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Thus in the early life of Huo-ping as well as her husband's family, the interplay and indeed the clash of Chinese and Western influences, with Christianity confusingly intertwined. In this respect the Nee's are typical of China as a whole at this time.
It is impossible to study the history of the church in China without appreciating the intimate and eventually dangerous interplay between Western culture and the Christian church in China.
Dr. Ng has pointed out that nationalism came late to China. However, there was a strident form of "culturism" that preceded nationalism as such. As Ng puts it,
"What lay beyond its (China's) borders was of little value or consequence, and the need to compete with outside forces simply did not exist."9
The Manchu Dynasty at this time had a strictly isolationist outlook. Fifty years earlier Emperor Chien Lung had said to George III of England, "As your envoy can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects strange and ingenious, and have no use for your country's wares."10
"The Opium Wars (1839-42) which shocked China out of her complacency, could be taken to mark the beginning of nationalism in China."11 This national humiliation woke the Chinese up to the need to rise up to the challenge of the west.
After 1842, the British and the Dutch were eager to establish trade with China. At that time Hong Kong was ceded to the British and five coastal cities were opened to Western trade. But this concession had been wrung from the Chinese at the barrel of a gun.
Even after giving trading rights to the British, the Chinese forbade bartering, and would only allow the British to buy Chinese wares with silver. This was hardly what the British had in mind. It was later discovered that the Chinese could be persuaded to pay cash for Indian opium. For this reason the British forced the Manchu Dynasty to legalize the use of opium in the "unequal treaties" signed in 1862.12
It was during this period that Protestant missionaries began to arrive in China in great numbers. Hudson Taylor arrived in 1854 and founded the China inland mission in 1865. Therefore, in many Chinese minds there was an intimate connection between Christianity and the western gunboat diplomats who were humiliating the Chinese at the same time they fostered the opium trade.13
From 1851 to 1864 the country suffered terribly from the Tai-ping Rebellion led by an unsuccessful candidate for civil service examination. Hong Xiuquan had been influenced by Christian tracts, and because of a dream, felt that he was called to rid China of idolatry and corruption. He set out to overthrow the Manchu Dynasty and replace it with a heavenly kingdom named Tai-ping, meaning "great peace". As the revolution developed, mystical and superstitious elements were added, and in time the movement lost any Christian emphasis it may have had. Hong became obsessed with the idea that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He established his capital in Men Ging and for 10 years his armies extended their control over large areas of the country.
When Shanghai was threatened however, the foreign powers organized an army and helped the corrupt imperial Manchu forces to destroy the Tai-pings. It is estimated that some 20 million people were killed during the more than 10 years of that war. The associations between the Taipings and Christianity were not helpful to the developing impression of Christianity in the minds of most Chinese.14
By this time the Manchu Dynasty was too weak to resist Western influence. The unequal Beijing Treaty of 1861 allowed missionaries to own land in China's interior and thus led to the building up of large institutions. The Roman Catholic church became a great land owner and later these same large institutions attracted strong criticism from Communist and other nationalist leaders.
More and more missionaries arrived to work in schools, colleges and hospitals, introducing western science and technology. Bohr says that the Chinese field had absorbed more effort, money, and human resources than any other mission field.15 Although all authorities agree that Christian missionaries opposed and deplored the opium trade which was being fostered by their own governments, it was impossible for most Chinese to distinguish between white skinned, red-haired missionaries and white skinned, red- haired merchants who had come to exploit.
In 1900 the I Huo Chuan (or Righteous Harmony Fists), whom the foreigners knew as the 'Boxers', were murdering Chinese Christians and spreading anti-foreign outrage. The astute and unprincipled Empress Dowager, seeking to harness the dangerous movement to her own ends, had issued an order to destroy all aliens China-wide.16
Very much of the fury, both in the Boxer rebellion and in the revolution of Sun Yat-sen in 1911, which finally toppled the corrupt Manchu Dynasty was directed against foreign incursion and exploitation of Chinese society.17
In China, therefore, unlike Russia, the poor of the country looked not only to their own government, but also to foreign exploitation as the cause of their suffering. This outlook squared well with the tribalistic separatistic attitude of Chinese culture for the past two millenia. Ng summarizes this point when he says,
"Foreign encroachments on China were not only what set Chinese nationalism in motion, they were in fact its prime moving force. Close at the heels of the Opium Wars were the wars with England and France in 1858 and 1860. Then there was the Sino-Japanese War in 1895. In the treaties signed following China's defeat in each of these military encounters, important concessions were made to different foreign powers. . . . Thus one of the characteristics of Chinese nationalism from its very inception was its anti-foreign tendency. This anti-foreign sentiment was manifested again and again after each of the "incidents", in the forms of street demonstrations, boycotts of foreign goods, strikes, and at times attacks on foreign nationals."18
This anti-foreign tendency is important because of the close association between Christianity and foreign colonial powers in the Chinese mind. Ng reports on a distinct "anti-Christian" movement during the 1920's, also called the New Thought Movement. This movement was strong among the young intellectuals especially in the north of China. Their attack was not limited to Christianity, because Confucianism was also attacked,
. . . for its de-moralizing and de-humanizing effect on the people. The Confucial emphasis on meekness, obedience, respect for age, and the abhorrence of competition was blamed for producing a people that was weak, lacking in resistance, and in word, unfit for the demands of the modern world.19
However, Christianity was held doubly guilty by the growing mass of nationalistic thinkers, not just because its teachings were damaging, but because it was the "vanguard of Western imperialism", and the "tool which imperialists used in the exploitation of weak nations."20
One of the resolutions adopted by the Young China Association in its fifth annual conference (August, 1924) read,
That we strongly oppose Christian education which destroys the national spirit of our people and carries on a cultural program in order to undermine Chinese civilization.
and again,
As the capitalist system must first be abolished before a new and just social order can be established, Christianity, being closely allied with it, must also be summarily dealt with.21
When the communists came to power, a great deal of their appeal came from hatred of foreign imperialists. Mao himself had developed an anti-foreign sentiment well before he became a Marxist.22 After he became a Marxist he continued to demonstrate an outlook that was a reinterpretation of Marx along nationalistic lines.23
Although the whole sweep of Mao's policies and teachings regarding Chinese society is clearly beyond the scope of this paper, we will have to consider how Mao's nationalism has been (and is being) expressed toward the church.
Probably never before had the church's stand in relation to nationalism been any more critical in affecting her survival. Never has religious jingoism presented itself as any more of a threat and a rival to true spirituality.
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