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Q. What casualties had the US after the Cold War?A. First an exhaustive list of US Cold war casualties. Then accounts of John Birch, the first Cold War casualty (last article most complete).American Cold War Veterans, Inc.The first casualty of the Cold War - Aug 25, 1945 - HISTORY.comOn this day in 1945, John Birch, an American missionary to China before the war and a captain in the Army during the war, is killed by Chinese communists days after the surrender of Japan, for no apparent reason.After America had entered the war, Birch, a Baptist missionary already in China, was made a liaison between American and Chinese forces fighting the Japanese. But on August 25, Birch, commanding an American Special Services team, was ordered to halt by Chinese communist troops. A scuffle ensued, and Birch was shot dead.In the 1950s, Robert Welch would create a right-wing, anticommunist organization called the John Birch Society. For Welch, Birch was “the first casualty in the Third World War between Communists and the ever-shrinking Free World.”John Birch (missionary) - WikipediaJohn Morrison Birch (May 28, 1918 – August 25, 1945) was an American Baptist minister, missionary, and United States Army Air Forces captain who was a U.S. military intelligence officer in China during World War II. Birch was killed in a confrontation with Chinese Communist soldiers a few days after the war ended. He was posthumously awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal.The John Birch Society, an American anti-communist organization, was named in his honor by Robert H. W. Welch, Jr. in 1958. Welch considered Birch to be a martyr and the first casualty of the Cold War. Birch's parents joined the Society as honorary Life Members.August 25, 1945: Captain John Birch MurderedSometimes regarded as the first casualty of the Cold War, Captain John Birch died seventy years ago. Born in 1918 in India to American Baptist missionaries, he followed in his parents’ footsteps by becoming a missionary in China in 1940. After the Doolittle Raid he helped rescue some of the raiders who landed in China. He was commissioned a First Lieutenant, later promoted to Captain, in the Fourteenth Air Force. General Chennault, legendary founder of the Flying Tigers, got him to accept the commission by telling him that he could still function as a missionary in his off hours. He performed intelligence missions behind enemy lines for the Army Air Corps and the OSS. While on these missions he would conduct services for Chinese Christians. He was utterly fearless, despising both the Japanese and the Chinese Communists. He built up an extensive network of Chinese who passed along information to him about Japanese troop movements and shipping that he passed on to Chennault for bombing attacks.On August 25, 1945, as he was leading a group of Americans, National Chinese and Koreans to liberate Allied personnel in a Japanese POW camp, he was ordered by a party of Chinese Communists, who had intercepted his group, to surrender his revolver. Birch refused and was murdered by the Communists. He was posthumously awarded a Distinguished Service Medal. Dead at age 27, he had led a short but eventful life.The John Birch Society was founded by businessman Robert Welch in 1958. Never large in numbers, the Society, as a result of its frequently bizarre claims, was useful for critics of American conservatism in their ongoing effort to portray conservatives as paranoid crazies. Denounced by most mainstream conservatives, the organization continues to exist but with little influence. Jimmy Doolittle, who met Birch, thought that he would not have been pleased to have his name used in this fashion. However, both of the parents of Birch joined the Society as life membersRobert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society shown in his Belmont (Mass.) headquarters with a painting of U.S. Army Capt. John Morrison Birch for whom the society was named. Birch was a Baptist soldier-missionary who was killed by communists in China in 1945.John Birch Society Records at the John Hay LibraryHistory: August 25, 1945: First Victim of the Cold War, John BirchA Brief HistoryOn August 25, 1945, American Army Intelligence officer, Captain John Birch, was killed by communist revolutionaries in China a mere 10 days after the end of World War II. Birch is seen by many, especially hard corps right wing anti-communists, as the first martyr or victim of the Cold War between the totalitarian communist states and the democratic capitalistic nations (largely East vs. West).Digging DeeperBirch was the son of Christian missionaries and was born in India in 1918. Highly intelligent, hard working, and a dedicated patriot, Birch graduated Magna cum laude from Mercer University in 1939, a Baptist affiliated school. His idea of Christianity was rather strict and literal, with no tolerance for divergent ideas. Birch followed his conscience and studied to become a missionary, traveling to China in 1940, learning the language and volunteering for service in the US Army when the US joined World War II.Considered too valuable for his knowledge of Mandarin and the ways of the Chinese to serve as a chaplain, Claire Lee Chennault, commander of the famous Flying Tigers (American Volunteer Group) made Birch an intelligence officer instead.Lieutenant General Claire Lee Chennault (September 6, 1893 – July 27, 1958), was an American military aviator. A contentious officer, he was a fierce advocate of "pursuit" or fighter-interceptor aircraft during the 1930s when the U.S. Army Air Corps was focused primarily on high-altitude bombardment.When the war ended China was torn between revolutionary communists and the Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek. The US military employed the former occupiers of China, the Japanese Army, to keep order while things were sorted out, a situation that infuriated the Chinese communists. While traveling with a small group of Americans Chinese and Koreans, Birch was stopped by a communist patrol that demanded he turn over his pistol. Birch refused, a confrontation ensued, and Birch was shot and killed, the other members of his party taken prisoner.Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek 蔣中正1940 photo of Chiang Kai-shek in full military uniform.Chairman of the National Government of ChinaJohn Birch became a symbol of anti-communism as a martyr in the struggle against the atheistic socialists, and in 1958 the John Birch Society was formed by Robert Welch, Jr., an American businessman. The John Birch Society is a radical right wing organization that firmly resists the idea of wealth redistribution, “big government,” any hint of communism or socialism, government intervention in business or society and later became synonymous with resistance to the Civil Rights movement by condemning the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At first considered a far right but still sort of mainstream organization without undue stigma attached to membership, the John Birch Society became demonized as a radical right quasi racist outfit that national level politicians could not associate with and expect to get elected, though in some extremely conservative localities politicians can still afford to proudly claim membership. This shift in social acceptance happened rapidly after 1985 when the founder, Robert Welch, died.Originally based in Massachusetts, the John Birch Society is now based in Wisconsin. It is hard to determine exactly how many members the JBS currently has, although the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates as many as 100,000 people may have been members during its peak in the 1960‘s, and numbers are believed to be somewhat less today. The JBS may well have gotten a surge in interest and membership due to the elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, and his policies such as “Obamacare” remain priority targets of the group.John Birch was decorated for his military service with a Distinguished Service Medal and twice awarded the Legion of Merit, among other decorations. Jimmy Doolittle, commander of the famous “Doolittle Raid” was assisted by Birch and his unit after crash landing following the bombing of Tokyo in 1942, and later opined that Birch would not have approved of the use of his name in the John Birch Society. Was Birch a martyr to the Cold War? Is the John Birch Society a legitimate American organization or should they be considered radical pariahs? Share your thoughts on these subjects with your fellow readers. For opposing views, see these links: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2013/bringing-back-birch and http://www.jbs.org/For God and Country: The Story of John Birch (warfarehistorynetwork.com)September 6, 2016The story of John Birch, missionary and intelligence officer, reveals a hero’s contribution to victory.by Sam McGowanIn the 1960s the John Birch Society was well known to most Americans as a right-wing political organization noted for its anti-communism and conspiracy theories. Yet few knew anything at all about the man whose name the organization bore. Most assumed that John Birch founded the society, and even members of the organization knew only that the real John Birch was a missionary who became an intelligence agent in China and died at the hands of Chinese Communists in the closing days of World War II.While his death as the “first American soldier killed in the war against communism” was considered heroic by adherents of the society’s principles, few knew that Captain John Morrison Birch not only was truly a hero, but that his actions in World War II rival those of the most swashbuckling Hollywood spymaster. Even fewer Christians realize that, even though Birch was an Army Air Forces intelligence officer, he was also a dedicated defender of the faith who continued to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in China even after he had undertaken a new mission serving his country.Recognizing Lt. John Birch for his bravery in undertaking hazardous missions behind Japanese lines in China, General Claire Chennault, commander of the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force, pins a medal on the hero’s chest.John Birch was born on May 28, 1918, in India, where his parents were serving as missionaries. Two years later the family returned to the United States because of his father’s ill health, first settling in New Jersey, then moving to Georgia when John was in his early teens. When the family decided to return to the Birch farm near Macon, John and his younger brother went down and cleaned up an abandoned house for the family to live in and planted the fields, which gave him a strong bond with the land and an appreciation for the outdoors.Born with keen intelligence, as a boy John was fascinated with airplanes and aeronautics. After the family moved to rural Georgia, he became interested in radios and designed and built his own set, using the cardboard centers from toilet paper rolls and copper wire to make coils. Raised in a devout Christian home, John was baptized into a Baptist church in New Jersey at the age of seven. His parents had left their Presbyterian church because they believed the denomination had become modernist, and they joined a nearby Baptist congregation. When he was 11, John decided to become a missionary after hearing one describe his adventures in South America. After graduating from high school, John enrolled at Mercer University, a Baptist school in Macon, from which he would graduate first in his class.Two major events occurred during Birch’s years at Mercer. The young man fell under the influence of J. Frank Norris, a legendary and controversial Baptist preacher from Fort Worth, Texas. During a service in Macon, Birch heard Norris tell about the accomplishments of two missionary families in China and how they were praying for a strong young man to come to China to work with them. During the invitation at the conclusion of the service, Birch went forward and told Norris that God was calling him to China and he would go. Shortly afterward, Birch became involved in a campus controversy when he and other members of the ministerial student body brought charges against members of the faculty for teaching things that were contrary to Baptist doctrine. An uproar resulted, and fellow students branded Birch as the vilest person on campus. He was threatened with expulsion but held true to his convictions and refused to go along with demands made by the college dean to cancel a planned city appearance by Norris. The controversy was settled when Norris inexplicably canceled the meeting.True to his word, immediately after his graduation from Mercer, John Birch began the journey to China by enrolling at Norris’s Fundamental Baptist Bible Institute in Fort Worth. He completed the two-year seminary course in a year, and in the summer of 1940 set sail for Shanghai, along with another graduate named Oscar Wells. They arrived to find a country in disarray, with thousands of refugees from the country crowding the streets and disease and starvation on every corner. China was literally divided, with Japanese troops occupying much of the central coastal areas, Communists in the northern mountains, and Free China to the west. They were met by Fred Donnelson, who took the two new missionaries to his apartment, where they met the other members of the World Fundamental Baptist Missionary Fellowship team in China, which consisted of Donnelson and his wife, Effie, an elderly missionary affectionately known as Mother Sweet, and her partner in the mission field, Margaret Fitzgerald.Birch and Wells enrolled in the Adventist Chinese Language School in Shanghai, where Birch’s zeal and intelligence allowed him quickly to gain a working knowledge of the language. He felt called to minister in the distant towns and villages away from Shanghai and the coast. Hangchow was the city that was on his mind, and he finally got the opportunity to visit it when J. Frank Norris’s associate, Beauchamp Vick of Detroit Baptist Temple came to China.John Birch poses with a Mongolian pony he once rode for 60 miles through a snowstorm over rough terrain in one day.John was convinced this was where he should minister and he returned to Hangchow in early 1941. From then on, his ministry was in the inland regions of China as he ventured out from Hangchow to preach in the villages and towns in the surrounding no-man’s-land where Chinese guerrillas fought Japanese troops. In August, he was visited by his friend Oscar Wells, who was ministering in Shanghai, where he had met and become engaged to a young female missionary from the Reformed Church. Along with Pastor Du, the Chinese pastor in Hangchow, the two young men set off on a journey to Shangjao, a city in the mountains in Free China almost 200 miles away. Journeying by bicycle and on foot, they slipped through the Japanese lines then made their way westward until they were well into the mountains. As they left Japanese territory, they realized that the food was better and the people happier. When they reached Shangjao, they were directed to the Baptist church and were invited to conduct services that evening. The local Christians were eager to host the missionaries and told Birch that there were many places to the west where they could establish churches. He promised to come back.Birch Told His Friends That if He Wasn’t at Breakfast That He Would Have Already Slipped Through the Lines on His Way Into Free ChinaBirch made friends with dozens of Chinese pastors during the next few months and established relationships that would later prove beneficial. Many Chinese Christians were involved in the guerrilla movement, while others were members of the Nationalist army. Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, Madame Chiang, were both Christians, and Chiang had written a tract about his belief in Jesus Christ that was passed through the ranks of the army. Birch was more than welcome among the Nationalist troops, and he was encouraged to preach to them. But clouds of war were gathering, and American missionaries were told to get out of the country. Many decided that their place was in China, and even though they knew that if the United States entered the war they would be interned, the Donnelsons, Mother Sweet, the Wellses, and Birch all elected to stay.In November, John was scheduled to take a language exam in Shanghai, so he journeyed through the Japanese lines to Hangchow and caught the train to the city. He finished the exams on a Friday and left the next day for Shangjao. He arrived in Hangchow and visited some Presbyterian missionaries, who encouraged him to spend the weekend. Birch felt he should be on his way and refused the offer; he told his friends that if he did not appear at breakfast with them the next morning, he would have already slipped through the lines on his way into Free China. The next day was Sunday, December 7, in China and Saturday in the United States. Had Birch accepted the invitation to remain in Hangchow for the weekend, he probably would have been interned by the Japanese. He got word of the attack on Pearl Harbor from Chinese soldiers he met on the road.Over the next six months, John Birch was a stranger in a foreign land, cut off from his friends, who had been interned by the Japanese, and with little funds. He had some traveler’s checks, but the Chinese banks in Shangjao refused to cash them. Still, he continued his ministry, preaching in homes and churches in the mountains around the town. In April 1942, he wrote a letter to the U.S. military mission in Chungking inquiring about the need for someone with his qualifications. His first choice was to be a chaplain, but he offered to do whatever was needed. In the letter he mentioned his knowledge of radio and stressed his ability to withstand physical hardship. Three days later, the Chinese Army cashed his checks and he sent most of the money to his friends through a courier who had made the long journey to inform him that they were interned and in need of funds.On April 27, John Birch was sitting in an inn in a remote river town when a Chinese man sat down at his table and asked if he was an American. Sensing that he might be watched, Birch silently nodded that he was. The Chinese told him to finish his meal, then follow him, but to be careful that they were not seen. The man led the missionary to a sampan sitting low on the water. He nodded toward the boat and said, “Americans.” Birch was incredulous—how could any Americans be out here in the middle of China? As far as he knew, he was the only American within hundreds of miles. He knocked on the door of the cabin and called out, “Any Americans in here?” After a moment of silence, a voice from inside said, “No Japanese could mimic an accent like that,” and the door swung open. He looked inside and saw five Americans dressed in military uniforms. The leader stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Jimmy Doolittle. We just bombed Tokyo.”Lt. Col. and future Gen. Jimmy Doolittle poses with several of his fellow survivors of the famed April 1942 raid on Tokyo. Also pictured is one of the friendly Chinese who risked their lives to shelter the raiders from the vengeful Japanese.Birch was with Doolittle and his crew for barely 24 hours, but the young missionary made an impression on the veteran pilot. Doolittle told Birch to write down any notes or letters he wanted delivered, and he would take them back to the United States. Birch stayed with the sampan until it reached its destination, then guided Doolittle and his crew to a Chinese Army post at Lanchi. He told the officer in charge who the men were and asked if they had word of any other fliers. The officer asked Birch to inform Doolittle that the Chinese Army was doing everything possible to prevent any of the airmen from falling into Japanese hands. Birch continued on to Shangjao where he found a telegram from the Army telling him to report to the nearest air base at Ch’u Hsein and await further orders.When he arrived at the airfield, Birch found two other American bomber crews who were badly in need of an interpreter. Birch made arrangements for a flight to take them to Chungking. He received a phone call from a missionary in Yang Kou, who told him that Doolittle had left money and instructions. Another crew arrived as he was preparing to leave to pick up the money. Doolittle had left $2,000 in Chinese money and instructions to arrange for the burial of Corporal Leland Faktor and any others whose bodies might be brought in, to arrange for medical aid, to obtain all information pertaining to survivors, and to serve as an interpreter for crews who came to the field.Doolittle Raider 80 Brave MenWhen the last crew left, Birch was to go with them and report to the U.S. military mission at Chungking. Over the next several days, Birch was able to account for 60 of the Doolittle Raiders. When Birch asked the military commander about purchasing a burial plot, the Chinese said he would not sell it to him but would give it for a hundred years or as long as needed. The Chinese also paid for the coffin and the cost of the marker. Birch conducted a memorial service for Faktor with 13 Doolittle Raiders present, then two weeks later conducted a graveside service.Birch did not make it out on the last plane; instead he made his way to Kweilin by truck, on foot, and by train looking for Claire Chennault, who he had been told was there at his forward operating base. He found the American Volunteer Group (AVG) commander in his operations cave on the side of a mountain. When he introduced himself, Chennault revealed that Jimmy Doolittle had spoken of him and the aid he had provided to the members of the mission to bomb Japan. Birch replied that he wanted to be a chaplain, and Chennault asked which denomination. When Birch said he was a fundamental Baptist, Chennault replied that he was a Baptist himself, a member of a congregation in Louisiana.Men of the U.S> Fourteenth Air Force attend Sunday church services at their base in China.Birch told Chennault that he wanted “to serve God and my country.” Chennault said he already had one chaplain but might be able to make him an assistant. Birch asked Chennault for a ride to Chungking and was told to meet him at the airport. Birch was there at the appointed hour, and he climbed aboard the airplane with Chennault himself at the controls. When they landed, Chennault took the young missionary to Hostel A, where he and his pilots stayed, and arranged for a room.Birch arrived in Chungking in late May, at a time when the U.S. military role in China was developing. Although he held the rank of general in the Chinese air force, Chennault had yet to be brought back into the United States Army, from which he had retired a few years previously. After seeing that the young missionary had a place to stay, Chennault turned him over to a U.S. Army officer for a debriefing on his activities with the Doolittle Raiders.It was at this point that Birch detected an air of superiority among the Americans, an attitude that directly affected the conduct of the war in China. When Birch turned in the $2,000 Doolittle had left for him and related that the Chinese Air Force had paid the costs of the burials, the debriefing officer was incredulous. Birch had grown to love the Chinese and was offended when the American commented, “All of the Chinese we’ve dealt with have their hand out.” Such an attitude was common among the Americans who made up the China military mission. Birch was soon to learn that many Americans, including their commander, Lt. Gen. Joseph Stilwell, preferred Mao Tse-tung’s Communists over Chiang’s Nationalists. Birch could not believe his eyes when he visited the American Office of War Information and found a pamphlet praising Mao’s revolutionaries.An Army Air Force B-25B bomber takes off from USS Hornet (CV-8) at the start of the raid, 18 April 1942. Note men watching from the signal lamp platform at right. