Hunter, "From denationalization to patriotic leadership: Chinese Christian colleges, 1920s--1930s," 2001

Rebecca Christine Hunter, M.A.

Abstract (Summary)
This paper looks at student activism and student nationalism at Christian colleges in China during the 1920s and 1930s. By concentrating on the Christian colleges, it looks at the interactions between the students at these schools, their foreign faculties and connections, the growing influence of the Guomindang and CCP and their effects on the rise of student nationalism. In the 1920s, the Christian colleges often found themselves the targets of student uprisings. After a process of sinification, however, by the 1930s their students were participating on the same level with students at the government institutions. This paper examines these changes and argues that by the 1930s the students at the Christian colleges, while wanting to prove their patriotism because of the lingering charges of "denationalization," actually depended on the foreign ties of their universities for more successful activism.

Advisor:Wills John