mission parts made in china

Although there are some changes affecting the factory of the world, including salary increase, tensions with US and other countries (Australia, EU), China is still the only global serious choice for subcontracting technical parts. Local supply chain improved a lot (availability of materials and semi-finished products, logistics) so has the general quality of the production, taking gains on heavy investment in high end equipment, improvement of local manufacturing equipment quality and slow but steady change of mentality toward quality. China is not anymore the mysterious country it used to be, but still, doing business there is different to the way we do in western countries. Therefore, let me share with you some insights about the different steps leading to a successful purchase experience in China.

Sourcing companies : If you are clear about what you are looking and want to save your time, paid sourcing missions with professionals can be interesting. Be sure that these professionals understand you needs. Most prices range from several hundred USD to 2000 USD according to complexity of the mission.

For each kind of manufacturing process, you’ll be able to identify many companies in China, who they really are is not always easy to know. The best way to be sure that the company is technically able to produce the parts you want to subcontract, is still to visit it and review their equipment and products references. If you are not able to visit by yourself, you can still ask Quality Control companies to audit your supplier before ordering.

Be clear about your critical specifications, so that your suppliers and inspectors pay extra care to the relevant details of your parts. Don’t hesitate to send golden samples or assembly parts so that the supplier or third party is able to check the functionality of parts by himself.

Ask for quality report from supplier and more often than never send an inspector to double check. After 20 years of subcontracting industrial goods in China our inspectors still find many discrepancies between suppliers own report and inspection of parts.

We experienced a lot of unfortunatemiscomprehension between western purchaser and Chinese manufacturers. Most of them are based on different appreciations of products specifications. Purchasing side, using same detailed specifications for their local manufacturing thinks their request is crystal clear and cannot be misinterpreted, whereas supplier may be used to other ways of specifying parts and wrongly estimate that he understood perfectly what to deliver.

US Customs records for Mission Auto Parts in Murfreesboro. See their past imports and exports, including shipments from Jiangsu Luoke Auto Parts Co Ltd, a supplier based in China.

The history of the missions of the Jesuits in China is part of the history of relations between China and the Western world. The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of knowledge, science, and culture between China and the West, and influenced Christian culture in Chinese society today.

The first attempt by the Jesuits to reach China was made in 1552 by St. Francis Xavier, Navarrese priest and missionary and founding member of the Society of Jesus. Xavier never reached the mainland, dying after only a year on the Chinese island of Shangchuan. Three decades later, in 1582, Jesuits once again initiated mission work in China, led by several figures including the Italian Matteo Ricci, introducing Western science, mathematics, astronomy, and visual arts to the Chinese imperial court, and carrying on significant inter-cultural and philosophical dialogue with Chinese scholars, particularly with representatives of Confucianism. At the time of their peak influence, members of the Jesuit delegation were considered some of the emperor"s most valued and trusted advisors, holding prestigious posts in the imperial government.

According to research by David E. Mungello, from 1552 (i.e., the death of St. Francis Xavier) to 1800, a total of 920 Jesuits participated in the China mission, of whom 314 were Portuguese, and 130 were French.

Fairly soon after the establishment of the direct European maritime contact with China (1513) and the creation of the Society of Jesus (1540), at least some Chinese became involved with the Jesuit effort. As early as 1546, two Chinese boys enrolled in the Jesuits" St. Paul"s College in Goa, the capital of Portuguese India. One of these two Christian Chinese, known as Antonio, accompanied St. Francis Xavier, a co-founder of the Society of Jesus, when he decided to start missionary work in China. However, Xavier failed to find a way to enter the Chinese mainland, and died in 1552 on Shangchuan island off the coast of Guangdong,

A few years after Xavier"s death, the Portuguese were allowed to establish Macau, a semi-permanent settlement on the mainland which was about 100 km closer to the Pearl River Delta than Shangchuan Island. A number of Jesuits visited the place (as well as the main Chinese port in the region, Guangzhou) on occasion, and in 1563 the Order permanently established its settlement in the small Portuguese colony. However, the early Macau Jesuits did not learn Chinese, and their missionary work could reach only the very small number of Chinese people in Macau who spoke Portuguese.

