Sino-US trade exchange began when "empress of china" sailed to China in 1784, while cultural exchange between the two countries began when American missionaries came to China in 65438+1930s. From then on, during most of the19th century, American missionary work in China was in a leading position in western countries. As early as 18 10, the United States established the American Foreign Missionaries Committee (ABCFM), and sent missionaries to China for the first time in 1830 to seek opportunities to spread the gospel. Since then, the Baptist Church, the Anglican Church and the American-Israeli-American Association have successively established overseas missionary organizations to send missionaries to China. From 1830 to 1848, there were 98 Protestant missionaries sent to China from various countries, including 73 from the United States, accounting for more than two-thirds of the total number of Protestant missionaries in western countries. [1] At this time, the trade between the United States and China was far less than that of Britain, and the missionary cause jumped to the top in just over ten years. The "spiritual export" to China far exceeded the commodity export to China, which was a characteristic of the early American relations with China. Missionaries in China have played an important role in communicating diplomatic, commercial and cultural ties between China and the United States, especially in spreading western Christian culture.
The so-called missionary work is to conquer the world peacefully with crosses and bibles. No one spoke more succinctly and thoroughly about the relationship between missionary work and national interests than arthur smith, an American missionary who came to China at the end of 19. He wrote:
In my opinion, in the long run, the missionary work of people in English-speaking countries will certainly bring them the effect of conquering the world peacefully-not politically, but in commerce and manufacturing, literature, science, philosophy, art, education, morality and religion, and will be rewarded in all these fields of life of future generations, and its development will be more far-reaching than currently estimated. [2] (emphasis added).
As early as before the Opium War, the port where western businessmen traded with China was limited to Guangzhou. Westerners are prohibited from spreading Christianity in China and printing and distributing church propaganda materials. American missionary soil is attached to British missionary organizations and preaches in Malacca, Singapore, Macau, Guangzhou and other places by running schools. Early churches did not run schools to impart western knowledge and culture, but to put missionaries in legal clothes. Its direct task is to teach some China people to learn English, train a group of assistants or missionaries born in China, and train translators and comprador needed by western churches and foreign companies. In the final analysis, it is to cultivate tools and slaves for the peaceful conquest of China. In order to print religious propaganda materials, the church set up a "local" Chinese printing factory, which was originally 1865438 Yinghua College (Yinghua Co 1 1 EGE) printing factory opened by British missionaries in Malacca. The earliest Chinese-translated Western-language book Bible was printed outside China and smuggled into China. Peter parker, an American missionary, opened an eye hospital in Guangzhou on 1835, which had a great influence. Even Lin Zexu asked him to see an eye disease. [3] In China, which was closed to the outside world in the19th century, these missionary places became the earliest intermediary to contact ordinary people in China and spread western civilization. However, due to the fact that the Qing government regarded westerners' missionary work in China as a demagogic rumor and strictly guarded against it, the contact and exchange activities between western missionaries and China people were extremely limited in the early 9th century. In fact, missionaries played a dual role in preaching in China: their main function was to convert China people to Christianity and spread western knowledge and culture. Christianity itself is the embodiment of western spiritual civilization. Early missionary progress was extremely slow and the results were poor. It took ten years for the United States and Israel to preach in China before they absorbed the first believer 1857. It was a missionary who absorbed a believer in 1856 after preaching in Fuzhou for nine years. Peter parker opened a hospital in Guangzhou, where there were many people, but none of the patients were interested in religion. It was not until 1847 that a China became a believer. [4]
President McGinley declared that "missionaries are pioneers of civilization". Old President Roosevelt believed that missionary work could avoid revolutionary riots in China, and President Wilson spared no effort to support overseas missionary work. In this way, the missionary movement of overseas students combined with the American overseas expansion movement, forming the climax of American missionary activities in China. [ 1 1]
