In 1949, before the Communist Party took power in China, there were several church universities founded by Western missionaries, many of which were among the top universities in China at that time, playing an important role in cultural exchanges between East and West.
However, after the Communist Party seized power, all these church universities were abolished. Why did this happen? This question deserves careful consideration today.
Before the Communist Party took power, China had 16 famous church universities. Thirteen were run by Christian churches, including Yenching University, Cheeloo University, St. John’s University, University of Shanghai, University of Nanking, Ginling College, Soochow University, Chekiang University, University of Huazhong, Fujian Union Medical College, South China Women’s College, West China Union University, and Lingnan University; and three were run by the Catholic Church: Aurora University, Fu Jen University, and Tianjin Catholic University.
These 16 church universities were located in key cities such as Beijing, Jinan, Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, and Tianjin.
Yenching University was considered the top church university in China; Cheeloo University, at its peak, was known as the “number one institution in North China”, on par with Yenching University, earning the moniker “South Cheeloo, North Yenching”; St. John’s University was called the “Harvard of the East”; Ginling College was the first women’s college in China; Union Medical College was the best medical education and research institution in China at the time.
Boston University Ph.D. Wang Zhongxin once commented, “The church universities narrowed the gap between Chinese higher education and the West by hundreds of years.”
Historian Zhang Kaiyuan, in his article “The Historical Fate of Chinese Church Universities”, commented that compared with church schools in Africa, Chinese church universities were at a higher level of education; compared with church universities in India, they were fewer in quantity but higher in quality; and compared with church universities in Japan, they were more competitive with public universities.
Although church universities had their historical and temporal limitations, objectively speaking, they made significant contributions to China. They trained a large number of well-trained talented individuals, promoted cultural exchanges between East and West, and facilitated the development of both government-run and private higher education in China.
By 1949, over 15% of university graduates in China came from church universities, producing many outstanding talents. For example, Shanghai St. John’s University alumni include modern Chinese diplomat Gu Weijun, Nankai school founder Zhang Boling, writer Lin Yutang, Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, and Acting Premier of the Republic of China, Soong Tse-ven, industrial tycoon Liu Hongsheng, renowned architect Ieoh Ming Pei, among others.
Renowned alumni of University of Nanking include Li Jingjun, pioneer in human genetics and former president of the American Society of Human Genetics; tobacco expert Zuo Tianjue, former director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Tobacco Research Laboratory; educator Tao Xingzhi, Chinese television pioneer Sun Mingjing, first Chinese elected member of the French Academy Cheng Baoyi, and Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Pearl S. Buck.
The Communist Party began cracking down on church universities, starting with Fu Jen University, which was taken over by the Communist Party in October 1950.
On January 11, 1951, the Communist Party issued the “Directive on Handling Church Schools Accepting American Aid and Other Educational Institutions”, forcing all church universities to sever ties with foreign churches.
In 1952, the Communist Party conducted a major restructuring of university faculties, dissolving all church universities and merging their faculties into relevant institutions.
For example, arts and sciences faculties of Yenching University were merged into Peking University, engineering faculties merged into Tsinghua University, with the campus “Yan Garden” becoming Peking University’s campus. The faculties of St. John’s University were respectively merged with Fudan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Tongji University, and East China Political and Law University established on the original site. The faculties of Chekiang University were merged into Zhejiang University and Tongji University and Zhejiang Normal College was established on the original site. The theology college and institute of Chinese studies of Cheeloo University were abolished, with arts and sciences colleges respectively assigned to Shandong University, Nanjing University, Shandong Normal College, the agricultural college attributed to Shandong Agricultural College, and the medical college renamed Shandong Medical College.
There may be four main reasons:
The founders of Chinese church universities were either Christians or Catholics, believers in God. One of the purposes of establishing these universities in China was to spread Christianity and Catholicism and make the Chinese people believe in the God they worship.
Believers in God believe that the Creator created heaven, earth, humans, and all things in the universe. The Creator is the supreme God. The culture passed down to humanity by the Creator is divine culture. Only by believing in God, respecting God, and worshiping God can one receive divine blessings and protection.
The atheism embraced by the Communist Party is fundamentally opposed to theism embraced by the founders of church universities.
The Communist Party does not believe in God; what does it believe in then? It believes in Marxism-Leninism, which is fundamentally opposed to traditional values and universal values, it believes in the party guided by Marxism-Leninism, and in the highest leader of that party considered to possess the true truth of Marxism-Leninism.
As early as the 1940s, when the Communist Party established Mao Zedong’s core position through the Yan’an Rectification Movement, Mao was elevated to a divine status.
In 1945, Liu Shaoqi praised Mao as the “greatest theorist and scientist in Chinese history”, possessing the “highest theoretical cultivation and the greatest theoretical courage”, and Mao Zedong Thought was the “only correct guiding ideology” of the Communist Party.
Since Mao was considered the greatest spiritual leader in history, after the Communist Party seized power, who should the entire party, army, and people worship? The Communist Party’s answer naturally is: worship Mao.
The founders of the church universities worship God, the missionaries of the church universities teach students to worship God, how can this be acceptable?
On August 30, 1949, in his article “‘Friendship,’ or Aggression?”, Mao Zedong said, “American imperialism, compared with other imperialist countries, has focused more on spiritual aggression activities for a long time, from religious undertakings to ‘charity’ undertakings and cultural undertakings… Many famous schools in our country such as Yenching, Union Medical College, Huiwen, St. John’s, Jinling, Soochow, Zhejiang, Xiangya, Huaxi, and Lingnan were all established by Americans.”