A new regional manager ("Visitor") of the order, Alessandro Valignano, on his visit to Macau in 1578–1579 realized that Jesuits weren"t going to get far in China without a sound grounding in the language and culture of the country. He founded St. Paul Jesuit College (Macau) and requested the Order"s superiors in Goa to send a suitably talented person to Macau to start the study of Chinese. Accordingly, in 1579 the Italian Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607) was sent to Macau, and in 1582 he was joined at his task by another Italian, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610).Isabel Reigota in Macau, Mercia Roiz in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Candida Xu in China, all donated significant amounts towards establishing missions in China as well as to other Asian states from China.

Just as Ricci spent his life in China, others of his followers did the same. This level of commitment was necessitated by logistical reasons: Travel from Europe to China took many months, and sometimes years; and learning the country"s language and culture was even more time-consuming. When a Jesuit from China did travel back to Europe, he typically did it as a representative ("procurator") of the China Mission, entrusted with the task of recruiting more Jesuit priests to come to China, ensuring continued support for the Mission from the Church"s central authorities, and creating favorable publicity for the Mission and its policies by publishing both scholarly and popular literature about China and Jesuits.Chongzhen Emperor was nearly converted to Christianity and broke his idols.

In 1685, the French king Louis XIV sent a mission of five Jesuit "mathematicians" to China in an attempt to break the Portuguese predominance: Jean de Fontaney (1643–1710), Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730), Jean-François Gerbillon (1654–1707), Louis Le Comte (1655–1728) and Claude de Visdelou (1656–1737).

Johann Adam Schall (1591–1666), a German Jesuit missionary to China, organized successful missionary work and became the trusted counselor of the Shunzhi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty. He was created a mandarin and held an important post in connection with the mathematical school, contributing to astronomical studies and the development of the Chinese calendar. Thanks to Schall, the motions of both the sun and moon began to be calculated with sinusoids in the 1645 Shíxiàn calendar (時憲書, Book of the Conformity of Time). His position enabled him to procure from the emperor permission for the Jesuits to build churches and to preach throughout the country. The Shunzhi Emperor, however, died in 1661, and Schall"s circumstances at once changed. He was imprisoned and condemned to slow slicing death. After an earthquake and the dowager"s objection the sentence was not carried out, but he died after his release owing to the privations he had endured. A collection of his manuscripts remains and was deposited in the Vatican Library. After he and Ferdinand Verbiest won the tests against Chinese and Islamic calendar scholars, the court adapted the western calendar only.

To disseminate information about devotional, educational and scientific subjects, several missions in China established printing presses: for example, the Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique (Sienhsien), established in 1874.

At first the focal point of dissension was the Jesuit Ricci"s contention that the ceremonial rites of Confucianism and ancestor veneration were primarily social and political in nature and could be practiced by converts. The Dominicans, however, charged that the practices were idolatrous, meaning that all acts of respect to the sage and one"s ancestors were nothing less than the worship of demons. A Dominican carried the case to Rome where it dragged on and on, largely because no one in the Vatican knew Chinese culture sufficiently to provide the pope with a ruling. Naturally, the Jesuits appealed to the Chinese emperor, who endorsed Ricci"s position. Understandably, the emperor was confused as to why missionaries were attacking missionaries in his capital and asking him to choose one side over the other, when he might very well have simply ordered the expulsion of all of them.

The timely discovery of the Xi"an Stele in 1623 enabled the Jesuits to strengthen their position with the court by answering an objection the Chinese often expressed – that Christianity was a new religion. The Jesuits could now point to concrete evidence that a thousand years earlier the Christian gospel had been proclaimed in China; it was not a new but an old faith. The emperor then decided to expel all missionaries who failed to support Ricci"s position.

Among the last Jesuits to work at the Chinese court were Louis Antoine de Poirot (1735–1813) and Giuseppe Panzi (1734-before 1812) who worked for the Qianlong Emperor as painters and translators.Paris Foreign Missions Society.

Mungello (2005), p. 37. Since Italians, Spaniards, Germans, Belgians, and Poles participated in missions too, the total of 920 probably only counts European Jesuits, and does not include Chinese members of the Society of Jesus.

Egor Fedorovich Timkovskiĭ; Hannibal Evans Lloyd; Julius Heinrich Klaproth; Julius von Klaproth (1827). Travels of the Russian mission through Mongolia to China: and residence in Pekin, in the years 1820-1821. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green. pp. 29–.

