Christianity’s Four Major Contributions to Modern China
基督教对近代中国的四大贡献
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【Editor’s Note: Throughout history, two major religious influences—Buddhism and Christianity—have profoundly shaped China. While Buddhism altered the Chinese language and worldview, its societal impact remained limited. Christianity, however, introduced new social organizations and cultural ideals, deeply influencing China’s modernization. Christian missionaries played a key role in modern education, founding institutions like Yenching, Jinling, and St. John’s University and contributing to the development of Zhejiang, Xiamen, and Tsinghua Universities. They also revolutionized healthcare, establishing hospitals and introducing Western medical practices. In philanthropy, Christian missions fought foot-binding and founded girls’ schools, orphanages, and institutions for the blind, deaf, and the mentally ill, improving social welfare. Christianity also introduced concepts like democracy, equality before the law, and human rights, fostering intellectual shifts that influenced movements such as the May Fourth New Culture Movement. Despite its profound impact, Christianity’s contributions to China have been largely forgotten. To understand its role in China’s transformation, A History of Christianity in China by Luo Weihong (罗伟虹) offers an essential historical overview.】
Throughout history, two foreign cultural influences—both related to religion — have profoundly shaped China. Each offered China a new perspective on the world and twice transformed the nation.
The first was Buddhism, introduced during the Eastern Han dynasty, when Indian monks brought Buddhist scriptures, and Chinese monks traveled to India despite immense hardships. By the Tang and Song dynasties, Buddhism had flourished on Chinese soil, earning the saying: “In every home, Guanyin; in every household, Amitabha.”
The second was Christianity (基督教), which came to China in four distinct waves—during the Tang, Yuan, late Ming, and late Qing periods. Above all, from the late Qing to the Republican era, countless missionaries traveled vast distances to China, guided by a spirit of universal love as they spread the Christian faith.
Buddhism introduced imaginative concepts such as hell, the six paths of reincarnation, and bodhisattvas like Guanyin and Vajra, as well as terms like “instant” (刹那), “affliction” (烦恼), and “secular bond” (尘缘). Its ideas—“no-self” (无我), “wisdom” (智慧), and the dialectic of emptiness and being (空有)—profoundly altered the Chinese language, mindset, and worldview. Yet its overall impact on Chinese society remained limited; China persisted as a Confucian, patriarchal state.
By contrast, Christianity’s influence on China shaped language, thought, and worldview and introduced new forms of social organization and cultural ideals. It touched nearly every aspect of Chinese social life and played a deep, ongoing part in the country’s modern transformation.
Regrettably, for various reasons, Buddhism’s contributions to China are still widely recounted, while Christianity’s contributions have mostly been forgotten in everyday discourse.
Modern Education (现代教育)
Above: On January 31, 1916, Yenching University (燕京大学) was founded, with American missionary John Leighton Stuart (司徒雷登) (second from left) as president.
Christianity centers on two core ideas: truth and love. Its embodiment of truth was the establishment of schools and the promotion of education.
Although, since Confucius, ordinary people could receive schooling, most regions had no academic institutions at all, and worse yet, the imperial examination system restricted education to a narrow Confucian canon.
From the late 19th to the early 20th century, many missionaries taught classes in church buildings, then founded mission schools and introduced Western-style education. These schools did not merely teach Christian doctrine but also implemented modern educational ideas, especially in science, mathematics, literature, and foreign languages.
The prominent universities that remain today—Zhejiang University (浙大), Xiamen University (厦大), and Tsinghua University (清华)—as well as the renowned Yenching, Jinling, and St. John’s during the Republican era—all owe their beginnings to Christian missionaries. Even today, the foreign exchanges and endowments of many universities have close connections to successive generations of Christian donors.
Missionaries placed great importance on modern knowledge for Chinese youth, cultivating generation after generation of remarkable talents. Figures ranging from Zhan Tianyou (詹天佑, also known as Jeme Tien Yow) to Hu Shi (胡适) exemplified those who traveled to Britain and the United States as part of the “young students abroad” programs, returning to become the great masters of the Republican era. Even among the ethnic Chinese Nobel Prize recipients—such as Chen-Ning Yang (杨振宁), Tsung-Dao Lee (李政道), Samuel Chao Chung Ting (丁肇中), and Mo Yan (莫言)—one can trace many subtleties to Christianity.
Modern Healthcare (现代医疗)
Above: John G. Kerr (嘉约翰) (front row, fourth from right), superintendent of Boji Mission Hospital, with hospital staff.
Christianity’s other core idea, love, was realized in the founding of hospitals—not only to heal bodies but also to guide people toward God. The Gospel itself carries a dual capacity to heal both spirit and body.
Traditional Chinese medicine was largely based on experiential knowledge. Some remedies proved effective, but treatment involved limited scientific understanding. Whether in classics like the Compendium of Materia Medica (《本草纲目》) or the many folk remedies, Chinese people often relied on luck to combat illness.