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.The Doolittle Raiders – The MissionBirch also learned that most of Chennault’s AVG men would soon be leaving. With the exception of a few who agreed to accept induction into the U.S. Army, most refused to serve under Colonel Clayton Bissell, the U.S. Army officer who replaced Lt. Gen. Lewis Brereton as commander of Tenth Air Force in India and whom General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold had picked to command U.S. air operations in the theater. The pilots and mechanics of the AVG were all former military personnel who had been recruited from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, and the former naval aviators were particularly turned off when they were told they would become part of the Army instead of returning to their previous branches of service.Chennault Wanted Nothing Less than Birch’s Total Commitment; Birch Told Him He Would Have to Pray About itWhen Birch arrived in Chungking, the transition to the Army was still a few weeks in the future, so he decided to delay his entry. As an ordained minister, he was exempt from the draft and could not be inducted. His impression of Chennault had been highly favorable, and he decided he would prefer to serve directly under him. The admiration was a two-way street; Chennault had been equally impressed with the young missionary, and while he was willing to let him go through the motions of applying for an appointment as a chaplain, he realized he could be far more important in another role.Over the next few weeks, Chennault and Birch were frequently together. On an occasion when Chennault invited him to ride into town, he brought up a new subject. He told Birch he had a need for field intelligence officers with experience in China, men who had lived there before the war, spoke the language, and were familiar with Chinese customs. He told Birch how important the work would be to the winning of the war and that it would be extremely dangerous. The punch line was when he told the young missionary that he would be free to preach on Sundays if he chose to accept a commission as an intelligence officer. There was one thing Chennault wanted, and that was total commitment. He told Birch that if he decided to accept the job, he would give him an immediate field commission. Birch said he would pray about it.On July 4, Birch attended a barbecue hosted by the first lady of China, Madame Chiang (formerly Soong) herself, and General Chennault, held at the home of the Chinese president, Lin Sen. Birch was surprised to get an engraved invitation. Madame Chiang’s sister, the widow of the founder of the Chinese Republic, Sun Yat Sen, was also present. When Birch came through the receiving line, Chennault introduced him to the Soong sisters as “a missionary who helped General Doolittle and his flyers.” Birch and the Soongs had something in common; the sisters’ father was a Methodist minister, and as young women they had attended Wesleyan College in Macon. They were thrilled to learn that Birch was from Macon and greeted him warmly.Another member of Chennault’s entourage was also from Macon. Colonel Robert L. Scott, who would take command of the 23rd Fighter Group, was a Macon native. Although the two knew each other—Birch was part of the 23rd Fighter Group—the young missionary was not the inspiration for the title of Scott’s famous book, God Is My Copilot. The title came from a comment made by another missionary, Dr. Fred Manget, who treated Scott for minor shrapnel wounds.On July 5 at breakfast, Chennault again approached Birch about becoming an intelligence officer. Birch told Chennault that he thought he knew what the delay was; although he met most of the requirements for being a chaplain, J. Frank Norris’s school was not accredited, and graduation from an accredited seminary was a requirement. The senior chaplain in Chungking had told Birch he would request a waiver, but no word had come down. Chennault told Birch he could accept a commission as an intelligence officer and transfer to the chaplaincy later if an appointment came through. The concession excited Birch, who immediately accepted. Chennault had the paperwork drawn up and commissioned John M. Birch as a second lieutenant assigned to the 23rd Fighter Group as the group intelligence officer.Although he had been commissioned as an intelligence officer, Birch volunteered to assist Chennault’s chaplain, Paul Frillman, another missionary who had joined Chennault’s staff in the Chinese Air Force and had come into the U.S. Army as a chaplain. Frillman would later become an intelligence officer himself. Frillman was Lutheran while Birch was a fundamental Baptist, and although there was disagreement between the two over issues of personal conduct, Frillman made Birch his assistant and assigned him to preach at Sunday services when he was absent and to orient new personnel to the theater.Birch was still focused on becoming a chaplain, and when he learned that the chief of chaplains for the CBI was coming to Chungking, he requested that his file be reviewed. The request was approved. When he went to tell Chennault the good news, the Old Man told Birch he wanted him to go on a mission for him. Birch agreed, under the condition that if the appointment came through, he would be allowed to transfer. Chennault countered by asking Birch whether he would remain as his intelligence officer if the appointment did not come through. Birch said he would, and the two shook hands.Birch’s mission was to journey into southeastern China to inspect clandestine airfields that Chennault had ordered built two years previous and had stocked with gasoline and ammunition. Chennault wanted to know the condition of the airfields and supplies so he would be able to use them as forward airfields if the need arose. Birch and a Chinese soldier named M.L. Wang left on the mission in mid-September. It was the first of many long treks into contested territory. They took only what they could carry. Birch also carried maps, a list of contacts, and a roll of gospel tracts written in Chinese to pass out along the way. They covered more than 1,000 miles on the two-month journey, traveling by land, water, and air. When they were in Japanese-controlled territory, they moved by night. Birch’s contacts, many of whom were Chinese Christians, allowed them to sleep in their homes, and on Sundays he was usually offered the opportunity to preach in homes and local churches.Birch and Wang inspected the airstrips and asked the contacts to show them the supply caches, which had been ingeniously concealed. Gasoline cans and ammunition boxes were buried under pagodas, hidden in corn cribs, suspended on ropes in wells, hidden in caves, and buried underground. Birch was pleased to discover that local villagers had kept the airstrips in good condition. When they returned, Chennault read Birch’s report and immediately wrote a letter of commendation for his personnel file and recommended that he be promoted. It was the first of several recommendations for Birch’s promotion made by Chennault, along with recommendations for decorations, but the convoluted command structure in the CBI required that they be approved by Tenth Air Force Commander Clayton Bissell, who was quick to disapprove just about any recommendation Chennault made.Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell (left), commander of the U.S. Tenth Air Force, and Maj. Gen. Claire Chennault (right) were bitter rivals. This meeting at Tenth Air Force headquarters in Delhi, India, was strained.The command arrangement in the CBI caused many problems. Although the War Department apparently originally saw China as a base for an aerial bombing offensive against the Japanese home islands, the Japanese victory in Burma and the offensive in China in the wake of the Doolittle Raid caused the theater to lose its importance. General Stilwell went to China as the senior American officer, but he had little regard for Chiang and the Nationalists and was focused entirely on avenging his defeat in Burma. Stilwell and nearly everyone else in any position of authority were jealous of Chennault’s relationship with Chiang and the military successes of his shoestring forces in the Chinese interior.Hap Arnold hated Chennault and had been forced by the White House to accept him as the senior air officer in China. He had seen to it that Chennault’s authority was diminished by making him subordinate to Bissell. He wrote the orders promoting both of them to brigadier general so that Bissell outranked Chennault by one day. He also placed Chennault’s China Air Task Force (CATF) under Bissell’s Tenth Air Force and required that Chennault go through Bissell with every request. Birch’s family would learn after the war that he had been recommended for every combat decoration up to and including the Medal of Honor, but the recommendations were all mishandled except for the Legion of Merit and Distinguished Service Medal. Bissell and his staff disapproved most of the recommendations for decorations submitted from China on the basis that the men were “just doing their duty.” The attitude led to great resentment against Bissell and his staff, who were safe in offices in Delhi.Birch learned that no authorization for him to become a chaplain had come through, so he accepted the position as Chennault’s intelligence officer. Chennault told him that he was his “intelligence department” and would answer directly to his command. Birch’s office was a shack a few yards from Chennault’s headquarters. His first duties were to make corrections to aerial maps and debrief pilots returning from missions. He would be in charge of all intelligence, no matter from what source. A few weeks later he discovered that Bissell had decided to take over the intelligence department as well, without consulting with Chennault.Questioning a local villager as to their position, members of Y Force stop in a remote Chinese village for the night. Utilizing a map, they attempt to orient themselves during their foray into northern Burma and work to establish radio communications.On December 10 two officers arrived at Kweiling, where Bissell had ordered Chennault to relocate his headquarters, and informed Chennault that they had been sent by Bissell to become his chief intelligence officer and assistant. After his initial meeting with the two officers, Chennault ignored them for more than a week. He told them that he did not appreciate Bissell picking his staff and that he already had an intelligence man, Lieutenant John Birch.The two officers were actually well qualified and did not appreciate being caught in the middle in the war between Bissell and Chennault. Lt. Col. Jesse Williams had been in Shanghai for 18 years as an oil company executive, while Captain Wilfred Smith was the son of missionaries and had studied oriental history at the University of Michigan. Neither had the kind of experience Birch did, but they were well qualified to serve as intelligence officers in China. They finally decided to ignore Chennault and go to work. They went to Birch’s office and told them who they were. It was an uncomfortable moment as Birch answered directly to Chennault on his order, and he commented to the two officers that Bissell was not too popular in that part of the world. Yet, he recognized that they were superior officers and told them to pull up a chair and he would show them what he was doing. The three men got along well together and soon all were laughing over the feud between the two generals.Birch Needed to Cover More Than 300 Miles in Japanese-Controlled Territory, So He Decided to Disguise Himself as Chinese.Although he was an intelligence officer, Birch still had the opportunity to preach. He was amazed to discover that the American military personnel responded to him better than they did to the chaplain. The young soldiers and airmen realized that Birch did not have to be in the Army because as a member of the clergy he was exempt from the draft, yet he was undertaking dangerous assignments far from friendly lines. He had thought that he could best serve God as a chaplain but discovered that he was more effective in the spiritual role in a different status. He was also able to continue ministering to Chinese Christians when he went out on intelligence-gathering missions in the countryside.In early 1943, Chennault was finally promised reinforcements. He went to Williams and Smith and told them he needed intelligence from the coast. He wanted his own intelligence network in China so he would not have to rely on Stilwell’s headquarters, which usually was a week or more late in passing on reports that would have been important to mission planning if they had been more timely. When Smith commented that they were not the Office of Strategic Services and did not have the resources for such a program, Chennault responded that they had John Birch. He told them to send Birch out with some radios on a mission to set up a network of reliable Chinese agents who would pass intelligence regarding Japanese shipping back to him. Chennault realized that Japanese supply routes to Formosa were just off the coast and believed that his CATF could interdict shipping. When Smith informed Birch of the mission, Birch only had one question—could he preach in Chinese churches on Sunday? Smith responded that he could preach on Monday if he wanted, as long as he got the job done.Birch left Kweiling and flew to the CATF’s easternmost airfield, from which he set out on foot. He hired a coolie to assist him with his cargo of radios and prepared to trek to his first destination in Fukien Province. He would have to cover more than 300 miles in Japanese-controlled territory, so he decided to disguise himself as Chinese. He dyed his brown hair black, then donned traditional Chinese peasant garb and put on sandals. His initial trek was over mountains, and as he climbed he taught the coolie an old children’s spiritual, “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.”After they descended the mountains and reached a river, Birch sent the coolie back home and obtained a sampan from a guerrilla. He repeated the process of using a coolie when trekking overland and sampans on rivers when he could, a system that allowed him to average nearly 40 miles a day. He kept in touch with Smith by radio. He frequently encountered Chinese Christians who were incredulous to see a missionary so deep inside Japanese territory, and he preached to several congregations as he came across them on his way to the coast. On one occasion he and his coolie hid their cargo in a dung pot and carried it through a Japanese checkpoint as the guards held their noses and turned away.When he reached a village near the coast, Birch sought out a Christian he had been told to contact. The man took him to the leaders of the local church, where Birch explained his mission and told them he needed two fishermen who were “willing to risk their lives for China.” One of the deacons said he was a fisherman and that he had a friend who would help. Birch interrogated the two men to be sure they were dedicated to defeating the Japanese and then showed them how to work the radios. He also promised them $10 a month apiece to cover their expenses and compensate them for their time away from their livelihood. He gave them a radio and a codebook that was set up so they could translate their messages into English.Birch devised his own system of mixing up the pages to confuse the Japanese who monitored the transmissions. Meanwhile, Captain Smith had set up monitoring/relay stations in Free China to pick up the messages from the coast and pass them along to his headquarters. By the time Birch returned to Free China, Smith was receiving as many as 50 messages a day.The intelligence was priceless. The coast watchers transmitted reports of ship sightings that were relayed to CATF. Chennault set up a Teletype system at his main base to pass along mission orders to his dispersed bases. In some instances, CATF aircraft were in the air on their way to intercept Japanese ships within 10 minutes after the coast watcher transmitted the report. Some ships were attacked less than an hour after they were reported. Smith also compiled a daily report that was transmitted to Navy personnel at Stilwell’s headquarters in Chungking, which then transmitted the information to U.S. Navy submarines and ships operating in the China Sea. Chennault was elated at the quality of the intelligence and recommended Birch’s promotion to first lieutenant for the third time.A bomb hit on a Japanese patrol boat is recorded by a photographer aboard an American aircraft. During the same mission in which they sank this vessel off the Shantung Peninsula, pilots of the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force destroyed 45 Japanese planes on the ground and damaged 55 others.Although Arnold still considered him a crackpot, in early 1943 Chennault was allowed to break out from under Tenth Air Force control as the CATF became the Fourteenth Air Force. Chennault’s staff members were elevated in rank, and John Birch was promoted to first lieutenant while his immediate superior, Captain Smith, jumped two ranks to become a lieutenant colonel. Chennault was promised a force of 500 planes, and Stilwell was ordered to transfer control of the Hump airlift from Bissell to Chennault. Stilwell refused.In the spring of 1943, Japan launched a new Chinese offensive, and Smith sent Birch to serve as a liaison between Fourteenth Air Force and Chinese Marshal Hsueh Yo’s army on the Yangtze River. Birch’s mission was to set up air support for the Chinese ground forces. He would seek out targets and guide air strikes in on them and set up a rescue network to retrieve downed airmen. It was a pioneer effort, and Smith and the Fourteenth Air Force staff hoped to establish tactics for a larger effort with new agents who would be trained to take his place.Birch went by train and sampan to Changsha, where Yo had his headquarters. After familiarizing himself with the area, he set out with a team of Chinese soldiers on a 300-mile hike to the front lines, where he was turned over to guerrillas who took him deep inside Japanese territory. Once again, he disguised himself as a coolie. He and Smith had worked out a plan under which Birch would mark targets with white cloth panels pointing in the direction of the target. His first target was a pagoda that had been converted into an ammunition dump.A Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk fighter came in for a strafing run that set off the ammunition. Then Birch directed the fighter onto a Japanese artillery piece. He and his guerrillas slipped back into the forest and crawled on their bellies in the darkness of night to locate their next target, a fuel dump at a Japanese camp. Early the next morning a pair of Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers hit the dump, causing fires that spread through the camp. Birch remained at the front for more than a month, calling in air strikes that enabled the Chinese troops to drive the Japanese back into their previous positions.In mid-1943, Birch was summoned back to Kunming, where he was to take part in the commissioning of a new batch of intelligence agents, including his friend Arthur Hopkins, who had served briefly with him the year before, and Chennault’s former chaplain, Paul Frillman. Birch briefed the men on his experiences, and Williams pointed out that he was the first U.S. agent to live and work with Chinese troops. The commissioning of the new agents gave Birch the opportunity to ask Chennault for permission to apply for pilot training. He had been interested in aviation since childhood, and seeing the Fourteenth Air Force fighters and bombers in action at close range had rekindled his interest. Chennault agreed to pass the application forward but would later tell Birch that he was more valuable to him in his present capacity than 10 pilots would have been.Guerrillas Operating Near the Bombing Site