Swerts, Lorry, Mon Van Genechten, Koen De Ridder. (2002). Mon Van Genechten (1903–1974): Flemish Missionary and Chinese Painter : Inculturation of Chinese Christian Art. Leuven University Press. ISBN 90-5867-222-0 ISBN 9789058672223.

That fall, the Federal Communications Commission initiated a rule that effectively banned small telecoms from using Huawei and a few other brands of Chinese made-equipment. “The existence of the investigation at the highest levels turned some doves into hawks,” said one former US official.

But two years later, none of that equipment has been removed and rural telecom companies are still waiting for federal reimbursement money. The FCC received applications to remove some 24,000 pieces of Chinese-made communications equipment—but according to a July 15 update from the commission, it is more than $3 billion short of the money it needs to reimburse all eligible companies.

The country’s Chang’e-5 spacecraft gathered as much as 4.4 pounds of lunar samples from a volcanic plain known as Mons Rümker in a three-week operation that underlined China’s growing prowess and ambition in space. It was China’s most successful mission to date.

The Chinese are eager to flaunt their technical skills and explore the solar system. Like the United States, the country has a broader goal to establish a lunar base that could exploit its potential resources and serve as a launching pad for more ambitious missions.

Although the law does not prevent non-NASA scientists from working with Chinese counterparts, it does prevent Chinese scientists from looking at the moon rocks that NASA astronauts brought back during the Apollo missions, and China may well return that snub.

But while China takes its time with longer-term space goals, the successful Chang’e-5 mission took off only last month, and its speedy return with lunar samples provided almost instant gratification. It required feats of engineering and execution that China has never attempted before.

Not long after arriving in lunar orbit, Chang’e-5 split into two parts, an orbiter and a lander that reached the surface on Dec. 1. It then scooped up and drilled for samples that the spacecraft returned to lunar orbit and then ultimately back to Earth. The lander also lifted a small Chinese flag.

China envisions its moon missions as more than demonstrations of its space technology and national pride. It envisions the moon as a base — robotic at first, then perhaps a human outpost — that will support space exploration in the decades to come.

ATSUMITEC AUTO PARTS (FOSHAN) CO., LTD (China) dba AFS celebrated its 10th Anniversary on November 21, 2017. A “10th anniversary Celebration” was held on the 24th of the November with members of management, plus associates with 8+ years of service, in attendance. The celebration included a video screening that looked back over the 10-year history, a dinner party, and key speakers. The history of AFS’s first 10-years was not without its challenges. However through the cooperative efforts by associates, support members, and both Japanese and Chinese Management member, success has been consistently achieved in the areas of Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery and Morale. AFS, with the strong support of its headquarters will continue to work hard as one team to respond to continuing changes in the automotive industry, and become a company that will leap into its future for its 20th and 30th years and beyond.

What we can learn:The area around Mons Rümker is thought to have rocks that are close to just over a billion years old. They could be the youngest moon rocks ever brought back to Earth—way younger than the 3- to 4-billion-year-old rocks brought back by Apollo missions. Those samples could help scientists better understand the history of the moon, shedding light on questions such as how it cooled over time and how its magnetic field dissipated. It will be the first time Chinese scientist have directly studied lunar material themselves, since Congress currently bars NASA from working with China and allowing it access to Apollo-era rocks.

Space race:If successful, this mission would make China just the third country in the world (after the US and the former Soviet Union) to bring materials from the moon"s surface back to Earth. The last lunar sample return mission was the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission in 1976. Sample return missions are still incredibly difficult to pull off, and if it goes well, Chang’e 5 could be one of China’s biggest technological achievements to date.

Chang’e 5 is the latest mission in a very successful lunar exploration program. The program"s most high-profile success so far has been Chang’e 4, a rover that became the first spacecraft to safely land on the far side of the moon. That mission has already led to quite a few bits of interesting science from a region of the moon hardly seen before. Chang’e 6, slated to be China’s second lunar sample return mission, should launch in 2023 or 2024.

The Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (PBFM) was an organization under charge of the Presbyterian Church (USA) that commissioned missionaries and missions in foreign and domestic lands. One such mission that was under charge of the PBFM was the South China Mission, headquartered in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China (廣東省廣州市). This mission did a variety of work in Guangdong province, Hainan province, and other surrounding areas.

