By Hollington K. Tong
Published by CHINA POST, Taipei. 250 pp.
US$1.50.
Reviewed by Geraldine Fitch
The author, former Chinese ambassador to the United States, gives as one reason for undertaking this study the fact that while in Washington he received much information about the Communist persecution of Christians on the Chinese mainland, but was unable to obtain adequate information about the growth of Christianity in Taiwan. By his thorough-going research, he has remedied a lack that many others have also felt. He spent his first five months after returning to Taiwan in 1959 in collecting material.
This is probably the first book to tell the complete history of the Christian movement on the island of Taiwan (Formosa), up-dating all previous partial accounts. The history of Christian growth here is a saga of human heroism and devotion to the Christian cause.
The first attempt to implant Christianity on the island was made in the 17th century, (during the Dutch occupation) by George Candidius, sent to Taiwan by the Reformed Church of Holland. On so ancient a foundation, the movement has been founded. But there was a lapse of 200 years during which Christianity, if not extinct, was at least dormant.
Two years after the Dutch settled in southern Taiwan in 1624, the Spanish took the northern port of Keelung, and occupied the area around Tamsui. Catholic missionaries followed the Spanish conquerors, but the Dutch drove the Spaniards from the island, and no written records are extant of the Catholic achievements.
The half-Chinese, half-Japanese Koxinga (Cheng Cheng-kung in Chinese history), who drove the Dutch from Taiwan, married the daughter of Dutch missionary Antonius Hambroek. Koxinga and his colleagues were very suspicious of the missionaries because of their involvement in civil affairs. They finally drove them from the island. At least five of the Dutch missionaries suffered martyrdom, including Hambroek, Koxinga's father-in-law.
It must be said, to the credit of the Dutch missionaries, that they gave the people a written language and were in the act of publishing the Bible in it. But when the translation had been made and the printing was under way in Holland, their work was brought to an unfortunate end. Had the Bible been ready for distribution, Christianity would not have gone into eclipse for two centuries.
In 1860 Carstairs Douglas of the English Presbyterian mission came over from Amoy to visit the northern part of Formosa (as it was then called). He was impressed by the fact that the Amoy dialect was understood all over an island 100 miles distant, whereas if one traveled 100 miles in any direction from Amoy on the mainland, that dialect would be unintelligible. He was also much impressed by the beauty of the mountainous island. He pressed the Foreign Missions Committee in England to send missionaries. The Committee agreed to send two, but when the time came only one—a medical man—was available.
Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell, graduate of Edinburgh and resident-physician at a general hospital in Birmingham, sailed for Amoy and for language study. Carstairs Douglas then accompanied him to the port of Takao (now Kaohsiung), and missionary work was started in Tainan.
The very success of the foreign doctor in curing the sick caused jealousy on the part of native healers, who circulated rumors that the new doctor was dissecting the bodies of Chinese men and women. Such rumors, spread among a superstitious people, led to mobs that drove Dr. Maxwell and his assistants from Tainan, and resulted in the burning of his first chapel in Pithau and a second one as well.
The years that followed were years of hard work and slow growth. Finally, under pressure from the British Consul, the governor was induced to take action against the attackers and to issue a proclamation calling on the people to cease molesting the missionaries and their Christian converts.
It became possible to reestablish a mission in Tainan, to carry the gospel to the mountain tribes, and to train aborigine girls to work in the hospital. The natural gift of the tribes people for music was encouraged in group singing of hymns and other sacred music.
Rev. Hugh Ritchie was the first to work among people of the east coast. He learned the Hakka language and established the first church for Hakka people. His wife encouraged the education of girls. Ritchie wore himself out with hard work, and died in Taiwan of fever.
Missionary doctors introduced vaccination on the island. Medical missions opened the door to evangelistic mission work. They pioneered in effecting a new status for women and establishing girls' schools. The name of Dr. Maxwell (Ma I-seng) is still remembered, and he is something of a legend on the island.
Dr. Tong tells his readers much in good order that some of us had heard piece-meal before. This includes the persecution of the Christians, especially of the aborigine believers during the Japanese occupation. Their sufferings, when the war was going badly for the Japanese who suspected them of espionage, were severe.
Rapid growth of Christian missions has occurred since World War II and the restoration of the island to Chinese hands. It would be hard to find a greater degree of religious freedom anywhere; perhaps too free as at least one sect has worked among the armed forces, telling the soldiers it was wrong to fight, or to salute the flag of any nation. Many would be more critical than Dr. Tong of the indigenous churches - not those which grew out of missionary work and are still in touch with the mother churches of England and Canada - but those extreme sects, without a central board to provide checks and balances, who proselytize, over-lap established churches and compete with them, refusing to cooperate in Christian work.
Dr. Tong puts the case well for the Christians on this island and their opposition to resolutions such as that of the Study Group in Cleveland, favoring recognition of the Chinese Communists. In his preface he states that his own prayer for "deliverance from neutrality in a world where the issues are clearly drawn between good and evil" is the prayer of 500,000 Christians in Taiwan.