Reported That Bodies of Dead Japanese Were Hauled Away by the Truckload.Birch’s next mission was to set up a network of agents along the Yangtze to keep watch on river shipping. Arthur Hopkins and Sergeant Leroy Eichenberry would assume his previous role with Marshall Yo. They would fly together to Changsha. Then, Birch was to continue northward to contact General Heuen Yoh, commander of the Second Guerrilla Brigade. Birch remained in Changsha for a few days before continuing his journey to visit members of the China Inland Mission and deliver supplies he had brought for them. Accompanied by two Chinese radio operators and a team of coolies, he then set off on a 10-day trek in scorching heat through swamps and over hills to link up with General Yoh. The guerrillas planned a route for Birch and his two radio operators down the Yangtze in a series of junks. Once again, Birch set up a system for rescuing downed airmen. While on the Yangtze, he learned that the Japanese were drawing considerable material from the iron mines at Shihweiayo and arranged an air strike against them.Birch’s determination was revealed when he got wind of an ammunition dump at Hangkow that had been established in a former residential area. He infiltrated through Japanese positions and located the dump, then radioed directions back to the Fourteenth Air Force. The area was too congested to risk laying his customary white panels, and when the formation of bombers came over, the crews were unable to identify the target. Birch then made his way back to a remote landing strip where he was picked up by a light airplane and flown to the bomber base. He went up in the nose of the lead airplane and pointed out the target to the bombardier. The first bombs set off the dump, and the series of explosions spread through the Japanese camps. Guerrillas operating in the area reported that bodies of dead Japanese were hauled away by the truckload.In the spring of 1944, Birch went on “a trip,” as he called his missions, to the plains of the Yellow River. There he found huge numbers of Japanese troops massing for an offensive. Riding on horseback, he set out to locate the enemy lines of supply. Birch saw thousands of Japanese marching southward from northern China. He wondered why Mao’s Communists had made no attempt to stop them. After setting up observation teams to keep watch on the railroad, he boarded a sampan for the journey down a tributary of the Yangtze to Lao Ho Kow, where he was to link up with two other members of the intelligence team.Laden with Chinese commandos, sampans make their way down the Liu River en route to attack Japanese positions in the hills near Tanchuk.On May 17, Birch joined Lieutenant William Drummond and Sergeant Eichenberry, then set out with them to search for a place to set up an intelligence base before proceeding north to Shantung Province to establish a network of Chinese agents. As they proceeded northward, they came into an almond-shaped valley on the Yellow River, which had been bypassed by the Japanese. An army of 100,000 Chinese soldiers had been cut off in the valley for over a year. Birch immediately recognized the 100-mile-long valley as a natural location for a forward base, with a radio station and secret airfields at each end. Birch visualized the airfields being used as emergency landing strips for airplanes returning from missions to the north and as refueling stops for bombers and fighters going on missions into Manchuria—and perhaps even Japan. They could also serve as gathering points for downed aircrews to be picked up by Fourteenth Air Force transports.Birch radioed his headquarters for approval, then explained his idea to the Chinese general in command of the troops and received permission to go ahead. After setting up the radio station, Birch took a squad of Chinese soldiers looking for sites for airstrips. Relying on experience gained during a summer in which he measured cotton in Georgia, he laid out a 3,500-foot runway himself. Thousands of Chinese soldiers worked with picks and shovels to level out a dry streambed and then packed the runway with sand and gravel. With the airstrip complete, they constructed a small terminal and radio shack nearby. A second strip was laid out in a pasture. The first airplane into the valley came to evacuate Sergeant Eichenberry, who had come down with cholera. The two airfields were constructed entirely by Chinese military personnel and without any assistance whatsoever from U.S. sources other than Birch’s supervision. They had not cost the U.S. Army one thin dime.John Birch also suffered from serious medical maladies, particularly malaria, the same disease that had forced his father to leave India. In early August, he was picked up at one of the secret airfields and flown to Kunming to be decorated with the Legion of Merit.Recognizing that Birch was ill and tired, Chennault told him to take a 60-day furlough and go home for a rest. Birch refused, telling his commanding general that he did not want to take up a slot that some other soldier could use. Birch was true to his word when it came to furlough. He never took leave the entire time he served in China, not even to visit a young Scottish Red Cross worker he met in China, but who transferred to India shortly after they met. Birch proposed marriage to the girl, but then retracted the proposal when he realized that his postwar plans were to take the gospel into either Tibet or Turkestan, remote areas that would make life rough on a woman. The woman remained single for the rest of her life.A Japanese offensive in mid-1944 cost the Allies considerable territory in eastern China, a defeat that Chennault and many others blamed on Stilwell’s obsession with Burma and neglect of China. Stilwell’s days in China were numbered, although he attempted to gain complete control over the theater. He is believed to have drafted a plan giving him command of all the Chinese armies and sent it to Washington, where it was presented to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When a message came back ordering Chiang to turn command over to Stilwell, “Vinegar Joe” made the mistake of delivering the message himself—“to break the Peanut’s face” as he expressed his feelings in his diary. The plan backfired. Although Chiang had been willing to relinquish command, Stilwell’s arrogance not only caused him to change his mind, but he also wired Washington that he was through with Stilwell and demanded that he be replaced.The arrival of General Albert C. Wedemeyer brought about a change in the fortunes of the Fourteenth Air Force. Chennault began receiving support that Stilwell had withheld, and Fourteenth Air Force returned to offensive operations throughout the country, striking targets in northern China and south into Indochina. Chennault supported Birch’s plan to use the new base on the Yellow River for intelligence operations in north China and ordered the delivery of supplies to the airfield at Anhwei.Birch returned to duty and went north with the supplies. Shortly after he got there, he took a squad of Chinese soldiers and radios and headed further north. As was his practice, he carried a New Testament and a supply of gospel tracts. He was gone for two weeks. In early November, the effort paid off. One of the new agents radioed that he had discovered the crew of a Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, who had bailed out of their airplane six months before and had been hiding in the mountains. Guerrillas brought the men to the new base, and they were flown out in a C-47. On the day the transport came, an intense thunderstorm struck the valley and the airplane arrived in the middle of a heavy downpour. Birch ran out to the radio shack and got a bearing on the airplane, then talked the pilot in for a landing in nearly zero visibility.In early 1945, Birch arranged the evacuation of a number of missionaries who had been ministering in northern China. Mostly elderly, they were American, British, and Dutch who had ministered in rural towns that had been bypassed by the Japanese. As the war intensified, they began to fear for their lives. Some of those in the Anhwei area got wind of Birch’s base and sent word through guerrillas that they wanted to be rescued. Birch advised them to come out of the mountains and that he would evacuate them somehow. Several stranded airmen were also in the valley waiting for a plane.In late December, the missionaries began arriving. Birch called Kunming but learned that Colonel Smith had been called back to the United States for an urgent meeting. No one else in Kunming was sympathetic to the missionaries’ plight. Birch was told that they were not running an airline for missionaries. There were not enough downed airmen to justify sending a transport, and even when Birch sent word that they were running out of supplies, he was told he would have to wait.Lt. John Birch (second from left) and a pair of fellow Americans pose with officers of the Chinese Army.Birch finally got Kunming’s attention when he told them that he had a bag of sensitive intelligence that needed to be sent back. He was finally promised that an airplane would arrive when the weather broke. Birch rode a pony the 50 miles to the airstrip and discovered a snow-covered runway. He went to General Wang, the Chinese commander, and told him he needed men with shovels. Wang asked how many, and Birch said about 800 would do. The Chinese soldiers quickly cleared the runway, and the plane came in and picked up the stranded airmen and all but one of the missionaries, who had to wait for another month. The pilot gave Birch what he considered to be distressing news. Birch and his men were going to be transferred to the OSS, which was why Colonel Smith had been called to Washington.This was something Birch had feared. A planeload of OSS colonels and majors had arrived at Kunming before he left and started throwing their weight around. A few days after the pilot told him of the rumor of the impending transfer, Birch received a message sent under Chennault’s name that he and the other Fourteenth Air Force intelligence men would be transferring to the OSS and that the move would be beneficial for them. Birch was not buying it. He was convinced that the OSS would cause nothing but problems and that they would mess up the entire intelligence program he and the agents who followed him had been working for years to set up and maintain. He sent a return message in which he said he would rather be a Fourteenth Air Force buck private than a full colonel in the OSS and have access to Wild Bill Donovan’s slush fund, knowing that the message would be intercepted and read by every OSS man in China.Birch Told Chennault That the War Was Almost Over, and He Intended to Stay Until “the Last Jap is Out of China.”Birch’s opinion of the OSS changed when Lieutenant Bill Miller, a recent West Point graduate, came to visit him at Ankang where he had been hospitalized during another bout with malaria. The young officer told Birch that he was famous in the OSS and that everyone back in Washington had heard about him. Birch replied that it was probably because of the message he had sent. Miller confirmed that he knew about it but that Birch was widely respected for the magnificent job he had been doing in China for the past three years. He told Birch that he had been assigned as an escape and evasion agent to the airfield at Foyuang about 50 miles from Birch’s base at Linchuan. Deciding he liked Miller, Birch offered to help him all he could.When Smith returned from Washington, he brought Birch back to Kunming to attempt to talk him into accepting the transfer to the OSS. Birch was adamant in his refusal and insisted on remaining with the Fourteenth Air Force. Smith was not surprised. The rest of his staff had also been opposed to the transfer, but he had managed to talk all of them into accepting it. All, that is, except Birch. Chennault himself joined in the effort to convince Birch to accept the transfer, but the officer, who had been promoted to captain, remained obstinate. They finally worked out a compromise. Birch would work for and with the OSS but would remain on the Fourteenth Air Force roster. Chennault attempted once again to convince him to take a furlough in India, and Birch was tempted since it would offer him an opportunity to spend time with his former fiancée. Birch told Chennault that the war was almost over, and he intended to stay until “the last Jap is out of China.”Birch was now a captain, and the Chinese had given him a name, Bey Shang We, which literally meant Birch Captain. Although his activities were classified, John Birch was well known throughout China, especially among the Chinese military and the Christian community. He was also known to the Communists, who occupied a mountainous region in northern China and had done very little to oppose the Japanese. Birch was a strong anti-Communist and had been before he came to China. When he got there, he learned from the veteran missionaries that the Communists were considered to be more of a menace than the Japanese.After three years in China, Birch had come to believe that Mao and his Communists were merely waiting for the Allies to defeat the Japanese, and were depending on combat to wear down the Nationalist forces so that they would be unable to resist a Communist takeover after the war. Birch was not one who kept his views to himself and frequently admonished his friends and associates of what he believed were Communist intentions—to take over China, then move into Korea.Birch had been in the war since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, first as a missionary wandering through remote regions and existing on starvation rations, then as an intelligence officer operating in enemy territory. He was emotionally if not physiclly worn out, and was tired of the war. He also felt that he, like Chennault, was being shoved aside. He had discovered the Anhwei pocket and set up operations there, but now there were three bases in the area he had pioneered and he had been made subordinate to an OSS major. When he got word that his family was thinking about selling the farm he had worked so hard to establish, he became even more morose. He wrote an essay reflecting his emotions entitled “The War Weary Farmer.”Birch’s intelligence network brought news of Communist activities in northern China and Manchuria. Chinese Communist troops were occupying territory that had been abandoned by the Japanese, who were in full retreat now that the end of the war was near. Communists in Henan Province tore up dikes that held back the Yellow River, causing flooding in the Anhwei pocket that destroyed what had promised to be a bumper crop. Birch was at his base at Linchuan when he got word of the detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. He also received orders telling him to make preparations to move north into Japanese territory to accept the surrender of Japanese garrisons.Keeping a sharp lookout for movement by the Japanese enemy, Chinese soldiers have taken cover in deep and lengthy trenches just beyond the Burmese frontier.Immediately after the Japanese surrender announcement, Mao’s Communists came out of the hills where they had been hiding and moved into Japanese territory as quickly as possible before American and Nationalist forces could come in. Their intention was to capture arms and ammunition and disrupt Allied lines of communications. General Wedemeyer ordered OSS offices in China to make plans to get their agents to Japanese installations as quickly as possible to make arrangements for surrender to the proper authorities. Birch and his friend Bill Miller were ordered to Süchow. Miller made plans to go by junk and suggested that Birch and his party go with him, but Birch replied that it was too risky and that he hoped to get a plane. The two talked openly in their regular morning radio conversation since the war was over and they felt no need to speak in code.The plane did not come through so Birch made plans to hike overland to Kweiteh and catch the east train on the Lunghai railroad. His friend and fellow agent Captain Jim Hart warned him that the Communists might already be in control of the railroad and suggested he go with Miller instead. Hart later reported that Birch went into a tirade about how the Antichrist would soon take control of the world and that Communists were his servants.The following morning Birch and his party departed. Three other Americans—Lieutenant Laird Ogle, Sergeant Albert Meyers, and Albert Grimes, a civilian OSS operative—five Chinese officers, and two Japanese-speaking Koreans along with Birch made up the party. One of the Chinese, Lieutenant Tung Fu Kuan, was assigned as Birch’s aide. When they arrived at Kweiteh, they were joined by two Chinese who had collaborated with the Japanese, a general and his orderly. The general was to escort them to his counterpart in Süchow, where they would accept the Japanese surrender. A Japanese officer received the party at Kweiteh and assured them they would be well received at Süchow, but that there were Communist guerrillas along the railroad to the east.Forty-five miles down the railroad the train halted at the station at Tangshan. The Japanese stationmaster informed the Korean interpreters that the railroad had been sabotaged up the line and that Communists, Japanese, and Chinese puppet troops were fighting in the area. The train was going to remain in the town until the rails had been repaired and the fighting ended. Birch and his party discussed their options. Ogle proposed that the four Americans go on alone. Birch decided they would all go and commandeered the locomotive and a baggage car. After only 10 miles, the locomotive came to a halt when the engineer saw that the rails ahead had been removed. Ogle and Birch went into a village to hire coolies but learned that Communists had come in the night before and killed most of the men. A Japanese work crew arrived with new rails. Birch commandeered the handcar and told the Japanese commander to have his men move it over the break.After spending the night in a village about a mile down the tracks, Birch and his party got under way again early the next morning, with each man taking turns pumping the handcar in the hot China sun. Sometime before noon they ran into a group of about 300 Communists, all carrying arms. The Americans and Chinese were all in uniform, and Birch wore the well-known Flying Tiger insignia of the Fourteenth Air Force on his arm. There was little doubt who they were. Birch took Lieutenant Tung ahead of the party to meet the Communists, identifying himself as Captain John Birch of the American intelligence services on a mission under the orders of General Wedemeyer. He asked to be taken to their “responsible man.”One of the Communists said he would take them to their leader, but they must first disarm. Birch refused, responding that the Americans and Chinese were allies and must respect each other. The Communist argued for a time, then gave in and took Birch to a man he identified as their commanding officer. The officer demanded that he be allowed to examine the men’s equipment, and Birch refused, replying that their equipment was the property of the U.S. government and not for personal use. He advised the Communist that the United States dealt harshly with thieves and demanded that they be allowed on their way.Birch Grabbed Their Guide by the Collar and Said, “What are You People? If I say Bandits, You Don’t Look Like Bandits. You are Worse Than Bandits.”Over the next few hours the party encountered several groups of Chinese Communists but managed to make its way through them. Birch griped constantly about the Communists, referring to them as nothing but common thieves and bandits. His men realized he was agitated and feared for their lives. When a pair of North American P-51 Mustang fighters flew over at low altitude, they attempted to signal them, but without success.Lieutenant Tung proceeded ahead of the party to deal with the Communists. When they reached the town of Hwang Kao, Tung entered the railroad station and found it occupied by hostile-looking Chinese. He advised them that they were on a mission to Süchow for General Wedemeyer and asked to speak to their “responsible man.” When one of the Communists blurted out that they must disarm the Americans, Tung replied that if they attempted to do so it would cause a serious misunderstanding. The senior officer told Tung he would send someone with him back to the party, but Tung heard him advise the man to take his gun along and if anything happened to shoot Tung first.Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer, overall Allied commander in China and chief of staff to Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-Shek, chats with the Generalissimo.By this time, Birch was thoroughly incensed at the treatment he and his men were receiving from their reputed allies. When Tung and the Communist joined the party, he asked the Communist if he was “another bandit.” General Peng, the Chinese collaborator, and Albert Grimes advised Birch to take it easy. When Tung told Birch that the Communists intended to disarm them, Birch exploded, blurting out that Americans had liberated the entire world, but now the Communists wanted to disarm him and his men! The Communist told Birch that he was not the “responsible man” but that he would take them to him, but that since they refused to disarm, he would not be responsible for anything that happened. Tung later reported that he and Birch expected the Communists to let them pass, then shoot them in the back.Finally, a Communist wearing the Sam Browne belt that identified him as an officer told Birch that he could see their responsible man. Ogle and Grimes insisted that they go along, but Birch told them to wait with the rest of the party and he and Tung would proceed alone. Tung later reported that Birch told him that he wanted to see how the Communists were going to treat Americans and that he did not care whether they killed him. If they did, America would punish them with atom bombs. At one point Birch grabbed their guide by his collar and said, “What are you people? If I say bandits, you don’t look like bandits. You are worse than bandits.” Tung told the Communists that Birch was joking.A little later someone called out, “Look, here is our leader.” Birch and Tung turned and saw that they were referring to the man in the Sam Browne belt. The officer told his men to load their guns and disarm Birch. Tung had taken off his sidearm earlier and told the Communists to let him get Birch’s gun in order to avoid “a serious misunderstanding.” The officer ordered one of his men to shoot Tung, which he did. He then told a soldier to shoot the American. The Communist hesitated, then fired a shot into Birch’s leg. Shortly afterward, Tung passed out from loss of blood. When he woke up, he was lying in a ditch next to Birch’s lifeless body.Word of John Birch’s death soon reached other OSS operatives. When Bill Miller arrived in Süchow, he was informed that Communists had killed his friend. Japanese soldiers and friendly Chinese found Tung and Birch’s bodies and took them to Süchow, where Tung was hospitalized. Both Tung and Birch had been badly beaten, and an autopsy found evidence that after Birch had been shot in the leg, he had been bound and then shot in the back of the head. His face had been slashed beyond recognition by bayonets. Miller was able to identify the body by Birch’s general build and from photographs taken when it was found.The senior Japanese officer at Süchow had refused to surrender to the Communists and waited for someone from the Nationalists to arrive in the city. He was sympathetic to Miller for the loss of his friend and offered his services to conduct an appropriate military funeral. Miller, the Japanese, Chinese puppet officers, and Jesuit missionaries who were in the city planned the funeral together. Two other Americans, pilots who had been killed in a crash near the city, would be interred along with Birch. A Catholic high mass was held for the young fundamentalist Baptist, and after the mass the entourage of Japanese and Chinese officers and Jesuits led a procession through the city to the music of a Japanese military band. The coffins were carried by 24 coolies. The three bodies were interred in a plot on the side of a mountain just outside the city. A Chinese Protestant conducted a graveside service. Japanese soldiers fired the traditional volley as the bodies were lowered into their graves.Frequent contributor Sam McGowan is a pilot and resident of the Houston, Texas, area. He has written extensively on World War II in the China-Burma-India Theater.China-Burma-India Theater of World War II (Feb 1, 1945)The Adventures of Captain John BirchThe John Birch Society Published on Dec 11, 2007John Birch, missionary and American intelligence officer in China during WWII, spreads a message of hope while risking his life behind enemy lines. During a chance meeting, he is led to Colonel James H. Doolittle and members of the World War II raiding party that had just completed the dramatic and legendary bombing raid on Tokyo, in April, 1942. This accidental meeting behind enemy lines proved to be the rescue the airmen had hoped for. With his encyclopedic knowledge of the language, customs, and geography of China, Birch was able to convey Doolittle and the crews of many of the other American bombers to safety in free China.Birch, an American Baptist missionary serving in China since 1940, then became an intelligence analyst as a second lieutenant with the China Air Task Force of the American Army—General Claire Chennault's legendary "Flying Tigers." He was the first American to live and work in the field with a Chinese army fighting against the Japanese. Performing high-risk intelligence-gathering missions on the ground, Birch earned the reputation as "the eyes of the 14th Air Force," devising an early warning system that enabled U.S. air units to come to the aid of Chinese units under enemy attack. He also organized a rescue system for pilots who were shot down by the Japanese. Chennault credited Birch with the fact that 90 percent of his downed flyers were rescued.The story of Birch is not as well-known as Doolittle's raid, but plays an integral role in leading the downed airmen to safety. Without Birch, many more of the raid may not have survived to tell their story nor perhaps would victory come as quickly as it did in then free China. Ten days after the war, Birch was killed by Chinese Communists as he was on his way to rendezvous with small pockets of Japanese soldiers, who were to surrender to him. Birch would never know the fact that details of his death were kept from the American people. Nor would he know of Robert Welch, who would found an organization bearing his name and who would continue Birch's quest to spread the message of freedom. He also would not know that his parents would proudly accept life memberships into the organization.John Birch: A Life: Terry Lautz: 9780190262891: Amazon.com: BooksJohn Birch was better known in death than life. Shot and killed by Communists in China in 1945, he posthumously became the namesake for a right-wing organization whose influence is still visible in today's Tea Party. This is the remarkable story of who he actually was: an American missionary-turned-soldier who wanted to save China, but became a victim instead.Terry Lautz, a longtime scholar of U.S.-China relations, has investigated archives, spoken with three of Birch's brothers, found letters written to the women he loved, and visited sites in China where he lived and died. The result, John Birch: A Life, is the first authoritative biography of this fascinating figure whose name was used for a political cause.Raised as a Baptist fundamentalist, Birch became a missionary to China prior to America's entry into the Second World War. After Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for the U.S. Army in China, served with Claire Chennault, commander of the famed Flying Tigers, and operated behind enemy lines as an intelligence officer. He planned to resume his missionary work after the war, but was killed in a dispute with Communist troops just days after Japan's surrender.During the heyday of the Cold War in the 1950s, Robert Welch, a retired businessman from Boston, chose Birch as the figurehead for the John Birch Society, believing that his death was evidence of conspiracy at the highest levels of government. The Birch Society became one of the most polarizing organizations of its time, and the name of John Birch became synonymous with right-wing extremism.Cutting through the layers of mythology surrounding Birch, Lautz deftly presents his life and his afterlife, placing him not only in the context of anti-communism but in the longstanding American quest to shape China's destiny.Editorial Reviews"Lautz skillfully provides one of the most important benefits of scholarly study - the correction of ignorant assumptions through disseminating historical fact. Lautz's effective, four-part account of Birch's 27 years provdies readers an opportunity to examine 20th-century fundamentalism, relatively unknown military efforts of WWII, the postwar rise of communism in China and anti-communism in the US. A valuable addition to any collection."-Choice"This remarkable book made clear to me how wrong I was in my assessment of John Birch. Because his name is associated with the right-wing John Birch Society, I assumed he personified its extreme views. Read this gracefully written biography and learn the fascinating truth about this extraordinary Christian, patriot, and good man."-Lee H. Hamilton, U.S. House of Representatives, former member, and U.S. Homeland Security Advisory Council"With the support of extensive and highly original research, Terry Lautz has written a fascinating and informative biography of John Birch, allegedly the 'first victim of the Cold War.' This is the engaging story of the real person behind the myth, and why and how the former was transformed into the latter as a symbol of conservative politics in America."-Chen Jian, Hu Shih Professor of History and U.S.-China Relations, Cornell University"This engaging study of the life and legacy of John Birch offers an illuminating read for anyone interested in the American missionary and military experience in China or the politics of anti-Communism in the U.S. Based on exhaustive archival and interview research, Terry Lautz's wonderful book is full of surprises about the origins of the infamous John Birch Society and the (unlikely) man in whose name it was founded."-Elizabeth J. Perry, Henry Rosovosky Professor of Government at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute"A fascinating window into the tumultuous events of American involvement in China during World War II. Lautz's depiction of the John Birch affair provides the human story behind a mythical figure in American political life. This is an eye-opening account that scholars as well as general readers interested in American and Chinese history and politics will value."-David Shambaugh, George Washington University and The Brookings Institution"Most treatments of Birch's life have tended to present it as a short preface to the history of the society carrying his name. But now, in "John Birch: A Life" (Oxford), Terry Lautz reverses the usual proportions and presents a biography of Birch in which the society figures as a sort of epilogue. Lautz has the kind of credentials-a trustee of the Harvard-Yenching Institute; a member of the Council on Foreign Relations-guaranteed to give fits to any Bircher past or present, but his book is thorough, judicious, and, except for a few overdone academic references to Cold War "paranoia," respectful of larger historical realities. Even conservatives near the mainstream's right bank will be hard-pressed to see it as another anti-anti-Communist undertaking." --Thomas Mallon, -The New Yorker"Lautz sorts the real story from the 'lunatic fringe'. A useful work that elucidates both the U.S. role in China and some elements of the contemporary conservative mindset." -Kirkus Reviews"Lautz rounds out a commendable study that fills a significant scholarly gap." - Publishers Weekly"Mr. Lautz's meticulous, readable book tells the whole story, from Birch's birth in India to missionary parents to his controversial afterlife. It is a pungent and poignant tale that touches on several major themes of midcentury history-Western evangelism in China, U.S. relations with the Chinese Communists and the caustic accusations of treachery made against American officials after those Communists took power in 1949." --Richard Bernstein, Wall Street Journal"The only way to learn about the real John Birch is to read about him - and Lautz's biography is the right place to start." --John J. Miller, National Review"Beyond bringing us back to a chapter of irrationalism in our past, Lautz's equally interesting contribution is to rescue John Birch, the man, from obscurity and from the society that pirated his name." --Gabriel Schoenfeld, lThe Weekly Standard'"Lautz painstakingly reconstructs the brief life of this missionary, soldier and spy, who arrived in China to save souls in 1940 and was shot dead by Communist soldiers five years later. Birch becomes a case study in the "well-meaning idealism and misguided adventurism" that had animated the interest of Americans in China since the 19th century... Lautz has written an enlightening reflection on a complex history." --Global Asia"In his splendid new biography "John Birch: A Life," Terry Lautz of Syracuse University asks many questions about Birch's life and legend. The first, in the opening pages, is the most compelling: How did a young, obscure lieutenant killed in a remote province of China become the namesake of an anti-communist organization whose zealous supporters shook the foundation of American political life?" --Alaska Dispatch NewsAbout the Author: Terry Lautz is a Moynihan Research Scholar at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and former vice president of the Henry Luce Foundation. He is also a director of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, trustee of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He graduated from Harvard College, served with the U.S. Army in Vietnam, and holds an MA and PhD from Stanford University.Who Was John Birch?By Rick FlandersMost people who have heard of John Birch associate his name with the John Birch Society, a public-policy educational association founded in the 1950s to combat communism. But the truth is that if nobody had named an organization for him, his name would be properly honored today, especially by fundamental Baptists. On August 25, 1945, John Birch was murdered in China, which was a significant event at the beginning of the Cold War because he was killed by Communists who, at the time, were supposed to be our allies. The seventieth anniversary of his murder occurs this year, and there are many reasons for Christians to remind themselves at this time of who this great man was.HE DID NOT FOUND THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY. The John Birch Society was organized in 1957, but not by John Birch, who had been dead for more than a decade. The founder was Robert Welch, a successful candy manufacturer who had made himself a serious student of world events and saw the need to take action against forces he saw were threatening the freedom of the United States and the so-called “Free World.” The society was named for John Birch because of the significance of his death to the larger situation we called the Cold War. Not only was the young Birch killed by the Communists, but the murder was covered up by the United States government. This cover-up of an act of aggression against us by the Communists, along with several more such cover-ups that were exposed in the post-war era, revealed a tangled web of treason and conspiracy that moved some to take action for the preservation of their liberty from powerful forces that threatened them. The death of John Birch, and the efforts of the American government to hide the facts about it, demonstrated the awful predicament in which our nation has been since World War Two. It also relates the remarkable story of the bravery and dedication of a young American Christian to his country and to his Lord in the face of great peril.HE WAS A BAPTIST PREACHER! John Birch was born in India to Presbyterian missionary parents in 1918, and was twenty-seven years old when he died. At seven years of age, he was “born again” (read John 3:1-17) by trusting in Jesus Christ for his salvation after hearing the gospel in the Baptist church his parents (who had been Presbyterians but left them over theological liberalism) had joined. When he was eleven, he surrendered to the Lord’s call to be a missionary. John was a dedicated Christian as a teenager and a strong Bible-believer as were his parents. When the time came for him to go to college, he went to a Southern Baptist Convention institution, Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, to begin ministerial training. He was already an accomplished preacher and preached often as a student, even pastoring a Baptist church for a time while in school.HE WAS A FUNDAMENTALIST. As a student at Mercer, John Birch came to see clearly the issue of infidelity in the churches, and took a stand against professors at the university who were undermining the faith of the students. He also had a chance to hear the famous fundamentalist preacher, J. Frank Norris, preach against what in those days was called “modernism” (a term for the liberal theology that had crept into the churches, which questioned or denied cardinal doctrines of the Christian Faith), and determined to take his stand. In his senior year, Birch united with a dozen other Mercer students to petition the state Baptist convention to investigate certain teachers on charges of heresy. In the midst of the furor that ensued, University officials threatened to expel the upstart. The newspapers made his name a household word in Macon, in either positive or in negative terms. In time, the heresy charges failed to convict the professors, and John Birch finished his senior year. He was graduated magna cum laud from Mercer. Instead of going on to a Southern Baptist seminary to further his education, he enrolled in the new Fundamental Baptist Bible Institute that had been organized in Fort Worth, Texas, by Norris, who was a leader in the national “fundamentalist” movement. Fundamentalists contended that Christianity must be defined in terms of the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, and that those who denied any of these cardinal tenets of the Faith, even if they are ordained ministers, are not really Christians. Fundamentalism was a grassroots movement in the historically evangelical churches against the influence of liberalism. John Birch was an all-out fundamentalist, and his intentions were to train to be a missionary and go to China to help the Baptist fundamentalists who were laboring courageously and faithfully there.HE WAS A MISSIONARY. In 1939, God sent John Birch to China as an independent Baptist missionary. He worked with two legendary fundamental Baptist men, Oscar Wells and Fred Donnellson. When he arrived, China was torn in the conflict that became the Second World War. Japan had invaded China, and the United States was putting pressure on them while seeking to stay out of the war. The government of Nationalist Chaing Kai-Shek over China was being challenged both by a Communist insurrection and the Japanese invasion. As the war progressed, his missionary support diminished to a trickle, and the place of his service came under Japanese control. Nevertheless he vigorously and zealously spread the Gospel, won souls to Christ, and nourished the Baptist churches in occupied China. American interest in the plight of China brought military help from the United States even before Peart Harbor. Volunteers from our country formed a unit of air force to aid the Chinese that was famously called “The Flying Tigers,” which fought the Japanese bravely until they were absorbed into the U.S. Army after we entered the war. All this time John Birch served the spiritual needs of the Chinese people with the war raging around him.HE WAS A PATRIOT. In this situation, Birch volunteered to join the United States Army. He made application to be enlisted, based on two appeals: (1) he wanted to help his country and the Chinese he came to serve, and (2) he needed an income. He argued that his fluency in the language and familiarity with the culture of the people would make him valuable to the war effort of the United States. As an ordained Baptist minister, he was seeking appointment as a chaplain. Eventually he made an attempt to join General Claire Chennault and the Flying Tigers, the fighting unit of American volunteers this great man commanded. It was the general that told Birch that they had no need for a chaplain, but that they did need an intelligence officer who could work behind Japanese lines and provide important information for the 14th Air Force (as the Flying Tigers came to be known). Eventually Birch was appointed an officer and served in the Army during World War II while he served the Lord as a missionary and an evangelist in war-torn China. He preached on Sundays and spied for Chennault during the week. After Birch was killed, General Chennault said, “John was more than just a very good officer in my command. In fact, I have always felt toward him as a father might feel toward a son.” In a letter to the Birch family after John’s death, General Charles Stone, his commander after Chennault, commended his service.“As an intelligence liaison officer of the Fourteenth Air Force, Captain Birch performed invaluable services which greatly aided the achievement of ultimate victory. His work was performed to a great extent behind enemy lines and often under hazardous conditions, in circumstances of extreme personal hardship and immediate danger. His unassuming manner, unswerving loyalty, and personal courage earned him the respect and admiration of officers and enlisted men among both American and Chinese units.”John Birch played a unique role in wartime China: he was a combination of Baptist missionary and American intelligence officer. His service at to both God and country was virtually unprecedented.HE WAS A HERO. While interviewing with General Chennault regarding his application to serve in the Army, Birch played an important role in the renowned mission of Colonel Jimmy Doolittle to bombard Tokyo. After the attack on Japan, Doolittle’s squadron of planes ran into trouble over China, as the famous flier’s plane ran out of fuel. He and his comrades wandered the Chinese landscape until providentially they ran into John Birch. Birch and his cohorts were able to get the great pilot and his men to American troops and safety. The news of his heroic efforts in this incident gave Birch credibility and favor before General Chennault, and got him a commission as captain. As the war with Japan came to a close, Birch had proven himself to be a remarkable soldier. He also had come to serious spiritual and political conclusions about the significance of the war. He wrote to his family,“I believe that this war will set the stage for Antichrist. I’ll have a lot to tell you when I get home. Things about the future of China and of the world.”As he prepared to come home, John Birch was to fulfill one more mission. Under orders of General Albert Wedemeyer, commander of American forces in China, he and ten other soldiers (three Americans, five Chinese, and two Koreans) were to take a train to Suchow to inspect the airport there before Birch would make his way back to the United States. In their journey the eleven where detained by Communists and eventually John Birch and his Chinese personal aid were shot and Birch was killed. The aid (whose name was Tung) was badly wounded and basically left for dead but survived and gave an eyewitness account of the captain’s abuse at the hands of the Communists. John Birch repeatedly refused to surrender weapons and other equipment carried by his men, insisting that since the war was over and Americans were supposed to be allies of the Communists, they were under no obligation to be subject to this treatment. They would not be disarmed by the Red Chinese. The arguments were heated and repeated. Tung warned John Birch against antagonizing the Communists, and several times the captain replied, “Never mind, Lieutenant, I want to see how the Communists treat Americans. If they kill me, America will stop the Communist movement [advance] with atom bombs.” They did kill him. He was buried we think in Suchow. But instead of holding the Communists responsible for this hostile action, the American government decided that the incident should not be made known. The story of the murder of John Birch became a tightly-guarded secret.HE WAS A WITNESS FOR JESUS CHRIST!In a letter to his parents in 1944, John testified,“If my hour to depart should strike, I am ready to go, thanks to the merits of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”The source of his bravery in the final hours of his service to his country was the assurance John Birch had in his mind and in his heart that he would go to Heaven. His decision to risk his life by standing for the rightful interests of the United States was based on the conviction that his life could be a sacrifice for the betterment of the world. All of these amazing qualities in the life of John Birch resulted from the work of grace wrought in his heart by Jesus Christ.After the war a newspaper reporter who had spent much time in China (Adeline Gray) wrote in amazing terms about John’s life and service in a letter to his parents.