The focus of this study will be the South China Mission and the work it did, contextualizing it within the PBFM and other missions in China. This study will also focus on the decades ranging roughly from the 1840s to the 1890s, as the documents available to synthesize information for this study mostly concern this time, even though the South China Mission continued work for decades after the 1890s. The largest body of primary source materials for this study come from The College of Wooster’s Department of Special Collections—specifically its Noyes Collection, an archival collection of manuscript materials from the Noyes family, a prominent family within the South China Mission and the Presbyterian Church in Ohio, as well as the Missionary Alcove Collection, a special collection of published materials used for educating future missionaries during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when The College of Wooster trained missionaries to go abroad and do mission work. A body of secondary sources is also used for this research, including a finding aid for an archival collection belonging to the Presbyterian Church (USA) and secondary scholarship on mission work.

In this organizational study, I will examine the history of both the PBFM and its South China mission, describe its organizational structure and organizational values and culture, and provide feminist, post-colonial perspectives on the work done by the PBFM’s South China Mission.

The PBFM was organized in 1837 by the Presbyterian Church (USA), an action of the Old School of the Presbyterian Church.[i] At this time, the PBFM was not yet a legal entity, not being incorporated as such until 1862. During the years before 1862, the PBFM was a “benevolent society of the Presbyterian Church,” meaning it was a committee within the Church’s administration.[ii] The mission of the PBFM during this period was “to convey the Gospel ‘to whatever parts of the heathen and anti Christian world, the providence of God might enable the Society to extend its evangelical exertions.’”[iii] In 1862, the Board was finally incorporated as a legal entity within the state of New York.[iv] By the 1920s, the PBFM had missions located on the continents of Africa, Asia, South America, and North America.[v] The PBFM ended its tenure in 1958 when it was incorporated into the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations under the United Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.[vi]

The first missionary to be commissioned for work in South China, was Dr. Andrew P. Happer, who arrived in China with his wife in approximately 1845 in Macau, opening a boarding school for boys in the same year.[vii],[viii] In 1847, Dr. Happer and his wife moved their work to Guangzhou, where they stayed for many years.[ix] This marks the beginning of the South China mission under control of the PBFM. Following opening the boarding school in Macau, Dr. Happer also taught English in a Chinese Imperial Government school, as well as opened a hospital and dispensary in 1851 in Guangzhou.[x] The mission force, after nearly ten years of doing work alone under the PBFM, grew to five with the arrival of Dr. John G. Kerr, his wife, and Mr. Preston in 1854.[xi] At this time, Mr. Preston began street preaching, and Dr. Kerr immediately took over the hospital that had been run by Dr. Happer previously.[xii] The mission did not grow more until 1860, when Rev. Condit and his wife arrived in China, and in 1863, Rev. Folsom and his wife arrived. It was originally intended for these new missionaries to set up a sister mission in Foshan, Guangdong (廣東省佛山市, 12 miles from Guangzhou, then called Fat Shaan by English speakers), however, this never came to fruition, although other Christian denominations did set up missions in Foshan.[xiii]

A new era of the South China mission began in 1866 with the arrival of Dr. Henry Varnum Noyes with his wife. These missionaries were the last of the South China Mission to arrive in China by sailboat, as steamers commenced running lines between the United States and Japan, as well as Hong Kong in 1867.[xiv] I mark his arrival as a new era of mission work by the South China mission due to Dr. Noyes’ increased attempts to go further inland to do mission work, something that had been extremely limited by the Chinese Imperial Government for many years beforehand, and still was at the time.[xv] However, Dr. Noyes still attempted to go further inland from Guangzhou, a city that sits on the Pearl River Delta, and would land his boat (as most travel inland was by boat at this time) wherever he was allowed. However, this did prove dangerous at times. According to Harriet Noyes, there was at one point a group of ninety-six villages that vowed to “kill anyone who should ever dare to bring a foreigner to one of their villages.”[xvi] Although there were these dangers, Dr. Noyes still would attempt to street preach inland as funds for education endeavors were not available at the time.[xvii] Additionally, in 1867, two mission homes were constructed for the mission, the first to be built according to “western ideas” by the mission, and possibly in all of Guangzhou.[xviii]