CHINA CROSSES THE YALU
The Decision to Enter the Korean War
by Allen S. Whiting
New York, The Macmillan Co.,
1960. 219 pp. US$7.50
Reviewed by Nathan S.Y. Yuan
At his farewell press conference, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters that the greatest problem facing his successor was the intransigent, unreasonable attitude of the Communist bloc which, he said, was the cause of all the free world's troubles. The President was evidently speaking from his own experiences, but he was also speaking the mind of most people for the irrational attitudes and actions of the Communists. These Communist performances have puzzled many a student of Communist affairs and frustrated the purpose of his study when he tried to rationalize or generalize their heterodox actions by using orthodox methods of historical investigation.
The author of this book is a member of the Social Science Division of the Rand Corporation, specializing in Chinese Communist foreign policy with emphasis on Peiping-Moscow relations. He tries to examine the question of why the Chinese Communists intervened in the Korean War, and what were the factors that contributed to Peiping's decision for war which resulted in the clandestine crossing of the Yalu River by 300,000 "volunteers" in the weeks before November 26, 1950.
By painful research through the Chinese Communist press during 1950 for clues and careful scrutiny of U.S. government materials as well as Russian and English sources, he arrives at the conclusion that the Chinese Communist behavior was "rationally motivated" for Chinese interest, and was not dictated by Soviet policy or directive as most other people have believed. The major motives, according to Mr. Whiting, were first, to disrupt the close relations between Japan and the United States at a time when a Japanese treaty "on American terms" was in the offing, since a show of military force might remind the wavering elements in Japan of a powerful neighbor and swing Japan onto a new course of prudent neutrality. The second motive was to upgrade Chinese Communist prestige in Asia to the plane of a leading power among Asian countries after having lost a great deal of face in failing to "liberate" Taiwan. These motives, plausible to most people, are, however, not fully endorsed by the author who thinks that these considerations were a contributing, not a deciding, factor in the decision on Korea.
Another motivation, the author finds, was to pacify internal anxieties on the vulnerability and insecurity of the Communist regime because: "If it passively accepted the U.S. victory in Korea, MacArthur and Chiang would be encouraged to engage in new attacks on the Chinese mainland and raise fresh hopes for the internal opposition." This state of mind, according to Mr. Whiting, was reinforced by General Mac Arthur's visit to Taiwan, his statements to the Veterans of Foreign Wars and to newsmen in Tokyo, as well as by Secretary Matthews' call for "preventive war" and by the belligerent demands of U.S. Congressmen and other Americans.
In summary, the author seems to lay the blame on the United Nations' doorstep. He states: "The final step seems to have been prompted in part by general concern over the range of opportunities within China that might be exploited by a determined, powerful enemy on China's doorstep. At the least, a military response might deter the enemy from further adventures. At the most, it might succeed in inflicting sufficient damage to force the enemy to compromise his objectives and to accede to some of Peking's demands. Contrary to some belief, the Chinese Communist leadership did not enter Korean War either full of self-assertive confidence or for primarily expansionist goals." In other words, Mr. Whiting concludes or at least infers that the United Nations Command was to blame for Peiping's entry into the Korean War, and that the Chinese Communist action could almost be justified on the ground of "self-defense."
As if the spoken or written words of the Communist elite were to be taken as truthful expression of their mind—not, as they have always proved to be, means to delude and to mislead—the author spends some time discussing the undesirable limitations of Communications among nations in limited war, on which he says: "The subjective obstacles to communications cannot be wholly eliminated, for they are rooted in the beliefs and the environment of men who decide policy. Their impact may be lessened, however, through persistent efforts to understand their role in shaping the perspective of both communicator and recipient .... Nevertheless the Korean War provides an instructive warning concerning the dangers of failure in communications in a limited-war situation."
That the author attempts to be objective and honest in his approach is beyond any doubt since he tries to base his remarks on the materials of his research which he sincerely believes to be reliable. But the reader gathers the impression that to engage in such a work seems to be so much good labor lost, as it contributes neither to any new discovery of historical facts nor any true insight into Communist mentality. It is as meaningless to enquire why the Chinese Communist enters a foreign war as to enquire why a burglar breaks into another man's house. Whatever immediate motivations may prompt the Chinese Communists to engage in a new adventure, they are all in the framework of one over-all motivation, namely, the conquest of the world. This primary pattern was set down by the Communist mastermind, Lenin, long ago when he dictated that the road to Europe is by way of Asia, which has now been supplemented by the Kremlin's evident idea that the road to U.S.A. is by way of South America. The Chinese Communists were only carrying out their part of the program when they participated in the Korean War just as they are doing now in Southeast Asia and will be doing again whenever the world situation becomes most favorable to them and wherever more spoils can be obtained at minor cost.
If the Chinese Communists' participation in the Korean War proved anything worthwhile for the free world to consider, it proved that the adventure was purely in the interest of the Communist bloc as a whole, that it was undertaken against the true will of the Chinese people and that, given the chance, most of their fig thing men would be willing to seek asylum in democratic countries as 14,000 of their comrades chose to do at the end of the Korean War.