“Yesterday, I read of John Birch’s death in the [Washington, D.C.] Evening Star and was very shocked. Your son was one of the finest men who ever came to China. He never drank, smoked, swore, or did an unkind thing to anyone. He believed that wars were due and are due to lack of religion. He talked of this in most lofty and beautiful worded sentences. He exerted a profound effect upon the thousands of people who came in contact with him…“His loss is a great loss not only to China, but to America and the world. He loved China and the Chinese people dearly and planned to stay in China all his life. During the war he performed many dangerous and heroic feats. As a member of the U. S. Army Intelligence, he often was parachuted out into Japanese areas and spent weeks and months behind the lines. He was a beloved man of the U.S. Army in China; he was widely known all over China…“I understand that no news agency was allowed to send out the story of your son’s death from China for fear of arousing Chinese Communists and American relations to a higher pitch of instability and ill-will. So his death was not mentioned in any news story from China. Otherwise, it would have been on the front page of every paper in the U.S.”On the Fourth of July in 1945, he had written a letter home that eloquently stated his perception of the need of the world:“There is only one real problem in the world with all its complicated evils, and there is only one answer, amidst the maze of futile plans. Here is the problem and the answer: ‘The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Romans 6:23).”Over the years after his death, the heroism and martyrdom of John Birch occasionally leaked out from the classified report, with statements made about him in Congress and the press. But the report itself was never seen by the public until it was de-classified in 1980. However, the testimonies of soldiers and family-members who knew his story have inspired thousands of Christians and patriots for seventy years. How he lived, what he said, and what he did tell us all that there is more to life than staying alive, that only in Christ can the needs of men be met, and that the still-spreading collectivist conquest of nations is evil at its core and essentially spiritual in its errors. May he be remembered, and the lessons of his life heeded.Have you bowed to Jesus Christ as your own Lord and Savior? Reader, have you received the gift of eternal life by faith in the Son of God? Christian friend, will you stand bravely for the truth of God in these dark days when many may be challenged to pay a price to live for Christ? As we remember John Birch, may the Lord use the testimony of his life and death to draw us to love the One Who loved us, and gave Himself for our salvation.“And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”(Revelation 6:9-10)SOURCES OF INFORMATION ABOUT JOHN BIRCH:Welch, Robert. The Life of John Birch. Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1960.Hefley, James and Marti. The Secret File on John Birch. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 1981.The John Birch Society, 770 N. Westhill Blvd., Appleton, WI 54914—920.749.3780.Arlington Baptist College, 3001 West Division, Arlington, Texas 76012—817.461.8741: ask for information on John Birch.

"That missionary activity was a tool and an adjunct of colonial expansion is no secret. And colonialism is not dead; it has only taken a new, more sophisticated form.”- by Sultan ShahinThe Catholic archdiocese of the Indian capital has launched a year-long campaign of prayer and fasting in view of next year general elections, saying India faces a turbulent political future that threatens the country's democracy, UCANEWS reported.In a pastoral letter read out in all the parishes of Delhi Archdiocese on Sunday, May 13, Archbishop Anil Couto called on Catholics to start a campaign of prayer and fasting on Friday ahead of elections in April or May 2019."As we look forward towards 2019 when we will have a new government, let us begin a prayer campaign for our country" from May 13, on the anniversary of the Apparition of the Blessed Mother at Fatima in Portugal, the pastoral letter said.The five-year term of the federal government led by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) ends in May 2019.Delhi Archdiocese launches prayer and fast campaign for India’ - Vatican NewsPreparing for the harvest …A new mood of aggressive evangelism has been emanating from America. Well-funded, superbly networked, backed by the highest of the land, seized of its moral supremacy, it has India as one of its key targets, reveals VK Shashikumar in a disturbing exposéhttps://joshuaproject.net/countries/INThis could be the plot of a fevered thriller. A jingoistic president, multi-million dollar corporations, high technology, a grand if furtive mission, networks spanning the globe, and biblical invocations.Only it’s real. And its got India in its crosshair.Religious expansionism has not witnessed this scale, scope, and state resources in a long time. Detailed investigations by Tehelka reveal that American evangelical agencies have established in India an enormous, well-coordinated and strategised religious conversion plan. The operation was launched in the early 1990s but really came into its own after George W Bush Jr, an avowed born-again Christian, became president of the United States in 2001. Since then, aggressive evangelists have found pro-active support from the new administration in their efforts to convert some sections of Indian society to Christianity. At the heart of this complex and sophisticated operation is a simple strategy-convert locals and then give them the know-how and money to plant their own churches and multiply.Around the time that Bush Jr moved into the Oval office, a worldwide conversion movement, funded and effected by American evangelical groups, was peaking in India. The movement, which began as AD2000 & Beyond and later morphed into Joshua Project I and Joshua Project II, was designed to be a sledgehammer-a breathtaking, decade-long steamroller of a campaign that would set the stage for a systematic, sophisticated and self-sustaining “harvest” of the “unreached people groups” in India in the 21st century. It was just as the operation was taking off that the script changed. Much to the delight of American evangelicals, one of their own, George Bush Jr, became the occupant of the White House.In a major policy decision taken very early into his presidency, Bush, on January 29, 2001, unveiled a “faith based” social service initiative that included a new White House office to promote government aid to churches and Christian faith-based organisations. This, in effect, threw the massive weight of the federal government behind religious groups and religious conversions. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was set up in the White House in the first week of February 2002 and a man called Jim Towey was appointed director. (A snap introduction to Towey: he was the legal counsel to Mother Teresa in the late 1980s.)Though Bush’s initiative to fund “salvation and religious conversion” is stalled in the Congress over constitutional and civil rights concerns, he has pushed for its implementation through executive orders.White House-Christian Coalition nexusThe American press is replete with reports on Bush’s largesse to faith-based organisations. They say it’s his “return gift” to the Christian Right for having loyally supported his presidential campaign. The Christian Coalition, founded by American TV evangelist and head of the multi-billion Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), Pat Robertson, played a crucial role in the 2000 election. Recently, in his TV programme, Club 700, broadcast on CBN, Robertson created a stir by announcing that he is confident Bush will win the 2004 election in a “blowout” because God has told him so.Indeed, Bush is keen to retain what we call the votebank and Americans ‘the base’. After all, the Far Right Christian evangelists have also been the most loyal backers of his hardline militarism in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.But there is another, perhaps more important, reason why Bush is keen on supporting his evangelist friends who run huge transnational missionary organisations (TMOs). In the decade 1990-2000 they ran a global intelligence operation so complex and sophisticated that its scale and implications are no less than staggering. This operation has put in place a system which enables the US government to access any ethnographic information on any location virtually at the click of the mouse. This network in India, established with funding and strategic assistance from US-based TMOs, gives US intelligence agencies virtually real time access to every nook and corner of the country. (See ‘List of TMOs Active in India’)Since Bush’s ascendancy to the presidency this network of networks has multiplied rapidly in India. Bush supports conversion in India because he supports those American TMOs who fund and strategise conversion activities in this country. Organisations like the International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention, Christian Aid, World Vision, Seventh Day Adventist Church and multi-billion enterprises run by evangelists like Pat Robertson, Billy Graham and Roger Houtsma, amongst many others, were instrumental in running a coordinated conversion campaign in India under the banner of AD2000. These later became the Joshua Project and when the decade-long movement officially closed down in March 2001, Joshua Project II was launched to sustain conversions and intelligence-gathering. Graham’s TMO, Billy Graham Evangelist Association, supports conversion activities in Gurgaon, Haryana, and Kolkata.When AD2000 was conceived for India, the plan was based on a military model with the intent to invade, occupy, control, or subjugate its population. It was based on solid intelligence emanating from the ground and well-researched information on various facets of selected people groups. The idea was to send out spying missions to source micro details on religion and culture. The social and economic divisions in the various Indian communities were closely examined. Given the oppressive and institutionalised caste system in the Hindu society, American evangelical strategists chalked out plans for reaching these various “unmixable” caste groups. The many faultlines running through the country-divisions in terms of ethnicity, caste, creed, language and class-were all factored in during the generation of ethnographic data.North India was designated the core target of American evangelists. It was described as the “core of the core of the core” of a worldwide evangelical movement conceived by fundamentalist American missionaries. This movement that took shape over the 1990s, has now taken off because of a unique collaboration between the American government and US-based evangelical mission agencies. In the 1990s this movement was shaped by the World Evangelical Fellowship (an international alliance of national evangelical alliances), working with the AD2000 movement. It brought together a wide variety of individuals and organisations, under the single goal of achieving “a church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000.” Its focus was missionary mobilisation and church planting in India and other regions of the world where the Christian population was negligible. This movement was also a massive intelligence gathering exercise funded and supported by American missionary organisations that were responsible for the election of George W Bush.Global evangelism plansAD2000 first attracted attention at a convention of international evangelical missions called Lausanne II in Manila in 1989. The movement then spread rapidly around the globe to help catalyse evangelism. The strategy behind the movement was to establish pioneering global partnerships to eventually provide a church within every “unreached people group”. Ralph Winter, founder of the US Center for World Mission, characterised the movement as “the largest, most pervasive global evangelical network ever to exist.”This movement, spearheaded by Luis Bush from the movement’s headquarters in Colorado Springs, US, was planned for large conversion of people living within the “10/40 Window”. Incidentally, Billy Graham, a Christian fundamentalist and rabid evangelist, who was responsible for George W’s “born again” Christian status and whom the president considers as his godfather was the honorary co-chairman of the AD 2000 movement.The 10/40 window is the rectangular area comprising parts of North Africa and large parts of Asia between 10 degrees north and 40 degrees north latitude where 95 percent of the world’s “least evangelised poor are found.” AD 2000 movement mobilised and funded evangelical operations in India. Further, they sponsored the May 17-25, 1995, Global Consultation on World Evangelization (GCOWE) in Seoul, South Korea, where nearly 4,000 Christian leaders from 186 countries, including India, gathered to draw up secret and covert evangelical plans. Many American evangelists now describe GCOWE, Seoul, as “the most strategic Christian gathering in history.” That year also saw the transformation of the movement to a higher plane in the name of Joshua Project.The first GCOWE consultation was held in Singapore in 1989. The first five years of the decade (1990-2000) were the years of seeding the clouds with the vision of a church for every people and the gospel for every person by the year 2000. This involved the building of a new kind of partnering relationships, a grassroots networking structure…a “network of networks.”While AD2000 spied out the land and its inhabitants to get an accurate picture of opportunities and challenges for conversion activities in India, they also framed subversive strategies to implement their plans. Concepts like PLUG, PREM and NICE were conceived. PLUG refers to the target group-people in every language, urban centre and geographic division. PREM refers to the techniques to use-prayer, research, evangelisation and mobilisation. NICE refers to how the work is to be done-networking, taking initiative, and using an evangelist to spur existing groups and cohorts in their efforts to convert people to Christianity.Local networksFor Indian evangelical groups, access to American technology meant faster and more secure communication with their patrons. And, of course, the availability of the Bible in local languages, In fact, in today’s India, the Bible is available in almost all languages and dialects. If the translation of the Bible was a symbol of huge transnational exercise, the massive distribution of gospel literature was nothing less than a distribution marvel. In India, a coordinated gospel literature distribution exercise was staged to reach 600,000 villages by the end of 2000. Finally, American evangelical organisations that also run cash-rich television channels pumped in money to buy slots on Indian television networks. In fact, Pat Robertson, who recently stepped down as the chairman of the Christian Coalition and the owner of the CBN set up a studio in Hyderabad to help Indian evangelicals minister through television programmes. These programmes are broadcast on various networks in India where CBN buys time.The Joshua Project, started by a splinter group of CBN, was also a large-scale intelligence operation that brought together American strategists, theologists, missionary specialists, demographers, technologists, sociologists, anthropologists and researchers to create the most comprehensive people group profiles in the 10/40 Window. In fact, the ethno-linguistic profiling of the people groups in India, probably, cannot even be matched by data with the government of India. The logic behind this massive intelligence gathering operation was to “make a priority of establishing as a minimum, a pioneer church-planting movement within every ethno-linguistic people of over 10,000 individuals by December 31, 2000.”The launch of the Joshua Project in the mid-1990s resulted in scores of American research teams arriving in India to lay preliminary roadmaps for the church-planting mission. Everyone came on tourist visas and, on their arrival in India, their respective mission partners took them in. This partnership with Indian researchers resulted in the production of enormous field data on various people groups in the country. This, in turn, led to the identification of areas and regions where evangelical activities could be carried out in a focused and methodical manner.Joshua Project II is a continuation and expansion of the original plan. Its professed aim is to “highlight all the least-reached peoples (non-Christian) of the world and to help build ministry networks and partnerships focusing on these people.” The constant research and updating of ethnographic data from India should ring alarm bells within the intelligence agencies in India. In fact, the project maintains its “peoples lists” in cooperation with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptists, as will be seen later, have traditionally worked hand-in-glove with the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). India’s ethno-cultural data collected by the project is categorised by them as ‘Security Level 2’ because there is a danger to Indian and foreign missionaries if data relating to their conversion activities is made public.The main target: IndiaAs part of AD2000, Christian organisations in most countries, including India, had an embarked on an ambitious National AD2000 Initiative. In India the Evangelical Fellowship of India was central to the fulfillment of the goals set by this initiative. According to the founders of AD2000 (and that includes Bush’s pal Billy Graham) north India is the ‘kairos’, the key. India is where the era of modern missionary effort began nearly 200 years ago with the arrival of William Carey, the father of modern evangelical missions. However, the nine north and central Indian states of Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana were considered areas of immense strategic importance for the following reasons:The Gangetic belt is one of the most heavily populated regions of the world. Forty percent of the Indian population lives here;New Delhi is the capital and centre of political power in India;It is the most socially deprived area of India (the Hindi belt has a literacy rate of 30 percent, infant mortality is double the national average and the government of India officially designates four of these states as BIMARU (sick));This area of India is known as the heartland of Hinduism, a religion that boasts of some 33 million gods; and It has the smallest Christian presence in all of India. According to the 1991 census, the Christian population of North India is 0.5 percent of the total population.Clearly, north India was strategically important for the missionaries. What made things easier for them was the new buoyancy in India-US relations. Therefore, it was open to researchers and their research plans. Billy Graham and his ilk openly admit that they dispatched spying missions to India. “Just as Joshua sent out the spies to survey the land and report on its condition before the children of Israel moved out in obedience to God’s command, many more missionaries and Christian workers are finding research information invaluable in laying their plans,” say the AD2000 and Beyond Movement documents. Over the past eight years, tremendous energies and resources have been spent on spying out the land and its inhabitants.The India Missions Association (IMA) in partnership with Gospel for Asia, another big American missionary outfit, researched and published very informative and accurate books that unraveled the intricate mosaic that is India. Some of those books are in Tehelka’s possession. One of the big achievements of the Chennai-based IMA was conducting a detailed India-wide PIN code survey. India’s postal service is one of the world’s largest and it is important to understand why American mission agencies picked on India’s postal system to devise their covert conversion strategy. The Indian postal system has a network of 1,52,786 post offices-89 percent of them in villages, which means one post office for 23.12 sq. km of rural land and one for every 3.16 sq. km of urban stretch, or one for a village with 4,612 people or one for 12,924 people in a town or city.PIN-code theoryThe 6-digit PIN code introduced in August 1972, identifies and locates every departmental delivery office. The first digit represents the zone, the second the sub-zone, the third digit shows the postal sorting district, the fourth digit indicates the mail route and the last two digits indicate the specific post office of destination in that zone. For this purpose the country has been divided into eight zones and each region in each zone has been assigned a particular postal circle in the first two digits of a PIN code. The Delhi circle, for instance, is 11. The digits 45 to 49 represent the Madhya Pradesh circle and 60 to 64 are for the Tamil Nadu circle.This neat division of India through the postal codes is seen as a boon for strategising missionary work, coding the data emerging from the field and flowing it back to missionaries on the job. Given below are a few way in which pincodes have helped evangelical work:There is no easier way of locating workers than attaching pincodes to them Media contacts can be linked easily with workers Sorting “harvest forces” and mailing lists is easyThe codes make distribution of gospel literature faster and easier Urban areas have more postal codes than rural areas. This helps in planning effectively to plant churches in each area.To really come to grips with the implications of IMA’s PIN-code theory one has to understand the ‘Joshua Project II Data Background’. The report of the Joshua Project II is self-explanatory: “Joshua Project II provides a “blue-print” of the unfinished task of world evangelisation. It came out of the process of the AD2000 and Beyond Movement focusing on a list of approximately 2000 people groups that most need a church planting movement. The peoples listed here are over 10,000 in population and less than two percent Evangelical and less than five percent Christian adherent. Data has been compiled from many sources including: Southern Baptist Convention, Operation World, Adopt-A-People Clearinghouse, US Center for World Mission and the AD2000 movement.