The mission force continued to grow, and in 1868, following the death of Dr. Noyes’ wife, his sister Harriet, accompanied by Dr. and Mrs. Kerr who had been on furlough, arrived in Guangzhou. Harriet would prove to be a major boon to the work of the South China Mission, starting off right away opening a day school soon after her arrival. Following Harriet’s arrival and the return of the Kerrs, the mission force doubled in 1870 from six missionaries to twelve. Following the growth of the South China Mission, Harriet Noyes established one of the first boarding schools for women and girls in Guangdong, and possibly all of China, in 1872.[xix],[xx] There had been earlier attempts by Dr. Happer’s wife to do so, but those attempts went unfinished due to sickness in the first attempt, and her death in the second attempt.[xxi] Three years following the opening of the boarding school for women and girls, the True Light Seminary (真光書院, still running now as the True Light Middle Schools of Hong Kong and Kowloon with other sister schools) opened, with a graduating class of nine girls following their three years of study at the Seminary.[xxii]

Following the opening of the True Light Seminary (TLS), in 1873, Harriet had ensured the training of six women to be bible women, Chinese women who went home-to-home in order to spread the word of the Presbyterian Gospel.[xxiii] Continuing work in education, which Harriet deemed to be “the most practicable and satisfactory way of reaching the women and children,”[xxiv] Dr. Noyes opened a boarding school for boys in 1878.[xxv] The mission continued to grow and grow as years went on. By the end of 1879, the mission had 12 missionaries from America, 15 assistant men, 7 bible women, 15 teachers, and 545 students in the South China Mission’s schools.[xxvi] In the following year, 1880, the Mission controlled $10,604 in expenditures——$3600 for 4 married missionaries and their wives, $1800 for 4 unmarried missionaries, $1,140 for 14 assistant men, $294 for 7 bible women, $1,280 for 2 boarding schools, $1,200 for 14 day schools, $500 for 5 language teachers, and $790 for miscellaneous costs.[xxvii] It is clear through these numbers the amount that the South China Mission grew since its beginnings with Dr. Happer in 1845.

However, the mission continued to grow greatly. Happening between 1880 and 1882, the mission received 18 new missionaries—more than doubling the amount of Americans working for the mission.[xxviii] Also, from 1880 to 1885, five new Presbyterian churches in addition to the two that already existed in Guangzhou, and the number of “outstations” in the surrounding areas of Guangzhou grew to twenty-four.[xxix] The number of students also continued to grow, with 636 students in boarding schools and day schools by the end of the 1880s.[xxx] The number of patients being seen at the hospital was also staggering for the small number of missionaries heading up the work—there were 39,500 patients seen in 1887, with over 4,000 surgeries being performed.[xxxi] Additionally, eighteen Chinese students were training to be doctors, with five of them being women.[xxxii]

The work of the missionaries and all those who helped them did not cease at the end of the 1880s, and actually continued until 1946.[xxxiii] It is likely that the mission ceased work at this time due to the civil war occurring between the nationalist Republic of China and communist fighters. I end my study of the mission’s history at the end of the 1880s because further study would be beyond the scope of this project. Harriet Noyes continued her work in China until 1923, just months before her January, 1924 death;[xxxiv][xxxv] Henry Noyes continued his work in China until his death in 1926;[xxxvi] Dr. Happer continued his work until his death in 1894.[xxxvii]

The structure of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions and its South China mission is quite interesting, and needs to be looked at in the broader context of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America at the time. The following diagram can help us better understand the structure of the PBFM and its South China mission, as well as how money was distributed to various parts of the organization and where it was sourced. [see image 3.4 at the bottom of this page]

We can trace much of the funding for the South China Mission and the PBFM itself to local churches and Foreign Missionary Societies their parishioners created. Churches could ask parishioners for donations on the behalf of missionaries, and Foreign Missionary Societies would often do different fundraising activities like sewing and sewing quilts to holding banquets.[xxxviii] Funds could be sent from local churches to the Presbyterian Church (USA)(PCUSA), which could then be sent to the PBFM. Funds could also be sent from the local churches or the Foreign Missionary Societies (FMS) directly to the mission, or from the FMS to the PBFM. Often, the PBFM would need to approve major spending, so it is likely the PBFM collected much of the money that was sent to the individual missions.