The school run by the American Church in China is called "foreign school" by China people. At first, the scale was small, the names were different, and the system was chaotic, which was only equivalent to the level of primary school or middle school. After 80 years, the focus of running a school has gradually shifted to institutions of higher learning. At the beginning of the transformation, there was a debate about policy within the church. At the 1877 Shanghai Church Conference, Calvin Wilson Mateer, an American Presbyterian pastor, emphasized the importance of education based on his own experience in running a church school in Dengzhou, Shandong Province since 1864. However, at that time, the view against imparting western secularism knowledge was still prevalent, thinking that such knowledge would make it more difficult for young people in China to get close to Christianity. Until 1890 Shanghai Church Conference, most talents agreed that education was the legal responsibility of missionary work in China. [12] Since the late 1970s, a few missionary universities have been gradually established: 1879, the Anglican Church established John College (the predecessor of St. John's University) in Shanghai; 1882, the Presbyterian Church established Wenguang School (predecessor of cheeloo university) in Shandong; 1888, the American-Israeli-American Association established Huiwen University in Beijing; 1889, the Congregation established North China United University in Tongzhou, Hebei Province (the latter two universities merged into yenching university). Generally speaking, these schools provide higher education by adding courses and equipment to ordinary church schools. Besides English and religion, they also offer courses in western science and medicine. Although the initial scale is very small, the number of students is very small, and there are only a dozen students in the university class, it is, after all, a western-style school completely different from the traditional schools in China, a disseminator of western civilization, and also a place where Mr. Gui Gu competes for Confucius disciples.
19 from the last year to the mid-1920s, the establishment of Christian universities in China by the United States entered its heyday. This is no accident. The rise of missionary universities was intertwined with the rapid changes in China's social and political life, accompanied by the abolition of the imperial examination and the reform of promoting learning. Many original missionary colleges merged and expanded into universities, which mushroomed for a time. The most important ones are Soochow University in Suzhou (190 1), Wenhua University in Wuchang (1903), Lingnan University in Guangzhou (1904), St. John's University (1905) and North China Union Women's University (/kloc) Nanjing Jinling University (1909), Hangzhou Zhijiang University (19 10), Chengdu West China Union Medical College (19 10), Wuchang Huazhong University (l9 10), Changsha Later, after reorganization, all fourteen schools formed the "China Christian University Federation" (19 19). At that time, there were only three national universities (Peking University, Shanxi University and Beiyang University) in China, and there were not many private universities, while there were more Christian universities in the United States than those in China, covering almost nine out of ten universities run by foreigners in China. Even the universities run by China people themselves were initially run by Americans. No wonder Timothy Ri-chard reminds people that almost all universities in China are founded and managed by Americans. This is one of the outstanding symptoms of China's semi-colonial culture.
1920s; With the upsurge of China's national liberation movement, under the strong pressure of anti-imperialist voices, the strength of missionary schools has been dealt a heavy blow, forcing them to cancel forcing students to take religious classes and believe in religion and change to the direction of national secularization education. By the early 1930s, except for St. John's University, the presidents of other missionary schools were apparently replaced by China people. As there are more and more public and private universities in China, the power of American missionary universities is relatively weakened. 19 16 years, 2 103 students were registered in various church universities, and 1927 years, there were about 4,000 students (including some seminary students). 1935, the number of students in missionary universities increased to 6475. 14. It is estimated that in 1930s and 1940s, China students studying in missionary universities accounted for 12 ~ 20% of the total college students in China. [15] Especially in the late 1940s, the number of students increased greatly. 1000 in the autumn of 947, the number of students admitted to various church universities almost reached 1 1000, and the number of candidates was ten times this number. [ 16]
Missionary universities were established earlier than China's self-run modern universities, and some universities were connected with famous American universities such as Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University and Cornell University. Therefore, the teaching system, department setup, curriculum arrangement, teaching methods, teaching tools and reference books were directly transplanted from the United States to China. More importantly, they introduced a series of new western sciences to China. For example, the Agricultural College founded by Jinling University and Lingnan University promotes modern agricultural science and technology and studies rice and wheat varieties; The cultivation of western medicine talents by Xiangya Medical College, cheeloo university Medical College and West China Union Medical College; Peking Union Medical College has been the largest and most complete medical education center in Asia before the war. Some missionary medical schools first taught nursing and trained nurses in China. Yenching university was a pioneer in sociology and journalism. Huazhong University in Wuchang was the first to offer the course of library science, and popularized the revised Dewey Classification in small libraries in China. There are also courses in business, business administration, western history, western literature, Latin and so on. , mostly established by or characterized by missionary schools. The "Harvard Yanjing Society" established by yenching university and Harvard University in the United States also has certain characteristics and contributions in studying the traditional culture of China. Religious schools advocate women's equal right to education, which breaks the feudal concept of family status and is regarded as changing customs and traditions by making foreign things serve China.
