1949 the Red Army and its blue-clad Propaganda Corps had swept from the eastern end of the Great Wall across the entire country to the borders of Tibet. Before this so-called Liberation, half the Protestant missionary population evacuated their stations, usually upon the advice of their field organizations or with their approval. Some of them did so because of poor health, approaching retirement age, insufficient language or too brief an adjustment in a strange land, or concern for children under unpredictable conditions. A few had suffered years of Japanese internment and judged it unwise to face another such experience. In some areas-but rarely--Chinese Christian leaders or home mission societies advised withdrawal in advance, lest foreigners prove to be a liability rather than an asset to the Church in China. For the most part, the Roman Catholic missioners, numbering well over three thousand, under more centralized discipline, were ordered to remain at their posts, and one group which arrived in Formosa was reported to have been sent back to the mainland to hold the fort. Three of those priests who returned were later imprisoned. The two thousand Protestant missionaries who stayed in Red China did so for a variety of reasons: commitment to their task, indifference to political change, curiosity, loyalty to their Chinese colleagues, desire to render service as long as possible, hope that somehow the Communists would modify their attitude toward religion and Western imperialism when they came to responsibility and power. For a yearmore or less, depending on geographical location-their choice seemed