As it may be clear, the PBFM and its South China Mission do not neatly fit into a certain type of organizational structure. However, according to Kathleen Ianello’s definitions of decentralized and fragmented organizations, the PBFM and South China Mission can be described as a mix between a decentralized organization and a fragmented organization. A decentralized organization, according to Ianello, is one with a bottom-up organizational structure, where some of the major decisions and most routine decisions are made by the lower parts of the organization, i.e., the South China Mission, with the higher parts of the hierarchy, i.e., the PBFM, still make most of the major decisions.[xxxix] However, in fragmented organizations, most of the major decisions are made by the lower parts of the hierarchy, and the upper parts of the hierarchy no longer have much control.[xl] I deem the PBFM and the South China Mission a mix between these two types of organizational structures because the South China Mission would make some major decisions, where the PBFM would make some as well. For instance, the PBFM would approve of a budget for a school for the South China Mission, and the South China Mission would decide how it would be designed architecturally.[xli] However, I also categorize it as fragmented due to the number of major decisions made by the South China Mission.

Relying on archival documents, it is difficult to determine the official organizational values of the PBFM and South China mission as most of the manuscript material is personal correspondence from members of the South China Mission, however, as discussed above, a mission statement for the PBFM itself is available. The mission of the PBFM during this period was “to convey the Gospel ‘to whatever parts of the heathen and anti Christian world, the providence of God might enable the Society to extend its evangelical exertions.’” Here, it is clear that the main motivation for creating these missions across the globe is obviously to evangelize non-Christians. However, the wording of the mission can tell us more about the values of the organization itself. The use of the word “heathen” in the mission for the PBFM signifies an air of superiority and condescension towards non-Christians. Additionally, the use of “anti Christian” reflects the frequent self-victimization some Christian denominations utilize for sympathy. Finally, “the providence of God,” signified how the PBFM views its actions as sanctioned by God himself. Although much cannot be derived from this mission statement alone, there is some valuable information contained within it.

The motivations for mission work were not always well-intentioned, or if they were, they were very often shrouded in attitudes of racism, ethnocentrism, and religious superiority. These attitudes need to be examined to understand the implications of mission work. Although much of the work that was done by the South China Mission can be portrayed easily in a positive light, specifically the educational and medical aspects of the mission work, there was still often an air of the attitudes discussed above by the missionaries themselves.

According to al-Hajri, “’most missionaries were primarily concerned with evangelizing the world first and providing humanitarian aid to foreign people second.’”[xlii] Additionally, al-Hajri argues that “all non-Christians needed to be educated so they could read the Bible and gain the knowledge of Christian beliefs and values.” These two statements about the primary motivations of missionaries in foreign lands show that the purpose behind mission work was never to provide aid to the people where missionaries colonized, but rather to evangelize the people of these nations, and if need be, to provide aid to entice them to evangelize. al-Hajri also specifically addresses the topic of education in their piece: “Education was also emphasized by American Missionaries from the very beginning. If preaching the Gospel was necessary, it was also necessary to spread education so that the Bible could be read and understood.”[xliii]

In addition to the above, the work of missionaries can also be understood in terms of violence. “Apart from praising the gentle ‘gospel of love,’ American missionaries described evangelization, very obviously in many instances, as war… American missionaries… frequently used… words such as ‘war’ and ‘occupy’ in their journals and reports.”[xliv] Furthermore, al-Hajri also states that, “The connection between being martyrs and spreading Christianity indicates the missionaries viewed the work they were performing as a war in which they must win over other religious groups. Any interactions that happened with non-Christians were interactions with the enemy.”[xlv]

We must also understand the mission work being done in the South China Mission as orientalist in nature. Orientalism, according to Edward Said, who coined the term, should be understood as a system of citing works and authors, a system based on power and domination in which narratives of the orient come from wealthy, privileged westerners who speak forthe orient.[xlvi] Said also states that cultural hegemony is what allows for the enduring idea of the orient, in this case, of China. This is further developed with the ideas that Europe and the U.S. is superior to all other cultures and ideas, and that European and U.S. superiority is reiterated over “oriental backwardness.” This is clearly evidenced in the work of the South China Mission.