“The mission of Joshua Project II is to highlight the peoples of the world who have the least exposure to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Joshua Project II seeks to accomplish this through information sharing and networking… the mission of the Joshua Project is threefold.First, to gather, manage and distribute strategic population, progress indicator and ministry activity information to maximise the visibility of the least-reached peoples to the Church. The goal is a comprehensive, accurate, validated, public ally available list of all the ethno-cultural people groups of the world.Second, to be a least-reached peoples networking resource to the Christian mission community.Third, to enhance the flow of information between Great Commission organisations by using standardised data coding.”In India’s case this “standardised data coding” has been married to IMA’s survey. This has been used to such a degree that even the diverse language groups of India have been divided into PIN codes. The ability to send evangelists that are familiar to language and culture greatly facilitates the speed at which conversion can happen. It is also cost effective since tactics can be formed at home base. This also enables any Christian missionary organisation anywhere in the world to source any ethno-cultural or ethno-linguistic data on India at the click of the mouse. So let’s say if one of Bush’s Christian evangelical cronies wants to check out which missionary organisation is working with the Banjaras in Nalgonda, Khammam and Krishna districts in Andhra Pradesh, all he has to do is plug into this highly guarded database. It will tell him how many Banjaras were converted to Christianity over a specified period, the names of Indian Christian researchers working in community and which evangelical ministry coordinating the exercise of “saving souls”. Just about any detail he wants is available on demand. Obviously, it flows the other way as well. So assuming that somebody at the CIA headquarters wants information on a particular district or region all that needs to be done is to call up Bush’s mentor Rev Billy Graham. Graham will in turn log into databases maintained by a network of American Evangelical Missions. All this can happen in seconds and this is how technology has made evangelical activities so potentially dangerous.Laptop evangelistsLatest cutting-edge web technologies are used to keep in touch with various “unreached people groups” through key local interlocutors. They also track on a regular basis status indicators like number of evangelists working within a people group, the number of Christian adherents, church growth and mission agency progress indicators. All this information is then used to “promote networking and partnerships focusing on least-reached peoples in order to promote the flow of strategic ministry activity information between individuals, churches, denominations and mission agencies.Tehelka’s undercover operation managed to set up networking contacts with the Joshua II project. Evidence of the meticulous nature of this data is available with Tehelka. The amazing network that has been established can be illustrated with the following anecdote. B Shreeprakash and B Jayaprakash from Kayamkulam, Kerala, came across the December 1998 issue of the National Missionary Intelligencer published by The National Missionary Society of India, Royappettah, Chennai, while waiting for an appointment with a doctor. That sparked off an amateur investigation exercise, the contents of which were put down in their report titled ‘Conversions in India’. Here’s an extract:“As part of this work, an address namely, ‘Workers Together’ in US was contacted. To my surprise, a pastor of the Brethren Church, contacted me from my own town, his residence was only 1km away from that of mine. He called me over telephone and invited me for a personal meeting. On visiting his house, he handed over to me an oxford Edition of the Bible, printed in New York, and a few booklets and pamphlets. What astonished me was, that the pastor had with him, a copy of letter which I had sent to US. On enquiring about how the nearness of my residence with that of the Pastor was understood by the party at Bangalore, he showed me an official directory of the list of the evangelicals working in India, with their family photographs and complete details arranged in order of PIN codes. Another directory of their worldwide network was also shown to me.”There cannot, perhaps, be a better example to understand the effects of marrying the IMA’s survey with Joshua Project’s database. The message is this-an American missionary agency will go to any length even if it means converting just one person. A letter written to an agency in the US is re-directed immediately to Bangalore and the agency in Bangalore in turn tracks down the nearest evangelist and directs him to take upon the task of ministering the gospel to the newest seeker. In fact, the mission goal of IMA, according to its general secretary, Ebenezer Sunder Raj, is: “We need a church within cycling distance, then within walking distance and finally within hearing distance.” The Church growth figures that are with Tehelka clearly indicate that this mission mandate is on in full swing.Data on India: the CIA connectionThe “spying out” missions that generated the vast ethnographic data of the Indian people also involved detailed study of Dr KS Singh’s ‘People of India Project’ that was launched in 1985 by the Anthropological Society of India (ASI). Under Singh’s leadership, the ASI undertook an ambitious project to chart one of the most far-reaching ethnographic studies in the 20th century. Five hundred scholars spent over 26,000 field days to compile information for these volumes. This gigantic research work came handy for American and Indian strategists to draft their evangelical plans for India. According to Luis Bush, “Never before has this kind of information on India been so carefully surveyed, prepared, well published and distributed…We do not believe it is accidental. God is allowing us to “spy out the land” that we might go in and claim both it and its inhabitants for Him.”The data collected by experts from Wycliffe/Summer Institute of Linguistics, World Vision (WV) and the International Mission Board/Southern Baptists to compile the Joshua Project Peoples list included a detailed and comprehensive list of the people groups in India as well. Though this may appear normal international research activity – generating ethnographic profiles of non-Christian people groups in the 10/40 window – there are unseen dangers inherent in the compilation of such accurate people-group profiles.The CIA has publicly admitted to having used Wycliffe/SIL and the Southern Baptists for covert intelligence operations in many parts of the world. The cosy relationship between the Wycliffe and CIA is documented exhaustively in a book Thy Will Be Done written in the 1990s by Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennett. The book documents joint CIA-Wycliffe missions to source anthropological data from Latin America. Here’s a quote from the book: “SIL had helped gather anthropological information on the Tarascan Indians that ended up in Nelson Rockefeller’s intelligence files. The files contained cross-references to reveal behavioural patterns among Indian peoples in everything from socialisation (including aggressive tendencies) and personality traits, drives, emotions, and language structure, to political intrigue, kinship ties, traditional authority, mineral resources, exploitation, and labor relations. Rockefeller called these data the Strategic Index of Latin America.” The question that will rattle not only the Indian government, but also outrage the Indian citizens is whether the American-funded “spying missions” carried out by Indian and foreign missionary agencies through more than a decade has resulted in the preparation of a ‘Strategic Index of India’ at the CIA headquarters?Wycliffe, the Southern Baptists and World Vision have all been active in India as well. Could it be mere coincidence that Southern Baptists who are amongst President Bush’s most loyal supporters, played an active role in the “spying out” missions? In fact, Colby and Dennett’s book features a missionary of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, William Carlsen, who admits that he gave an eight-hour briefing to the CIA on Thailand’s tribal areas. In the mid-1970s when the CIA’s penetration of American missionary agencies made international headlines, the agency passed a self-limiting executive order to refrain from using foreign missionaries for intelligence gathering operations. Incidentally, it was George Bush Sr who in his first action as the new CIA director declared on February 11, 1976, that he would ban the practice of enlisting “clergymen and newsmen as intelligence agents.” But this was just public grandstanding, doublespeak to save the CIA not only from embarrassment, but protect its operations in Latin American countries such as Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. As soon as this announcement was made the CIA granted itself a private waiver. This was confirmed in April 1996 when the then CIA director, John Deutch, testifying before a Senate intelligence committee, said that the agency could waive the ban in cases “unique and special threats to national security.”Faith-based policies of White HouseSurprisingly, Bush’s supporters like the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), made laborious protests then to condemn the collaboration between missionaries and the intelligence agency. “Any foreigner living in a foreign culture already comes under a natural suspicion. If this policy is reversed, it would totally erode the ministry of missionaries,” said Jerry Rankin, the then president of the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Mission Board. In effect, this amounted to a plea to the CIA to keep their most well publicized (and hardly noticed) secret guarded!! The very fact that CIA has been courting religious missionaries in India and elsewhere is testimony to the fact that US funded evangelical missions have an unparalleled reach to the remotest corners of the country. Christianity Today in its issue of April 29, 1996, carried the following comment by the NAE President Don Argue: “For intelligence agencies to seek any relationship whatsoever with our religious workers must be unequivocally prohibited.”Yet, as recently as January 15, on a visit to the Union Bethel AME Church in New Orleans (this is a predominantly African-American congregation) Bush touted his faith-based initiatives. These initiatives are designed to break the constitutional sanctity of the separation of the State and the Church. Bush is desperate to entangle and enmesh faith-based organization as providers of various services. The Americans United For Separation of Church and State and some other inter-faith organisations have challenged the Bush plan for religious conversions. Americans United, founded in 1947, is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, DC. But, the Bush administration has relentlessly pushed its religious agenda. It has now become inextricably linked with not only its social services policies domestically, but also with US foreign policy and the disbursal of aid to US-based TMOs. “President Bush shows little appreciation or understanding of the separation of church and state. Bush is closely aligned with ultra-conservative Christian groups that have opposed church-state separation for years. It is obvious they have great influence over his domestic and foreign policy agendas,” Rob Boston, assistant director of communications, Americans United, told Tehelka.These TMOs, themselves have been instrumental in influencing the faith-based policies of the Bush administration in the first place. Therefore, they in turn, by virtue of being Bush loyalists have carried the ‘Bush Religious Agenda’ to other countries, including India. While within the US this agenda “strikes at the heart of the religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment” of the US constitution, in the rest of the world, specially, India, it has vitally subverted its security and integrity. “The Religious Right organisations and fundamentalist Protestants groups have way too much influence over the Bush administration. Sadly, many Americans do not follow foreign policy decisions (with the exception of the war in Iraq) and are either not aware of what is happening or, more often, simply do not care. As a result, we are on the verge of dismantling the wall of separation of church and state in America-a policy that, if enacted, is bound to have negative repercussions around the world as fundamentalist interpretations of Christianity increasingly become the basis for foreign policy,” said Boston.Crusade in IndiaIndia is key to the Bush religious agenda. His government has given grants to Christian charities that are involved in conversion activities in India. On October 3, 2002, the US department of health and human services announced that television evangelist, Pat Robertson’s charity, Operation Blessing, would be given demonstration grants through the so-called Compassion Capital Fund. Robertson’s organisation and the other “intermediaries” were free to distribute this federal grant (essentially American tax payers’ money) to religious groups and community groups of their choice to provide social services. In other words, there was no restriction on how the federal grants were to be used. In an interview to Newsweek three years ago Robertson said, “I’ve got 10 good years left,” and “my heart is on missions, and on getting people into the kingdom of God. That’s the main thrust of my life.” In the same interview, Robertson recalled fondly a recent crusade in India: “I spoke to a crowd of 500,000 people!” he said. “Eighty-two acres of people! The response was overwhelming.” Robertson’s Operation Blessing is very active in India through CBN India headquartered at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad.Incidentally, Robertson deftly defrauded the Indian government because Indian laws do not permit issuance of visas to Christian missionaries. In response to an unstirred question (NO. 969) in the Lok Sabha on February 27, 2001 the minister of state for home , Vidyasagar Rao, responded that “no new missionaries are allowed after 1984. However, short term visas are being issued to the foreigners who are coming only in administrative capacity, to review working of their organisations etc.” Certainly, Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition in the US and head of the multi-million Christian Broadcasting Network, might have had “administrative” reasons to travel to India. But he, surely, did not have either the permission or the right to evangelise.The Indian government has been caught napping. Rev Bush, head of a decade-long global evangelisation programme, visited India in January 2003. He was a guest of the Evangelical Fellowship of India and presumably traveled to India on a tourist visa. In the early years of 2000, many evangelists entered India fraudulently. Amongst them were extremist Christians like Don Noble, president of Maranatha Volunteers International affiliated to a fundamentalist Christian group, the Seventh Day Adventists and Pastor Michael Ryan, director of Global Mission, the Seventh Day Adventist church’s international outreach department which co-ordinates India evangelistic initiative. The US state department website makes no bones about the fact that American evangelists enter India by employing fraudulent means.In the context of the fact that Robertson is one of America’s most rabid Christian fundamentalists, Bush’s largesse to him certainly has implications for India. In an interview broadcast on his own TV channel this is what Robertson had to say on one of the religions followed in India: “Hinduism and many of the occult activities that come out of the Orient are inspired by demons and demon worship…There’s this concept that all religions are the same and all are good. That is not true. The worship of the Devil is not good.” Robertson’s friend and fellow evangelist, Jerry Falwell, also a TV preacher, ignited anti-American violence across many countries in November 2002 when he called the Prophet Mohammad a “terrorist” on American television. In Jammu and Kashmir, Falwell’s emarks were published in local newspaper. As word spread protestors spilled out into the street pelting stones and shouting anti-American slogans.The Oval Office centreAccording to Americans United, “Robertson’s Operation Blessing, a $66 million-a-year agency, also has a controversial history…The controversy over Operation Blessing stretches back to 1994, when Robertson used his ‘700 Club’ daily cable television programme to raise funds for the charity. Robertson told viewers Operation Blessing was using cargo planes to aid refugees from Rwanda who had fled into the neighbouring nation of Zaire (now known as Congo) to escape a violent civil war…In fact, Robertson was using his planes to haul mining equipment in and out of Zaire for African Development Corporation, his for-profit diamond mining company.”Incidentally, Robertson sought the Republican nomination for president in 1988 and later founded the Christian Coalition, a political group that has worked tirelessly to elect Republicans to public offices nationwide. Bush’s presidential election victory has been, by far, the coalition’s biggest success till date. After having installed a Christian fundamentalist as the President of America, Robertson stepped down as the president of the Christian Coalition in December 2001. The Washington Post, in a dispatch on December 24, 2001 noted that the religious right had found its “center in Oval office”. The writer of this dispatch, Diana Milbank wrote, “A procession of religious leaders who have met with him testify to his faith, while Websites encourage people to fast and pray for the president.”For American evangelicals, Bush is “God’s man at this hour”. The Bush administration’s faith based initiatives-‘charitable choice’ as it is often calle-was one of his key campaign planks during the 2000 presidential campaign. In fact, as Texas governor, Bush had become a fervent advocate of this policy that enabled Christian religious organisations to evangelise while providing publicly financed service.As president, Bush has expanded the ‘charitable choice’ approach to virtually all aspects of government aid-national and foreign. “In every instance when my administration sees a responsibility to help people, we will look first to faith-based institutions, to charities and to community groups that have shown their ability to save and change lives,” Bush told a rally in Indianapolis on July 22, 1999. Evangelists all over the world were and still continue to be happy with the language used by Bush, full of Biblical references and metaphors, as it is. “Saving Souls” is a common and often-used expression by evangelists all over the world to refer to religious conversion.Exploiting the AIDS victimsOn September 21, 2000, Bush wrote in USA Today that he would allocate $80 billion over 10 years in tax incentives to help churches (in America) provide social services. The US government has established an unparalleled partnership with Christian religious organisations. In the last week of September 2003, the US administration announced new rules enabling Christian religious institutions to access $20 billion worth of federal grants. Faith-based organisations can access and use this fund to deliver services from drug/alcohol de-addiction to prison reform to HIV/AIDS