In the 16th century, there is no reliable information about the observant Christians who remained in China. Shortly after the establishment of direct maritime contacts between Europe and China (1513) and the founding of the Society of Jesus (1540), at least some Chinese participated in the Jesuit efforts. As early as 1546, two Chinese boys were enrolled in the Jesuits` St. Paul`s College in Goa, the capital of Portuguese India. Antonio, one of these two Chinese Christians, accompanied St. Francis Xavier, co-founder of the Jesuits, when he decided to begin missionary work in China. However, Xavier was unable to find a way to enter mainland China and died on Shangchuan Island off the coast of Guangdong in 1552. Slowly, the despair of the Chinese grew in the face of the plundering of their country by foreign powers. In 1900, this reached a crisis when a general uprising in northern China, led by the Society of Just Fists (mistranslated, „boxers“), attempted to exterminate all men from abroad and allow China to return to its old ways of life. This uprising was not primarily directed against Christianity, but because Christianity was the foreign religion, it suffered terribly. One hundred and thirty-five Protestant missionaries, fifty-eight children of missionary families, thirty-five Catholic priests and nine sisters were martyred. Even worse was the fate of Chinese Christians, who allegedly betrayed their country by accepting a foreign religion.

Although many were offered a chance to retract and live, sixteen thousand died, often after terrible torture. As a result, the 1990s were a decade of exponential growth for China`s Christian population. The state legalized the publication and sale of Bibles a few years earlier (1987). The whole society saw a new window to the outside world. „Exclusion“ is therefore a more accurate term than „persecution“. Many Chinese churches were founded by women, but as this conservative Reformed theology took root and spread, there was a tendency not only to exclude women from leadership positions, but also to teach women`s spiritual submission to men in all areas of life. This has inevitably led to many tragedies, from female preachers who have been deposed and publicly humiliated, pregnant female staff laid off, to single women and single mothers sexually exploited by abusive male leaders in the Church. It was around the same time that the narrative of „China as the next greatest Christian nation“ was spread by some evangelical scholars and religious freedom advocates in the American media. America has always had this obsession with the Christianization of China (especially communist after 1949) for more than a century, so this type of narrative has been favored by many. My 2019 book documents how a religious congregation in China not only reformed its structure in terms of gender roles, but also relied heavily on a republican, anti-communist, and Christian view of government. Like some evangelicals in America, they enjoyed holding public services outside police stations, and when taken away for public safety, they claim to have been persecuted.

The practice of religion was strictly controlled in dynastic times and still is today. Chinese over the age of 18 are only allowed to join officially sanctioned Christian groups registered with the state-sanctioned Catholic Patriotic Church, the Chinese Christian Council, and the Protestant Three-Self Church. [13] On the other hand, many Christians who practice Christianity are members of informal networks and unregistered congregations, these congregations are often referred to as house churches or underground churches, whose spread began in the 1950s, when many Chinese Protestants and Catholics rejected the state-controlled structures that are supposed to represent them. [14] Members of these groups are said to represent the „silent majority“ of Chinese Christians, and they also represent many different theological traditions. [15] The myth of persecution thus created a convenient shield for missionary irresponsibility. Ironically, these same missionaries liked to make their names known at major conferences, but when someone called for accountability in abusive situations, they insisted on anonymity simply because they were serving the Chinese people. In Tibet, most Muslims are Hui. Hatred between Tibetans and Muslims stems from events during the reign of Muslim warlord Ma Bufang in Qinghai such as the Ngolok Rebellions (1917-49) and the Sino-Tibetan War, but in 1949 the communists ended violence between Tibetans and Muslims, but further Tibetan-Muslim violence erupted after China`s liberalization. Unrest broke out between Muslims and Tibetans over incidents such as bones in soups and balloon prices, and Tibetans accused Muslims of being cannibals cooking people in their soup and contaminating food with urine.

Tibetans attacked Muslim restaurants. The fires set by Tibetans that burned the homes and businesses of Muslims left people dead and injured in the riots of mid-March 2008. Due to Tibetan violence against Muslims, traditional Islamic white caps were not worn by many Muslims. Headscarves were removed by Muslim women and replaced with hair nets to hide. Muslims were praying secretly at home when Tibetans burned down the mosque in August 2008. Incidents like these, which make Tibetans look bad on the international stage, are covered up by the Tibetan community in exile. The Chinese government`s crackdown on Tibetan separatism is supported by Hui Muslims. [71] In addition, Chinese-speaking Hui have problems with Tibetan Hui (the Tibetan-speaking Kache Muslim minority). [72] Although the vast majority of Catholic work was wiped out, some priests managed to stay in the country and converts stayed when the churches were destroyed. Catholic work was quickly revived after the opening of the country after the wars with the English and French in the nineteenth century. The French Jesuits have again gathered large congregations, and there are a considerable number under the formation of Spanish and German fathers. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were about two thousand five hundred priests, nearly half of whom are Chinese, and two million communicants.

Christianity has a presence in China that dates back to the Tang Dynasty and built a following in China with the arrival of a large number of missionaries during the Qing Dynasty. The missionaries were expelled from China in 1949 when the Communist Party came to power, and religion was associated with Western imperialism. However, Christianity has seen a resurgence in popularity since Deng Xiaoping`s reforms in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 2011, about 60 million Chinese citizens practiced Protestantism or Catholicism. Most of them do not belong to state-sanctioned churches. [20] The government said in 2018 that there were more than 44 million Christians in China. [21] With regard to gender roles, it was not until a decade later, in the 2000s, that a patriarchal faith was gradually institutionalized, thanks in part to the translation of some books by conservative preachers and the introduction of certain types of ministries. But even in the 1990s, South Korean missionaries and some traditional sects of Chinese Christianity maintained an understanding of conservative gender roles in Christian families.