In addition to the above, we must also examine how women played a role in the colonial project that was mission work. Although there were seemingly good reasons for women to become missionaries during the latter half of the 19th century (e.g., being able to establish a career in a time when many women were not able to do so, being able to enter the medical profession as a doctor, etc.), there were still major implications to their work. According to Cramer, “The identities of missionary women and of their relationships with women of other countries was predicated on whiteness and on excluding racial ‘others,’ or insisting on their conversion—a conversion that could be described as ‘whitening.’”[xlviii] Furthermore, Cramer argues that “observations of difference were coupled with the attitude missionary women held that women in other countries—indeed, entire countries—needed to be ‘whitened’ with the influence of the Christian Gospel.”[xlix] This perspective that missionary women, indeed most missionaries either men or women, that non-Christian, non-white people needed to be “whitened” with the Christian Gospel is truly just a continuance of the imperial/colonial project that was present in China during this period.

The PBFM and the South China Mission are of special historic significance—they operated together at a time during Chinese history when much transformation was going on as a result of colonial projects by various western nations (including France (Guangzhou), the U.S. (Guangzhou, Shanghai), Great Britain (Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Shanghai), Germany (Shandong Province, Guangzhou), and Portugal (Macau)) that they PBFM, through its South China Mission, was advancing the goals of the colonial projects occurring in Guangzhou at the time. Additionally, an historic organizational study has been lacking in the academic study of the PBFM and its South China Mission, as well as feminist and post-colonial perspectives on said organization. Through this paper I hope to have added to the body of work on the PBFM and the South China Mission in a way that has not yet been done.

[i] “Guide to the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Board of Foreign Missions, Department of Missionary Personnel Records,” Presbyterian Church (USA), archival finding aid, http://www.history.pcusa.org/collections/research-tools/guides-archival-collections/rg-360.

[vii] Noyes, Harriet. “Rev. Charles F. Preston—Dr. John G. Kerr, M.D.” Chapter in History of the South China Mission. (Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1927). 17.

[viii] Speer, Robert. E. “The Missions of China.” InPresbyterian Foreign Missions. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication and Sabbath School Work, 1901). 109.

[xx] Noyes, Harriet. “The New School Building.” In Women’s Work for Woman.2 no. 4 (Philadelphia: Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church, September 1872). 148.

[xxi] Happer, Dr. A.P. Letter. In Woman’s Work for Woman. 2 no. 1. (Philadelphia: Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church, March 1872). 7.

[xxxiii] “Guide to the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Board of Foreign Missions, Department of Missionary Personnel Records,” Presbyterian Church (USA).

[xxxviii] “History of the Organization and first years of our society prepared by its first secretary Mrs. O.N. Stoddard.” In Minutes 1890 Apr. to 1894 Mar. Minute book. In Women’s Foreign Missionary Society in Unprocessed Collections at The College of Wooster Department of Special Collections, Wooster, Ohio.

[xlii] al-Hajri, Hilal. “Through Evangelizing Eyes: American Missionaries to Oman.” In Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies. 41 (2011). 123.

[xlviii] Cramer, Janet M. “White Womanhood and Religion: Colonial Discourse in the U.S. Women’s Missionary Press, 1869-1904.” In The Harvard Journal of Communications. 14 (2003). 214.

Building bridges between different parts of the world. An education mission about 150 years ago, brought dozens of boys from China to our state to study and learn in order to help modernize the country.

Miller says this educational mission was the brainchild of Yung Wing, the first Chinese graduate from an American university. He received his diploma from Yale.

Jason Chang, an Asian studies professor at UConn, says this mission helped bring needed cultural exchange at a time when knowledge of China in Connecticut was limited and skewed.

This attractive, large format work is one of the finest general maps of China made during the fin de siècle period, which saw transformative change to the Middle Kingdom.  The map was commissioned by the China Inland Mission (CIM), the foremost Protestant religious organization in China, that was responsible for extensively exploring the country, and setting up missions all across the land, even in the most remote locales.  The map was drafted and published by the firm of Edward Stanford Ltd., the world leading commercial cartographic enterprises, as part of a sequence of continually updated general maps of the country that they made for the CIM from 1878 to 1928.