related care and support activities. The idea, of course, is to give opportunities to those who suffer to be “reborn”, just as Bush was after years of alcohol addiction.Even though the Bush administration has denied that its initiatives support evangelical activities, the fact is that faith-based organisation use prayer and proselytising as an integral part of its provision of social services. After all, Bush has often cited his own “reborn” status to justify the interventions of faith based organisation in the social sector. In his autobiography, A Charge To Keep, itself a twist on a well-known hymn, Bush wrote that evangelist Billy Graham had “planted a mustard seed in my heart, and I started to change… It was the beginning of a new walk where I would recommit my heart to Jesus Christ.”Bush has repeatedly singled out and praised faith-based organisations whose core philosophy is conversion while dispensing social services. During last year’s State of the Union speech his invited guests were Tonja Myles of the ‘Set Free Indeed Program’ at Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Henry Lozano of Teen Challenge, California. Both programmes use religious conversion as treatment. Within the US, Bush’s praise for religious conversion programmes has raised concerns as well. Early into the Bush presidency, the United Methodist Church, the second-largest Protestant denomination in the US, made it plain that the president’s faith-based initiatives were essentially about conversion. In a press release on June 14, 2001, a representative of the Methodist Church, Rev. Eliezer Valentin Castanon, said: “No one can honestly believe that a program funded with tax dollars, which requires as a major component of treatment the acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, will not advance religion.”One faith-based programme that Bush goes gaga about is the prison-based InnerChange Freedom Initiative started by Charles Colson. Incidentally, Colson was one of the characters from the Watergate episode; he spent seven months in prison for obstructing justice in a one of the Watergate cases. “InnerChange is an intensive Bible-centered program, ostensibly open to inmates of all religious persuasions, but every month inmates are evaluated on whether they “demonstrate a belief in Jesus Christ,” wrote Robyn E Blumner, perspective columnist of the St Petersburg Times, on September 28, 2003. “Those inmates who fail to show the proper level of piety are removed and lose the special freedoms and privileges dangled before inmates as incentives to participate,” he added. Bush introduced InnerChange into the Texas prison system when he was governor. At present it operates in four states and the Bush government subsidises its conversion activities with the American tax-payers’ money.What underlies all this is that the Bush administration’s conservative evangelical worldview has proliferated to countries like India. Here the Church and Christian NGOs have been involved for a long time in the provision of voluntary social service. But churches and Christian NGOs in India and the trans-national (read American) faith-based NGOs who have a large presence in India have gleefully responded to the message emanating from the White House. Bush’s support for religious conversion has happened on the persuasive power of the dollar. It is safe to say that almost all evangelical organisations in India and non-Catholic churches and the Christian NGOs get their funding from their American patrons or from USAID. These groups, like CARE or World Vision tend to Christian social workers and consciously infuse Christian religiosity as part of the help they provide to socially and economically marginalised communities.Holistic development tacticsWorld Vision, the world’s largest Christian church mission agency, has traditionally been closely linked with successive American governments. The former US Ambassador for International Religious Freedoms, Dr Robert Seiple, was WV chief for 11 years till 1998 when he was picked by former president, Bill Clinton, to head the office of International Religious Freedoms. Around the period when Seiple was the president of WV, its vice-president from 1993 to 1998 was Andrew S. Natsios. He is now the administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). For more than 40 years, USAID has been the leading government agency providing economic and humanitarian assistance to developing countries.WV’s focus is children and community development. It is involved in more than 162 projects in 25 states. It projects its community development programmes as “holistic development”. This is implemented through Area Development Programmes (ADP). Each ADP works in an area that is contiguous geographically, economically or ethnically. These programmes provide access to clean drinking water, healthcare, education and setting up of income generating projects. But infused with such development works is the spiritual component-Bible classes.In India, WV projects itself as a “Christian relief and development agency with more than 40 years experience in working with the poorest of the poor in India without respect to race, region, religion, gender or caste.” However, Tehelka has in its possession US-based WV Inc.’s financial statement filed before the Internal Revenue Service, wherein, it is classified as a Church ministry. In any case, its mission statement is self-explanatory: “World Vision is an international partnership of Christians whose mission is to follow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in working with the poor and oppressed, to promote human transformation, seek justice and bear witness to the Good News of the Kingdom of God.”Though, WV, has consultative status with UNESCO and partnerships with UN agencies like UNICEF, WHO, UNHCR and ILO, the fact is that its financial records reveal that it has funded evangelical activities all over the world, including India. WV uses its international clout and its close links with the US government through USAID to network with governments and corporate entities in the developing world.WV has an ongoing channel of interaction with the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII); its 2003 financial report it states that “the Rural Development Department of the Government of Assam recognised WV India as a leading development agency in the state and has recommended that WV be the choice for receiving bilateral funds. The government has also sought WV’s assistance in creating a proposal for US$ 80 million for development work in the state.”The income and expenditure account for the year ended September 30, 2002 shows that its total income was Rs 95.5 crores, which included foreign contribution of Rs 87.8 crores. For an organisation that claims to be only involved in development and relief work, it is quite stealthy about its positioning and exact nature of activities. When approached by Tehelka as part of its undercover operation for an interview, WV India’s national director, Dr Jayakumar Christian, after having agreed to the interview backed out because he wanted copies of the fictitious Christian magazine that Tehelka claimed to be representing.However, what goes unnoticed by the governments and the corporate world is WV India’s evangelical missions as part of its development agenda. Proselytisation is an integral part of its provision of development services under its much-touted ADP programmes. Though none of the literature published by WV India even mentions its evangelisation missions, foreign publications of WV India proudly proclaim its “spiritual” component.Take for instance, WV New Zealand’s report (4 September 2002) on the funding of ADP in Dahod, Gujarat. Under the head, ‘spiritual development’ the report states: “Held a vacation Bible school for 150 children from different villages. The children participated in games, Bible quizzes, drama and other activities. Organised a one-day spiritual retreat for 40 young people and a children’s Christmas party. Each of Dahod’s 45 villages chose five needy children to attend the party.” In Dumaria, Banka district, eastern Bihar, “the ADP supports local churches by running leadership-training courses for pastors and church leaders.”What has an ADP got to do with running leadership-training courses for pastors and church leaders? Incidentally, WV New Zealand funds ADP programmes in the tribal pockets of India. The New Zealand Government’s Voluntary Agencies Support Scheme (VASS) jointly fund the two-year project, the NZ government matching WV contributions on a 2:1 basis. There are many other instances of evangelical programmes run by WV India.In the Gajapati ADP, situated in Gumma Block of Orissa’s Gajapati district, a WV report admits that “Canadian missionaries have worked in the area for just over 50 years and today 85-90 percent of the community is Christian. However, local church leaders had little understanding of the importance of their role in community development. ADP staff build relationships with these leaders to improve church co-operation and participation in development initiatives.” Here WV organised two training camps for local church leaders in holistic development.Targeting the tribalsIn Mayurbhanj, again in Orissa, WV regularly organises spiritual development programmes as part of its ADP package. The WV report says: “Opposition to Christian workers and organisations flares up occasionally in this area, generally from those with vested interests in tribal people remaining illiterate and powerless. WV supports local churches by organising leadership courses for pastors and church leaders.”WV India is active in Bhil tribal areas and openly admits its evangelical intentions: “The Bhil people worship ancestral spirits but also celebrate all the Hindu festivals. Their superstitions about evil spirits make them suspicious of change, which hinders community development. ADP staff live among the Bhil people they work with, gaining the villagers’ trust and showing their Christian love for the people by their actions and commitment.”This being the case it is not suprising that WV India was honoured with the 2003 Mahatma Gandhi Award for Social Justice. This award is hosted by the All India Christian Council. Incidentally, Joseph D’Souza who was AICC’s President during that year also heads an evangelical network, Operation Mobilisation, in India. OM, again, is an American TMO. It was founded by Georg Verwer and today is a global ministry “committed to working in partnership with churches and other Christian organisations for the purpose of World mission.”Essentially, Bush has sparked off a theological fight between those Christian organisations who believe that their expression of faith is serving the marginalised, dispossessed and hungry in a non-sectarian way and the others who believe that the only way to bring change and reform is by Bible thumping. Unfortunately, the Bible thumpers are winning and they are being underwritten by the American tax payers.What they are probably not aware is that missionaries in India’s back of the beyond villages, like Karala, (see box) have been pulled into Bush’s missionary zeal. Sadly, while Pastor Prabhat Nayak is deeply committed to bring the villagers of Karala to Christ, he is unaware that Christian evangelical theology and money doled out by the White House threatens to rip apart the social fabric of India.The US administration headed by Bush is the most overtly religious in memory. Numerous press reports in America and Europe have highlighted instances where “cabinet meetings start with prayers and where no presidential speech is complete without some statement of Christian faith.” His foreign policy often seems rooted in biblical theology. The world has already seen Christianity vs Islam being played out in the war debate over Iraq. The Christian Right is solidly behind Bush’s Christianity First policy. Richard Land, a key leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, has strongly supported Bush’s faith-based foreign policy. By the way, Land, is a key member of US government’s Committee on International Religious Freedoms.The Southern Baptists fiercely believe in conversion. Not many would know that people like Land oversee the US International Religious Freedoms report. The 2003 report is a no-nonsense document that conveys the official US policy supporting evangelisation. It openly admits that “US officials have continued to engage state officials on the implementation and reversal of anti-conversion laws.” Here’s an excerpt from the report:“This act (Foreigners Act) strictly prohibits visitors who are in the country on tourist visas from engaging in religious preaching without first obtaining permission from the Ministry of Home Affairs. Given this context, the Government discourages foreign missionaries from entering the country and has a policy of expelling foreigners who perform missionary work without the correct visa…New missionaries currently enter as tourists on short-term visas. U.S. citizens accused of religious preaching while visiting India as tourists have faced difficulties obtaining permission to return to the country for up to a decade after the event.”Christian NGOs in IndiaThe Bush administration’s prescription of religiosity as social policy has gratified the religious Right in the US. The proponents of faith-based initiatives want US government funds to go to those churches and Christian NGOs that consider conversion as part of rehabilitation activities. Since the USAID funds Christian NGOs in India and also since US trans-national Chrisitian NGOs like World Vision and CARE are heavily involved in development initiatives in India, their role in evangelical activities is not a matter of conjecture.It is, of course, another matter that USAID plays a vital role in intelligence gathering operations for the CIA. President John F Kennedy had established USAID, along with the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress, “all three designed in part to stem the spread of communism.” The link between the CIA and Christian missionary groups is USAID. This is written in great detail in Thy Will Be Done. Here’s a quote again: “…That June, President Nixon’s director of (US) AID, John Hannah, had admitted publicly that AID had funded CIA operations in Laos, and subsequent revelations pointed to CIA-AID collaboration in Ecuador, Uruguay, Thailand and the Phillippines.” In fact, CIA-supported missionaries were embroiled in counter-insurgency operations, civil wars and were more often than not conduits for arms and armaments for Christian insurgent groups all over the world.Under President Bush’s fundamentalist Christian government, the era of CIA-USAID-Evangelicals partnership has come back with a roar. And a world caught up in “War on Terror” and the search for elusive weapons of mass destruction, has had no time to notice.In any case, aid dispensed by USAID was hardly meant to spur development. During the Cold War, it was meant to keep the former Soviet Union at bay and to keep afloat, bloated, venal and corrupt regimes all over the world.Including Saddam’s.In a research paper titled ‘Bush and Foreign Aid’, for the journal Foreign Affairs (September/October 2003), Steven Radelet, who was Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury from January 2000 to June 2002 and is now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, wrote: “One of the greatest surprises of George W Bush’s presidency so far has been his call to dramatically increase U.S. foreign aid…(in September 2002) Bush released his National Security Strategy, which gave prominence to development and aid alongside defense and diplomacy. Then came his State of the Union address, in which he called for $10 billion in new funding ($ 15 billion total) over the next five years to combat HIV/AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.”Radelet went on to reveal that US foreign aid increase from $11 billion in 2002 to $18 billion in 2006 is the largest increase in decades. This from a Republican president whose party has traditionally demonstrated antagonism toward foreign aid. USAID’s change of fortune is nothing short of miraculous. In the 1990s it almost disappeared into oblivion because US assistance to poor countries declined by 25 percent. September 11 brought the issue of foreign aid back into limelight.Nothing can illustrate this better than the example of Sudan. This oil rich country has for years been caught in a debilitating and destructive civil war that has pitted a Muslim government centred in the north against the southern Christians. But the recent discovery of oil in Sudan has changed the dynamics of the conflict and, as luck would have it, the oil was struck in the Islamic, northern Sudan. So human rights groups and Christian missionary organisations have been crying themselves hoarse over the “brutal anti-Christian campaign of the Muslim government” and the “persecution of the non-Muslims.” In the same breath Christian fundamentalists like Rev Franklin Graham and Senator Sam Brownback have pressured Bush to assist the rebels. Pressure is also suddenly being mounted internationally and within the US for “diplomatic intervention” to “end the conflict and prevent a disastrous famine” in the country.And guess who is making the loudest noises about Sudan? Christian Solidarity International. It is working overtime to influence the US Congress and British parliament. Over the last decade, USAID has spent $1.2 billion, most of it to support the SPLA, the Christian rebel group in Southern Sudan. The CIA-USAID-Missionary partnership story in Sudan is completed when the last block of the jigsaw puzzle is put in place-Andrew S Natsios.Natsios was appointed administrator of USAID on May 1, 2001. But President Bush gave him two other hats to wear as well-special coordinator for international disaster assistance and special humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. Ostensibly, Bush wants to ensure that aid reaches the people of Sudan as opposed to being stolen and misappropriated by the Sudanese government.The fact that aid deliveries have for so long been stolen by the Christian rebel groups, of course, did not even merit a mention.Natsios has earlier served in USAID from 1989 to 1993 heading two of its vital departments. It’s a strange co-incidence that during the time when CIA backed American missionary agencies were receiving ethnographic data from “spying missions” set up by American evangelical organisations in India, Natsios was associated with World Vision, which, in turn, was involved in analysing the ethnographic data along with Wycliffe and the Southern Baptists.Post-9/11 strategyUnder the Bush Presidency, the post-9/11 period has been marked by two key initiatives: support to “frontline countries” that are helping US in its “war on terror” and appear committed to development and humanitarian issues like HIV/AIDS, poverty, and economic inequality. What is striking, however, is that the Bush administration, in its efforts to project US as a “soft power” as opposed to a marauding military superpower, has relied and been influenced disproportionately by faith-based groups andinstitutions.And given the fact that Bush administration officials regularly hold consultations with Church groups and leaders, it is not surprising that American evangelical missions have found a deep reservoir of support with the US government for their activities in India and elsewhere.

