other kinds of construction.
However, the issue of economic construction in today’s China is difficult and complex. There are many different views and parties, and many disagreements and conflicts. Even if we only look at rural economic construction, there are a huge range of divergent views among scholars. Now with the war, much is being heard of the so called Chinese Industrial Cooperate movement. Ultimately, faced with such the massive problem of economic construction, how much can our church do? What can we do? These questions go to the heart of what is discussed in this article, and are the questions to which the author wishes to call the attention of co-workers in Christ.
Let’s start from rural reconstruction. If we remove the spiritual culture elements of the rural reconstruction movement, what remains is within the domain of economic construction. Above we have already briefly discussed spiritual culture construction, so here, in order to avoid repetition, we will focus on the economic aspects of rural reconstruction.
Over the last ten years, the call for rural reconstruction has been increasing daily, though it has fallen off somewhat recently due to the war. If we investigate the rural reconstruction work and theory of each place and organization, we will see that with the exception of the Rural Reconstruction Institute (乡村建设研究院) of Mr. Liang Shumin in Shandong, neither Christian or non-Christian rural reform has been tied to construction of the nation. Many who carry out this kind of work simply feel that in rural areas bankruptcy is too severe and life is too bitter, so that there is no choice but to provide relief. The successful cases of Ding County (定县) and the Mass Education Movement (平民教育运动), of the well-known Li Chuan (黎川) rural reconstruction project, and cases of bank loans to rural areas—all are related to concerns of relief. Only Mr. Liang Shumin’s rural construction theory is a systematic and visionary nation-building philosophy. Even though his proposals and ours as Christians differ somewhat in purpose and principles, and we cannot fully agree with his epistemology and methodology, his rural construction philosophy definitely provides the nation constructing efforts of the church with valuable guidance and stimulation.
In the constructing of a new China, we should give much effort to rural reconstruction, and there is no need to spill much ink explaining the reasons why this is true. China’s historical background, China’s current situation, and China’s geography all make the rural reconstruction movement the most pressing one in China. Even though rural reconstruction cannot solve all of the problems facing China at the moment and cannot achieve much on its own, and even though there are many other important tasks for us, rural reconstruction is without a doubt an indispensable part of constructing a new China. Most important is that the church should see this clearly, and place rural reconstruction and national construction together in a single unified plan, and also take this as a responsibility of the church.
Even though the rural reconstruction movement was a fairly late development, and most of its work has been experimental in nature, these experiments have already given us much important and valuable knowledge and guidance. Until the outbreak of the war there were already almost 200 rural reconstruction sites, and of these more than 20 were managed by churches or church organizations. Of these, the rural reconstruction project in Li Chuan was the most successful. Also, many Christians have served at sites not associated directly with the church; Dr. James Yen (晏阳初) in Ding County is an important example.
In the past rural reconstruction organizations nation-wide held three conferences, leaving us with three thick and valuable books of conference reports. In 1933, the National Christian Council of China also held a rural reconstruction conference in Ding County, with more than 100 participants representing 14 provinces and 15 organizations, and this conference also published a rural reconstruction conference report containing many precious presentation papers, work reports, and practical work plan outlines. These events and records now provide us with at least the following points of guidance:
1. Christian rural reconstruction work is an important part of our work of constructing a new China, but this work is somewhat behind that of organizations outside the church, so we should quickly make efforts to catch up.
2. Christian rural development work should not be done for the narrow goal of evangelizing; the purpose is rather rural reconstruction work itself. This is part of building the kingdom of heaven on earth. So in planning such work, we should pay attention not to put evangelism in the domain of rural development work. It is best that evangelism and rural development work are carried out by two separate bodies, working in cooperation but without one being administered under the other. In other words, the church’s social gospel and individual gospel should proceed parallel to each other, each supporting the other.
3. All previous rural reconstruction work has seemed to have an experimental flavor, or seemed to be a mix of relief work and experimentation. Now we should expand this work, turning the results of past experiments into a large-scale plan and carrying out positive construction work. Many of the inefficient methods tried in the past, such as excessive expenditure of money and human investment, should now be avoided, and we should use the Christian spirit to encourage many young people to undertake training and become directly involved in rural reconstruction.
4. We should set up national guiding and supervisory bodies to be responsible for overall management and planning of rural reconstruction work. This is a need that was felt commonly by several hundred representatives at the third national conference on rural reconstruction. In this conference that was not purely a conference, many complicated relationships prevented a unified national plan from being realized. Even though Dr. XuBaoqian (徐宝谦) presented such a suggestion, and it received the sympathy of most of the representatives, in the end it didn’t succeed. In the meetings called by the National Christian Council of China, such a proposal has also been made, but it has not been realized due to issues of personal relationships. However, as rural reconstruction work becomes increasingly developed, the need for such unity is increasingly pressing. Especially now as we need large-scale construction efforts to replace small-scale experimental projects, this unity is needed. It is easier to unify the work of Christian organizations working toward a common goal, rather than the current situation of different church organizations working toward different goals, so we should call on the sympathy of the existing experimental projects to work toward the achievement of a united rural reconstruction movement.
5. Improvement and sharing of technical skills is an important part of rural reconstruction work, and we should invest effort in this, rather than placing all of our efforts into organization and evangelism. Dr. XuBaoqian has noted that “We are putting ample spirit into evangelism but not enough into daily practical work.” This is a serious indictment of our past Christian work. In the future we need to emphasize the improvement and sharing of techniques, and especially emphasize the effectiveness of practical working methods, so that the rural reconstruction work of churches will not consist mainly of research edited into reports.
6. With an eye to avoiding bureaucratization of rural reconstruction work and other malpractices, Christian rural reconstruction work should not rely on political support for its implementation. The only effective method in our work is the love of Christ. Relying on political power will result in rapid but temporary advances in the impact of our rural reconstruction work, but the need result is often that reconstruction work that was filled with vitality becomes rigidified with rules, killing our spirit of creativity. It is best if we cooperative with the government in a spirit of friendship, working toward common goals, but not be organizationally tied to the government.
7. The rural reconstruction conference report of the National Christian Council of China contains many concrete plans and proposals. While some of these have now lost their original value because time has passed and the social situation has changed, others can still be implemented, and we should do so promptly. Otherwise, we not only disappoint the efforts and hopes of participants in the conference but also lose a ready-made source of assistance.
The above addresses rural reconstruction, one aspect of national construction
