Developing a discipline: The recent study of western church history in the people's Republic of China

Tie growth in the study of church history in China is one outcome of Deng Xiaoping's policy of 'reform and opening', as well as a result of increasing exchanges of scholars and ideas between China and the west during recent years. Since the 1980s Chinese scholars have to a great degree abandoned the Marxist interpretative framework, and gradually developed their own interpretations and methodologies for the study of church history. In consequence, academic studies in the 1990s displayed a fair, honest and objective character which marked the process of maturation in the development of church history as a discipline. In this process Professor Yu Ke played an important role, of inheriting the past and ushering in the future as the real founder of the discipline in China.