Christian University is an advanced research institution of Christianity and theology in China, and a foreign institution that pursues and imitates the western way of life in China. After the prevalence of studying abroad, it has become a convenient way for dudes to pursue "gilding" abroad. In this way, the missionary university not only maintained the style of study and tradition of westernization, aristocratization and conservatism in China, but also was the training ground for the comprador class in China, the "talent" of the new Westernization. However, we can't confuse the students in missionary schools with those in missionary schools. Especially in the later period, under the situation of the upsurge of the national salvation movement, the missionary universities have undergone obvious changes, mainly because a large number of students broke away from the control of the school authorities and made progress in the patriotic student movement until they joined various movements against American aggression against China and joined the revolutionary ranks.
The missionary university is a foreign body transplanted into the culture of China, and it is carried out under the protection of the imperialist unequal treaty system. Therefore, it was a colonial activity of cultural aggression against China, which destroyed the traditional culture of China. However, culture is different from politics, and it contains the crystallization of wisdom of all ethnic groups, which should be the spiritual wealth enjoyed by human beings. The forced import of foreign culture does not exclude the absorption and reference of domestic culture. China culture is facing severe challenges under the impact of western forces, and it is in a transitional period. From this perspective, the church education introduced from the United States and other western countries can be said to be a special way of cultural exchange between China and the West in modern times. This is a major feature and a major weakness of China's learning from the West in modern times. The reasons are as follows: first, the earliest western civilization that China came into contact with in modern times was the religious civilization imported by missionaries-Christian civilization; This kind of church civilization runs counter to the ethical philosophy of China's traditional Confucian civilization, which resulted in China's extremely strong rejection of traditional culture at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, thus greatly delaying the spread of modern western science and technology in China. Western knowledge, even scientific and technological knowledge, taught under the cloak of religion is incompatible with the traditional knowledge structure and teaching methods of feudal culture in China, and it is difficult for China intellectuals to accept it for a while. Second, modern western civilization was initiated under the religious influence of Christianity. However, in recent centuries, the relationship between the emerging western bourgeois culture and Christianity has undergone complex changes, which has largely broken away from the shackles of the church and achieved secularization and liberalization. Especially since the French Revolution, anti-church has been one of the characteristics of all radical and revolutionary ideological trends in modern western countries. Therefore, the western culture introduced into China by missionaries is an outdated, backward and conservative part of western culture. The western cultural knowledge brought by missionaries is the thought and knowledge "purified" by the church, but the essence of modern western civilization, such as rationalism, democratic thought and liberalism, is avoided by missionaries and unwilling to introduce. Therefore, China people's understanding and understanding of modern western civilization according to the "western learning" imported by missionaries is not only one-sided and distorted, but also a lot of dross, which is the conservative and reactionary side of western culture imported by missionaries; Thirdly, missionaries not only brought China a new belief system, but also a new knowledge system. No matter how modern western knowledge was imported, no matter who the importer was, it was an unprecedented challenge to China's traditional culture and inspired China people to re-understand the outside world. Western science and technology could not cause the revolution of China's traditional knowledge system at first, but at least it aroused people's doubts about the adaptability of old learning. "Learning from the Middle School as the Body, Learning from the West for Use" is a compromise scheme to absorb the advantages of western culture and make up for the shortcomings of China culture. Missionaries contributed to the position won by western learning. Western proverb says, "Science is the handmaid of religion". In order to expand itself in China, Christianity will cause profound ideological changes and weaken religious beliefs (not to mention the large-scale anti-Christian movement caused by the spread of Christianity), which is not conducive to the spread of Christ in China.