The present 1898 edition is notable, as it much larger in format than previous issues, while also being the first to embrace the ground-breaking cartography of Emil Bretschneider (1833 – 1901), a brilliant Russian physician and sinologist, who in 1896 compiled the most accurate mapping of China hitherto achieved, originally intended to illustrate his 1896 botanical work on the country (the present map is noted as being made ‘By permission of E. Bretschneider’).

As noted in the lower left, the ‘Stations of the China Inland Mission are underlined’ in Red, while the ‘Stations of other Protestant Missions are underlined’ in Blue.  The sheer number of missions, and the fact that many are located in such remote areas, is truly impressive.

Interestingly, many of the roads and some of the rivers in the deep interior feature names with abbreviated dates (ex. ‘Baber 76’), that refer to the pioneering expeditions of missionaries, some of whom were amongst the first recorded Westerners to visit many of the deep interior regions of China.

The China Inland Mission (CIM), later known as the Overseas Missionary Fellowship, was a British Protestant society founded in 1865 by Reverend James Hudson Taylor and William Thomas Berger to advance the interdenominational evangelization of the interior of China.  The society had a very intrepid and, in some ways, progressive culture, in that the missionaries were expected to adapt to the Chinese way of life, while it was one of the first international evangelical organizations to employ single women, including in senior field roles.  These traits were responsible for the CIM’S extraordinary success in one of the world’s largest and most challenging theatres.  Importantly, the CIM missionaries were amongst the first Westerners to travel through and settle in many of the most remote parts of China.

Taylor led the maiden field mission, departing England in 1866, whereupon they established their first station at Hangzhou, Zhejiang.  Other stations in the same province soon followed and from 1867 to 1871 several missions were established in Jiangsu.  From 1874 to 1878, stations were founded in Hubei, Hunan, Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet.  The CIM’s headquarters was established in Shanghai in 1873, and in July 1875, the society published the inaugural issue of its journal, China’s Millions.

In the succeeding years, the CIM proved wildly successful at attracting converts, despite opposition from certain elements of the local communities and the personal suffering of many of the missionaries.  It expanded into further parts of China, as well as Mongolia and Upper Burma.  In 1915, the society employed 2,063 workers at 277 stations, while by 1934 (the peak of the CIM’s operations), it engaged 1,368 workers at 364 stations.  By the 1930s, the CIM had been responsible for converting many thousands of Chinese people to Christianity, rooting the faith in virtually all regions of the country.  It had also provided high-quality education and healthcare in many places where such services were scarce.

However, the Japanese invasion of China, which commenced in 1937 and dovetailed into World War II, was a disaster for the CIM.  Many of its stations were forced to close upon the advance of the Japanese forces, while the missionaries and their followers were interned in Japanese prison camps.  The Communist takeover of China in 1949 spelled the death knell for the CIM’s operations in its main theatre, as the new regime considered Western missionaries to be ‘imperialist spies’; the last CIM workers left the country in 1953.

The CIM subsequently retooled itself to focus upon activities in Southeast Asia, with its headquarters being moved to Singapore. The organization was renamed the Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) in 1964.  Today the organization, re-branded as OMF International, remains an active concern, employing 1,400 workers in over 40 countries.

The China Inland Mission operated in many remote parts of China and surrounding lands that were little known to their recruits and supporters in Britain.  It was thus important for the CIM to commission a custom ‘master map’ that would locate their missions, as well as to depict the routes of the missionaries’ often-harrowing journeys to their stations.

The CIM engaged Edward Stanford’s Geographic Establishment to design and print such a map.  The firm, founded in 1853, by Edward Stanford (1827 – 1904), was since the 1860s the world’s leading cartographic publisher.  It owed this status to its unrivalled connections to governments, surveyors, explorers and missionaries throughout the world.  Maintaining a very high standard of lithographic production, Stanford’s maps were remarkable for their signature style, employing clear, carefully placed text, clean lines and attractive colours, as brilliantly exemplified by the present work.

The first edition of the CIM general map of China was issued by Stanford in May 1878, and the firm regularly issued subsequent editions, updating the locations of the CIM’s missions across the country and the surrounding lands; the final edition appeared in 1928.  The present 1898 edition is notable, as it is of a significantly larger format than previous issues, while being far more accurate due to the introduction of Bretschneider’s transformative cartography.