Mao’s analysis of church universities was guided by Marxist-Leninism. Marxism-Leninism created a party culture discourse system. In this discourse system, “imperialism” is a very negative thing.
As early as 1916, Lenin claimed that imperialism was the “monopolistic, parasitic, decadent, and dying stage” of capitalism, the “highest and final stage” of capitalist development. Therefore, workers of the world must unite, overthrow imperialist rule through violent revolution, and “liberate all humanity”.
According to the logic of the discourse system created by Marxism-Leninism, imperialism is bad, American imperialism is bad, church universities established by American imperialism are sure to be bad, and naturally fall into the category of elimination.
However, in the 21st century today, “American imperialism” remains the most powerful country in the world. This fact fully proves that Lenin’s theory of imperialism in 1916 is extreme, absurd, and not the truth.
It is not that imperialism has no problems, but rather that Marxism-Leninism’s understanding of imperialism is not in line with objective facts.
As mentioned above, the church universities established by England and the USA in China have not been wholly negative but have played a crucial and positive role in modern Chinese education.
However, after the Communist Party seized power, it aimed to control China’s universities with Marxism-Leninism.
Starting in 1952, the Communist Party began a campaign to reform the thinking of university intellectuals, “purging the influence of American cultural aggression and seizing the cultural aggression front of the United States in China”.
Therefore, in Chinese universities, especially church universities, those who had studied in England and the USA or had long been educated in England and the USA began to be scrutinized for “worshipping the American bourgeoisie, sectarianism, chauvinism, and individualism”, aligning their thoughts, speech, and actions with the party’s position and Marxist-Leninist stance.
Just before the Communist Party took power, it established a “leaning to one side” foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, joining the socialist camp led by the Soviet Union and blindly copying the Soviet model in politics, economics, culture, and other fields.
The Soviet Union sent many experts to China to help the Communist Party transform China’s education system. Soviet expert Arsenyev became the chief advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Education. According to statistics, from 1949 to 1959, a total of 861 Soviet experts worked in Chinese universities.
By learning from Soviet higher education ideas, a set of similar higher education systems resembling the Soviet model was established in China. From 1952 to 1953, the number of comprehensive universities in China decreased from 55 to 14, engineering colleges increased from 28 to 38, and normal colleges increased from 12 to 33. The share of disciplines such as arts, politics/ law, and economics drastically decreased. In 1947, arts, law, and commerce students accounted for 47.6% of total university students, dropping to 22.5% in 1952, and further down to 9.6% in 1957.
After the restructuring of Chinese faculties in 1952, China became the country with the least comprehensive universities and arts students on campus in the world.
The church universities, which were completely different from Soviet Communist Party education, naturally fell by the wayside.
On June 25, 1950, Kim Il-sung’s North Korean Communist Party-led army launched a sudden attack on South Korea. The North Korean army quickly crossed the 38th parallel and occupied the South Korean capital, Seoul; by early September, it had occupied 90% of South Korean territory.
In light of North Korea’s invasion of South Korea, on July 7 of the same year, the United Nations passed a resolution to form a United Nations force commanded by the US military to assist South Korean forces in resisting the invaders. On September 15, the UN force landed in Incheon, South Korea, crossed the 38th parallel swiftly, defeated the North Korean army decisively, pushing them into a corner.
On October 8, 1950, Mao Zedong ordered the Northeast Field Army of the Chinese Communist Party to be secretly transformed into the “Volunteer Army” and secretly dispatched to fight in Korea. Soon, Chinese forces clashed with American forces on the Korean battlefield.
China and the United States became enemy states.
According to He Fang, former deputy chief of the Foreign Ministry office of the Chinese Communist Party, before North Korea invaded South Korea, Kim Il-sung first secured the support of Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Stalin; then, he met with Mao Zedong in Beijing, hoping to gain Mao’s support. Mao said since Stalin had made a decision, he had no objections.
This means that the invasion of South Korea by North Korea was premeditated by Kim Il-sung, Stalin, and Mao Zedong.
When the UN forces landed in Incheon, the North Korean army was defeated. Mao Zedong did not wait for Stalin and Kim Il-sung to request help; as soon as American troops got involved, he began preparing for war against the United States.
In late September, Kim Il-sung urgently requested assistance from Stalin and Mao Zedong. Stalin initially considered abandoning Korea. Before Stalin ultimately made the decision to aid Korea, Mao had already issued the order to form the Volunteer Army and prepare for battle in Korea. Before Stalin supported Mao’s decision, he considered giving up on Korea.
After deciding to assist North Korea, Mao proposed the slogan “Defend Our Home and Country”. The true meaning behind Mao’s proposal of this slogan was to deceive the Chinese people.
On October 10, 1970, during a conversation with Kim Il-sung, Mao said, “If you don’t mention ‘Defend Our Home and Country,’ wouldn’t they (referring to the Chinese people) support it? Saying that it’s only for the Koreans, not for the Chinese, does it sound okay? That’s why I said, ‘Defend Our Home and Country!’ You want to protect your home, you want to defend your country, go to that place to protect, go to that place to defend. If you don’t support the Korean people in defending Korea, can you still protect your own home, defend your own country? This way, the soldiers understand.”
In other words, even before the outbreak of the Korean War, Mao had already prepared to be at odds with the United States; after the outbreak of the Korean War, with China and the US facing off on the Korean battlefield, Mao directly confronted the United States.
Since Mao and the United States were at odds, believers in God at church universities became thorns in the side for the Communist Party and had to be removed. After the Communist Party seized power, the fate of all church universities in China being eliminated was inevitable.