From the late 19th to the early 20th century, Christian missionaries threw themselves into China’s healthcare efforts, establishing numerous hospitals and clinics. They introduced Western medical ideas and technologies, such as anesthesia, stethoscopes, and professional nursing. These missionaries not only improved China’s medical and public health conditions but also brought modern concepts of bacteria, viruses, and cells.
Beida Xiehe (Peking Union Medical College, 北协和), Xiangya in the south (南湘雅), Cheeloo in the east (东齐鲁), and West China (西华西) in the west are just a few historical examples—today, more than half of China’s top-tier hospitals and countless medical schools originated as missionary institutions, even if their names have changed.
Many missionary doctors also participated in China’s fight against disease. Whether in epidemic prevention, leprosy treatment, or promoting public health reforms, these pioneers introduced the earliest municipal water systems, the first public toilets, and the first large-scale sanitation protocols. These initiatives triggered a leap forward in China’s public health.
Modern Philanthropy (现代慈善)
Above: Orphans cared for by the Xinyi Church (信义会) in Yiyang, Changsha.
Another facet of love is philanthropy. Many Christian organizations actively contributed to China’s modern charitable undertakings.
Traditional China had occasional benevolent institutions—community fields, clan-based charities—but these relied on family lineage structures. If the clan offered no help, people in vulnerable circumstances often had nowhere to turn. This reality contradicted the idyllic social vision in The Book of Rites, “Liyun” section (《礼记·礼运》): “The elderly are provided for, the able-bodied find employment, children are nurtured, and orphans, widows, the solitary, and the disabled are all cared for.”
From the late Qing onward, Christianity’s arrival radically altered this situation.
Missionaries opposed foot-binding among Chinese women, forming the “Natural Foot Society” (天足会) and launching a movement to liberate women from bound feet. They also founded China’s earliest girls’ schools, opening unprecedented educational paths for women.
They opposed infanticide, established orphanages, and founded institutions to care for unwanted children.
They also rejected the inhumane treatment of people with blindness, deafness, mental illness, or leprosy. They created China’s first schools for blind children, its first schools for deaf and mute students, the country’s earliest psychiatric hospitals, and its first leprosy hospitals—providing modern medical care and preventing the neglect or extermination that often befell these marginalized groups.
As Hu Shi (胡适) once observed, “Missionaries in China awakened the country to the flaws in its social life. They criticized foot-binding, railed against opium, and sought to rouse our people from their medieval slumber.”
Modern Thought (现代思想)
Above: Matteo Ricci (利玛窦, left) and Xu Guangqi (徐光启).
Christianity’s arrival was not merely a new faith but also a conduit for modern Western culture and ideas.
Until then, China was largely a Confucian society that incorporated elements of Buddhism, Daoism, and popular beliefs. Collectivism, a “differential mode of association,” and irrational superstition typified a pre-modern agrarian worldview.
Beginning in the late Qing, Christianity introduced notions of personal freedom, democracy, and equality before the law—an intellectual resource distinct from traditional Confucian culture. It spurred gradual changes in social and political thought.
Christian doctrines such as original sin, universal love, and respect for the individual affected Chinese ethical concepts, fostering an acceptance of “human rights” and “equality.”
Alongside this, Western science, philosophy, political theory, and economics entered China through the work of Christian missionaries. Matteo Ricci (利玛窦) brought Euclid’s Elements (《几何原本》). Johann Adam Schall von Bell (汤若望) and Ferdinand Verbiest (南怀仁) revamped the Chinese calendar. Robert Morrison (马礼逊) introduced the modern dictionary. Robert Hart (赫德) and Timothy Richard (李提摩太) not only brought the spark of Western thought but also promoted translation efforts, opening a gateway to Western ideas for Chinese readers.
Underlying notions of everyday life in China began to shift. This transformation became evident in the May Fourth New Culture Movement, in the “second enlightenment” of the 1980s, and in contemporary critiques of social life—all bearing the imprint of basic Christian ideas.
In short, Christianity has undeniably served as a crucial catalyst in China’s modernization.
Its impact is clear not only in its vigorous support for education, medicine, and philanthropy but also in its role in facilitating cultural and intellectual exchange. Through its doctrines and spirit, it introduced Western technology and thought while influencing Chinese ethics and values.
Sadly, Christianity’s contributions to China have been all but forgotten. In particular, the history of how Christianity reshaped Chinese society from the late Qing onward deserves to be remembered by every modern Chinese citizen. To that end, we earnestly recommend A History of Christianity in China (《中国基督教史》) by Luo Weihong (罗伟虹).
This work thoroughly reviews the history of Christianity in China over nearly two centuries (1807–2002), dividing it into three chronological stages: the late Qing, the Republican era, and the socialist period. It recounts the development of Christianity in China using a wealth of historical materials. It may be the only available history of Chinese Christianity on the market.
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This translation is an independent yet well-intentioned effort by the China Thought Express editorial team to bridge ideas between the Chinese and English-speaking worlds. The original text can be obtained from:
February 19, 2025