Chinese Needs Christian Private Education
In today’s China, public education system is similar to a mind-wash machine. Twenty years’ school lifetime, from elementary school to four-year college, shapes a student become a skeptical and selfish person. However, during 1900 to 1930, Christian private education has revived Chinese society for three decades through thousands of missionaries’ life invested in this land. However, because of the so-called nationalism, the government has expelled most missionaries out of China. Moreover, the government has taken over almost every Christian private school and put them into the public school system. Under the adamant political circumstance, education itself cannot be independent of the government or having protection from the law. Education itself became a tool of politicians which is serving man’s absolute power but not God. As a writer named Margaret DeRitter said, “Christian education can fulfill one of its worthy goals — to nurture young people who go out to bring God’s justice, love, and mercy to the world that needs them.” In China, such a complex environment, Christian private school is illegal, but it is necessary for Chinese people.
China had the longest tradition of private education in the world, but during the culture revolution in the 1960s, it almost disappeared. When it comes to the reform era, the private education appeared again with its new name called Minban. Wu Hua, the author of “An Introduction to the Development of China’s Private Education,” says, “Private education has exceeded that of the original design as a supplement to public education, it has made progress in terms of increasing education provision, improving educational fairness, promoting education efficiency, and expanding educational freedom; this offers a wonderful experience for developing countries to learn how to speed up their local education and provides important theoretical resources for rethinking the future direction if Chinese education and constructing the Chinese modern public education system.” Therefore, private education is playing a big role in the Chinese education field, and the statistic shows that “by the end of 2007, there were 95,200 private schools and institutions, and the number of enrolled students was 25,835,000” (An Introduction to the Development of China’s Private Education) In many ways, private education is doing much better work than public school.
Although private education contributes significantly to the transformation of Chinese society, such as improving the quality of Chinese education and promoting social development, the private schools still have not acquired respect and equal rights from the government. In 2001, Chinese education department published “Law of Promoting Private Education,” but it did not help private schools to obtain any power of implementation. Wang Jialiu, the vice chairman of the Education, Science, Culture and Public Health Committee of the NPC, introduced the Private Education Promotion Law (draft) and pointed out: “the legislative purpose of this act is to establish the status and role of private education in socialist education cause for private education; to embody the principle of active encouragement, fill support, correct guidance, and administration by law……promote healthy and orderly development of private education.” Moreover, for the public benefits of private education, he mentions founders of private schools can get a reasonable return, which is by the national conditions of China. The majority of founders run schools through investment. Therefore they have to make profits to keep those investors. However, members of NPC thought founders of private schools should not get reasonable returns mainly because of the following reasons: first, the so-called reasonable return is in essence profit making, which directly contradicts the provision of Article 25 of Education Law: “Any organization or individual may not establish schools or others educational insinuation for the purpose of making profit.” Second, they think developing education should mainly depend on tax incentives instead of attracting investment to run schools by reasonable returns. Until now, The Law of Promoting Private Education and its related laws have performed no practical function, and private education is still outside of full respect and protection of Chinese government. As Wen Dai, Ph.D. candidate, School of Education Management said, “The point at which private education can enjoy equal legal rights with public education is still far ahead.”
At the end of 19th century, Western countries rapidly increased the number of missionaries to China, especially The United States of America. For example, in 1901 Protestantism had about 1500 missionaries in China. However, in 1914, the number went up to about 5400. American missionaries accounted for a large proportion, and the number was close to 60% of all. During this period, Christian private education increased very significantly. In 1912, the number of students was about 138,937, and the number became 245,049 in 1920. In 1926, Christian private schools in China were about 6000; it included 16 colleges, 200 middle schools, and 5000 elementary schools. In 1934, the number of colleges had reached 25. At that time, Chinese government only owned eight public universities, but there were 13 universities established by missionaries. Missionaries’ contributions on Chinese education has directly helped the development of modern China. Those graduates from different Christian private universities were the backbones during 1940–1990s.
Today, the Chinese government is still limiting the Christian private school because of its political needs. Same as they did in the past years. A Chinese educator said this: “Along with this movement was a de-Christianization campaign and the government’s retrieval of the power of education from the hands of missionaries.”
In conclusion, because the vision of Christian private school and the government is not on the same path, Christian private school is not allowed to exist in China legally. As book mentioned that “a difference in values causes the focus of the public school and the Christian Protestant schools to be visibly different.” (Page 236) But everyone who knows the truth has to speak out for the kingdom of God, for giving others the true benefits of education are part of work that God has been doing in history. Education is to inspire people to know the creator through learning and to bring benefits to the world; it is not a tool to control people’s minds to achieve certain political purposes. Christian private school become public and legitimate in China is still a long way to go. Many decades ago, Christian private education had brought China into an academic revival, so today it also can benefit Chinese education if it became legal.
Works Cited
1. Zhang, Xiulan. China’s Education Development And Policy, 1978–2008. Leiden: Brill,
a. 2011. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost).
2. Ng, Peter Tze Ming. “Church-State Relations In China: Three Case Studies.” International
a. Bulletin Of Missionary Research 39.2 (2015): 77–80. ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials.
3. Wu, Bin, and W. John Morgan. Higher Education Reform In China : Beyond The Expansion.
a. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost).