IntroductionZoroastrianism first came to China by way of the famous Silk Road during the early 4th century, having been brought over by a successive series of Sogdian merchants.The Sogdians were an Iranian peoples who excelled at trade and commerce and so had wished to completely dominate trade all along the Silk Road. Based on this logic, they founded a series of settlements and trading outposts in Northwestern China near what is today Dunhuang (敦煌市), thus beginning the history of Zoroastrianism in China.The “Sogdian Deities” (粟特神祇白畫), a 10th century Chinese painting which depicted the Zoroastrian concepts of “Daēnā” (Revelation), left, and “Daēva” (Personified Evil), right:Prompted by subsequent influxes of immigrants to Dunhuang, China’s first Zoroastrian fire temple was constructed during the 4th century in order to appease the Sogdian faithful, who by that time had quickly become a significant force within the Middle Kingdom, both in terms of commercial (eg. a Chinese customs register had recorded a Sogdian involvement in no less than 80% of all incoming trading caravans) and non-commercial importance, and so by this logic could not be ignored by Chinese authorities forever.And in the context of a Zoroastrian influence in the Middle Kingdom, this was a good thing. For despite being a monotheistic religion similar to say Christianity, or its future rival Islam, the faith strongly disapproved of proselytization. There were no missionaries operating in China to that extent, unlike with Nestorianism - another faith popular amongst the Sogdians - which was comparatively more aggressive in its efforts to convert the unbeliever. Mazdaism therefore, mostly grew proportional to the amount of foreigners who immigrated to China, rather than from conversions to the faith.Zoroastrianism During the Tang DynastyWith the advent of the cosmopolitan Chinese “Golden Age” the Tang Dynasty (618–907) however, Zoroastrianism begun to finally pick up after hundreds of years of relative dormancy. Spurred onward by the great tolerance of the Chinese State to that extent, foreigners from all over came to live in the Celestial Empire, leading to either the introduction or further spreading of all faiths, whether old or new alike. Zoroastrianism was to benefit greatly to that extent, when waves of Sogdian and Uyghur faithful then came to China, in order to trade and live both.This was such that by the heights of the Tang Empire during the mid-700s, entire sections of China’s most cosmopolitan cities, came to include ethnic based quarters designed specifically to cater to their needs, amongst which cultural and religious matters were of paramount importance.A funerary couch from northern China depicting a Zoroastrian rite, in which a soul can be seen crossing the “Bridge of the Requiter”, which separates the world of the living from the world of the dead:This “foreignization” of China’s metropolises was most noticeable amongst the Chinese capital, Chang’an, whereby the city’s entire Northwestern district, the Yining Quarter (義寧坊) was comprised significantly of Sogdian and Turkic immigrants. The same albeit to a lesser extent, proved true also for the capital’s East-Central district in addition. Thus in accordance with Chinese tolerance and multiculturalism, the Imperial Government eventually authorized the construction in Chang’an of no less than four Zoroastrian fire temples.Three came to be located in the city’s northwest, whilst the last was built in the capital’s center-east. In addition to this, two fire temples were also constructed in the Tang secondary capital of Luoyang, and were promptly joined by further places of worship in Kaifeng, in addition to a number of other cities along the road to the Chinese Empire’s northwest. Indeed, per one claim, Northern China alone at one stage was purported to host no less than 29 Zoroastrian fire temples. By that stage, Mazdaism could not be said to be neither small in adherence nor influence therefore.Even so, the spreading of the faith on the other hand was almost certainly restricted from reaching its full potential however. The Imperial Government to that extent, despite wholly tolerating the teaching’s existence (the Chinese had recognized it as an official religion for approximately 200 years by the mid-700s), not only prohibited the Zoroastrians from spreading their religion, but also made it illegal for any native Tang citizen, to convert to the “Heaven Worship Teaching” (祆教) as the Chinese called it. Which when compared to the lack of restrictions on Sino citizens converting to Nestorianism or Islam, certainly seems unnecessarily harsh by stark contrast.Despite a “live and let live” attitude amongst the Chinese as such, Zoroastrianism was viewed rather indifferently if not negatively for the most part by Tang citizens, who understood it as little more than “the foreigner’s religion”, and was thus “unfit” for native adherence. This is reinforced by the incriminating fact, that whilst Chinese authors wrote many books on the Nestorian and Manichaen faiths both during the Tang Dynasty, this was not the case for Mazdaism by stark contrast, which even to this day has been found to be comparatively lacking.The apparent Chinese disregard of Zoroastrianism (perhaps counter-intuitively) was not unheard of in a tolerant society such as that of the Tang, which was certainly no stranger to the many past incidents of outright xenophobia and discrimination towards ethnic minorities (particularly in Chang’an) over the years. Foreigners inclusive to Zoroastrians, were strongly discouraged from marrying Chinese women to that extent, based on the official government rationale of “protection”.Which was why the Sogdians and Uyghurs were even living in pre-designated districts of the Tang capital in the first place: because they had been forced to by the ethnic majority, who were quick to segregate racial minorities upon their arrival in the Chinese Empire. Even so, this did little to halt the influx of new immigrants from abroad who remained enamored with the majesty of the Middle Kingdom to such an extent, that they kept migrating to China en masse, thereby assisting in the continued growth of Zoroastrianism all the way up until the mid-8th century.The Faravahar (فروهر), the foremost symbol for Zoroastrianism (presently thought to symbolize a guardian angel, with his two wings divided into three sections in order to represent the faith’s core teachings: “Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds”):Sogdian Zoroastrianism - Names, Organization and FeaturesSince the Zoroastrian community was mostly cut off from mainstream Tang society, few Chinese citizens knew anything of the foreign teaching save but for two facts: the first being that the faith had originated with Zarathustra (زرتشت‎) or Suluzhi (蘇路支) as they called him, the second being that fire in the Heaven Worship Teaching was a symbol for good. Hence presumably why the Tang Chinese also called Zoroastrianism the “Fire-Worshippers’ Transmission” (拜火教).This is interesting, as initially during the Three Kingdoms Era (220–65) first, and then during the succeeding Jin Dynasty (265–420), Mazdaism was called Hutian (胡天), a title which the Chinese used to also slander the “barbarians” who dwelt north of the Middle Kingdom. By the times of the early Tang Dynasty however, this was no longer the case, and the Chinese ultimately deposed of this crude title, in favour of an entirely original character which they invented, just so they could give the teachings of Zarathustra a new name, which was that of “Xian” (祆), meaning the “Worship of Heaven”.Which then of course went on to eventually become Xianjiao - the Heaven Worship Teaching. This was one way in which Zoroastrianism influenced Chinese society during the Tang Dynasty as such. Anecdotal literature would also suggest, that the Chinese were greatly impressed with Zoroastrianism’s ritual dances, and consequentially begun to associate the faith’s fire temples with feats of conjuring. This was another influence of the teaching on Chinese society.Aside from that, Zoroastrianism in China much like its Nestorian counterpart, was also formally organized, and had been so since the times of the Northern Qi Dynasty (550–77). The crucial difference between the two however, was that the latter was for the most part administered by high ranking ecclesial figureheads (ie. bishops), whilst the former due to its inherent lack of missionaries courtesy of a reluctance to proselytize, meant that Zoroastrianism had to be administered more so by the secular authorities instead.The Honglusi to that extent, which were a court of Persian established dependencies in the Northern Qi, not only acted as de facto ambassadors to China, but also oversaw Zoroastrian activities within the Middle Kingdom, via a central administrative office called the Sabaofu (薩寶府). And like their Christian counterpart, Zoroastrian operations in China were also divided into individual parishes (薩甫) for ease of manageability.A carved tomb panel (592) from the sarcophagus of a “sabao” or “caravan leader”, one of the administrators of Zoroastrianism in China:As for China’s Zoroastrian fire temples themselves, what little we do know about them would suggest that they were constructed so that one would enter the from the west, in order to worship whilst facing toward the east. Inside the fire temples of Chang’an, each had no less than 20 high altars. An idol lay on top of each altar, and academics suspect in hindsight that some of these may have been sculptures of Zurvan, the Zoroastrian god of time (the Sogdian practice of Zoroastrianism was not necessarily monotheistic), that was infused with the Hindu god Brahma.Similarly, the idol of Zoroastrianism’s God, Ahura Mazda was believed to have been fused with elements of another Hindu deity Indra, in addition to Mithras, the deity of the Roman religion, Mithraism. During memorial days in addition, the Zoroastrians who lived in the Tang Dynasty, were known to stew beef and mutton in a broth, which they consumed before singing and dancing with drums to celebrate.But on the other hand, the Sogdians were also said to have practiced next of kin marriages in accordance with their Zoroastrian beliefs. This is currently disputed by one scholar however, who has noted that such an assumption, would be difficult to prove with absolute certainty since Sogdian family titles were named only after their hometowns back in Sogdiana. Regardless, from a Tang Chinese perspective even the possibility of a permanent union between two individuals of a similar family name, was enough to imply intermarriage which in Imperial China (221 BC-1912 AD) was considered to be a most disgusting contravention of basic morality, and thus naturally was condemned.The Zoroastrians were also perceived by the Tang Chinese, to be highly promiscuous at least when compared to their Nestorian or Manichean counterparts. There was no sense of asceticism for one, which left Chinese observers with an impression that the followers of the Heaven Worship Teaching were comparatively more “sex positive”, or at the very least amorous relative to the average Tang citizen. In addition to this, at the time it was already an established conception, that ethnic minority women foremost amongst which were Sogdians (and later Persians, who fled the Islamization of the Middle-East), tended to work as hostesses in bars all across Chang’an.The famous Tang poet Li Bai (李白), is said to have contributed greatly to the propagation of this stereotype, by making the lusty Sogdian female, a common recurring theme in his compositions. Following on from Li’s exemplar, Chinese literature henceforth came to interpret Zoroastrianism as being synonymous to adultery. A popular saying which was eventually conceived hundreds of years afterwards, “the Xian temple (Zoroastrian temple) catching fire” (火燒祆廟), was in fact based on this very stereotype of the hypersexualized Zoroastrian worshipper.An artist’s impression of the “Sogdian Whirl”, a rigorous, twirling form of dance which eventually came to take the Tang Court by storm, and was introduced by the Sogdian peoples:Persian Zoroastrianism in Tang ChinaMazdaism in the Middle Kingdom then took a turn for the better, with the collapse of a centuries long Chinese ally the Shahdom of Sasan (224–651), at the hands of the mighty Rashidun Caliphate (632–61), during the mid-7th century.When Islamic forces took over the last Zoroastrian empire therefore, thousands of Persian citizens in addition to the entire royal family, fled east in 637 towards Central Asia in the hopes of gathering support for their cause but alas, amongst all the great noble families of the shahdom there was not even one, brave enough to assist the dying House of Sasan (ساسان) in their efforts, to take back Ctesiphon - the Sassanid capital - from caliphate hands. By the time that the royal family had reached the eastern edges of their empire in the year 651 as such, they were entirely spent and wholly defeated.Such misery was then only further exacerbated, when the last shah of the Empire, Yazdgerd III (یزدگرد) was brutally murdered in front of his family by a common miller, merely for his purse. Yazdgerd was survived by his son, Prince Peroz who whilst only 15 at the time was forced to take up his father’s mantle regardless as “Shahanshah” - the King of Kings (شاهنشاه‎), thereby ascending to the exiled throne as Peroz III (پیروز). The young king escaped, but a price was subsequently levied on his head, ensuring that the new shah would never be able to find peace wheresoever he journeyed to, not as long as the Caliphate had had some influence there. He desired protection, but alas where could such ever be found?And then he remembered: the alliance with China - for nearly 800 years to that extent, the various Chinese states had been extremely welcoming to the Persian imperium. Peroz’s own sister in fact, had been married off to the Chinese emperor prior to his own birth. And what of its power? Such that it even rivalled that of Rome or Constantinople itself according to his own father. Therefore, if there was only one place left where his life could be spared from a series of never ending assassination attempts, and the remnants of his people made safe also, it could only be with the Celestial Empire, of this he was most certain.Thus it was, that Peroz, the exiled Shah of Sasan, then made his way further east to China, where after years of travel, he finally arrived at the Tang Court in the year 670. And there, he was received warmly by the Emperor Gaozong (唐高宗).An artist’s impression of the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, where defeat ultimately heralded the end of Zoroastrian Persia:A great admirer of Persian civilization, upon meeting with the shah, Emperor Gaozong embraced Peroz as if he were his own flesh and blood, going so far as to even call him “brother”.Such kindness was then quickly returned by the exiled king, who out of respect refrained from looking directly into the eyes of the Tang sovereign. He then also promptly fell to his knees. Not to be outdone however, Gaozong quickly stepped off his throne in response, and lowering himself down to the shah’s level, said:“You have come a long way. Have no more fears. For you are my brother and this is your new home.”In light of this initial meeting, Gaozong not only permitted the royal family to stay indefinitely in China, but also did the same for all incoming Persian refugees which soon imminently followed, amongst their number of which were nobles, “Magi” (Zoroastrian priests) and commoners alike.According to one estimate to that extent, the Chinese ultimately opened their borders to no less than 1 million asylum seekers from Persia for the sake of their Sassanian allies, before resettling them in cities all across the Empire, including but not limited to Chang’an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Yangzhou and Taiyuan to name a few. This was how it came to be, that the number of Zoroastrians within the Middle Kingdom then grew rapidly, prompting additional fire temples to be constructed in southwestern China’s Quizhou and Xizhou metropolises.Alas, Peroz did not wish to stay in China his entire life however and soon quickly revealed to Gaozong the real reason for his arrival: military assistance. But even this too, was quickly granted by the Chinese emperor, and soon the Tang Dynasty found themselves pitted against the newly risen Umayyad Caliphate (661–750) on behalf of their Persian allies. The Chinese themselves did not intervene directly, however they supplied the remnant Persian forces with military equipment in addition to an entire battalion of men, before stationing them on the Western most edges of their empire near what is today Pakistan, where Peroz spent the rest of his days perpetually harassing Islamic forces, wining battles here and there.Ultimately, the Persians were unsuccessful in their campaign to reconquer their former homes (albeit they achieved some success in regards to the empire’s former eastern borders around Khorasan), and so were forced to remain in Tang China from that moment onwards. Then nearing death by the year 679, the king requested an audience with all who were dear to him, wishing to deliver a final speech. The entire royal family, all Persian exiles, and the Chinese emperor himself subsequently turned up in response.Beginning his speech, the Shahanshah Peroz III looked west and proclaimed:“I have done what I could for my homeland and I have no regrets.”Then he faced east and confessed:“I am grateful to China, my new homeland.”And then at last, turning to his family and to his people, the dying king ordered:“Contribute your talents and devote it to the emperor. We are no longer Persians. We are now Chinese.”Then with the end of the speech, the shah peacefully passed. The Chinese honoured his achievements by having a horse ride around his corpse 33 times, as this was how many battles he was said to have won against the Umayyad Caliphate.The Qianling Mausoleum (乾陵), where the corpses of Emperor Gaozong and Shah Peroz III rests (the inscription reads: “Peroz, King of Iran, crowned in the Tang court: Commander-in-chief of the Iranian Army, Martial General of the Right Flank Guards, Awe-inspiring General of the Left Flank Guards”):The Decline of Zoroastrianism in the Tang DynastyPeroz III’s final words eventually turned out to be prophetic to a certain extent, as before long like with many other faiths, Mazdaism in addition to its followers, the Zoroastrians (and not just the Persian peoples) would find themselves wholly assimilated into Chinese culture. Buddhism which came before, and was under the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (武則天) made the state ideology of the Tang, had previously undergone this treatment. Nestorianism similarly by the 9th century, was fused with Taoist and Buddhist elements. And by the late-1300s, both Islam and Judaism had also blended into Chinese society for one reason or another.Zoroastrianism to that extent was not exempt from this wave of pro-Chinese assimilation. It was however perhaps accelerated to an extent, with the outbreak and conclusion of the infamous An Lushan Rebellion (755–63) on the other hand. In that particular case, an overly ambitious Tang general who had foolishly been given control over 40% of China’s 500,000 strong army, rebelled against the Imperial Government thereby launching the entire country into civil war. When the conflict had ended, 36 million or almost half the population were dead. Predictably for those who had survived, these few were not in a forgiving mood thereafter and so quickly found a scapegoat for the cause of the Rebellion: foreigners.Indeed, on that premise they pointed out that An Lushan (安禄山) himself was a foreigner of Sogdian and Turkic descent. When you let immigrants into the country that was what they did, the Tang people came to argue. They destroyed Chinese greatness, ruined Chinese culture and murdered Chinese people. Was there any good reason for them still to remain as such? No, there was none.In the ensuing decades which followed therefore, Tang racism accelerated and foreigners became less and less appreciated with each passing decade. Thousands upon thousands of Arabs and Persians were indiscriminately murdered during the Yangzhou Massacre (760) to that extent, based on this rising Chinese hatred for all things foreign. Once open as such, the Middle Kingdom was now closed.And in the context of Zoroastrians, this had a rather desperate effect on the adherents of the Heaven Worship Teaching, who sought to escape harm’s way by any means necessary. Bucking social stigmas therefore, many Zoroastrians attempted to marry Chinese women in order to gain acceptance under the “New Regime”. Subsequently, they downplayed their foreign heritage and begun to adopt elements of Chinese culture in their practice of the Zoroastrian faith, a trend which was to only intensify with each passing year over the next 12 centuries of the religion’s on and off presence in the Middle Kingdom. Further attacks eventually also convinced 3,000 Zoroastrian Magus to become laymen.An 8th century Tang clay figurine of an ethnic Sogdian Zoroastrian priest:The efforts of the Zoroastrians to assimilate into Tang society ultimately did not pay off however, and this was quickly made clear post the assumption of Emperor Wuzong (唐武宗) to power in 840. Prompted by Confucian intellectuals such as Han Yu (韓愈), who were concerned at the effect that foreign religions foremost amongst which existed Buddhism were having on social harmony to that extent, Wuzong subsequently led a great crackdown on foreign religions in 845 AD.This event eventually became known as the “Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution” (會昌毀佛), so called because it initially only targeted Buddhism. Given however that the emperor himself was known to be a devout Taoist and thus a staunch advocate of native Chinese values, this could never strictly be the case however and so ultimately was not. In time, a case was made against the other foreign faiths of China also, foremost amongst which were Manichaeism, Nestorianism and Zoroastrianism, thereby forcing Emperor Wuzong to move quickly against them, when he extended the fury of the Imperial Court on these particular religions too.Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism were in this way mostly ousted from Chinese society henceforth, whilst Nestorianism on the other hand was sent into a 400 year long decline. Islam meanwhile had kept a low profile, and was thus spared. From Tang records which existed at the time, the Chinese claimed that the State persecution of Zoroastrianism and Christianity was wholly “legitimate” in nature because both teachings were considered to be merely Buddhist derived heresies, and were thus fit for persecution to be extended towards under the scope of the edicts, which had proclaimed:“As for the Daqin (Nestorian) and Muhu (Zoroastrian) forms of worship, since Buddhism has already been cast out, these heresies alone must not be allowed to survive. People belonging to these also are to be compelled to return to the world, belong again to their own districts, and become taxpayers. As for foreigners, let them be returned to their own countries, there to suffer restraint.”The subsequent decades during the last years of the Tang Dynasty were even worse however for the followers of the Heaven Worship Teaching, with the advent of the infamous Guangzhou Massacre (879), in which anywhere from 120–200,000 Muslim Arabs, Persians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Christians were murdered by the Chinese rebel leader Huang Chao (黃巢), as recounted by the Baptist missionary magazine (1869):“Foreigners have at different periods settled in China; but after remaining for a time, they have been massacred. For instance, Mohammedans and others settled at Canton in the ninth century; and in 889, it is said that 120,000 foreign settlers were massacred.”An artist’s impression of Huang Chao and his rebels rallying together shortly prior to the slaughter of thousands of foreigners including Zoroastrians, during the Guangzhou Massacre (廣州大屠殺):Zoroastrianism During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms EraDespite all the troubles which had been inflicted onto it during the last years of the Tang Dynasty, Zoroastrianism continued to survive well into the Five Dynasties, Ten Kingdoms era (907–60), albeit now merely as a shadow of its former self.Lacking the benefits of both a unified and cosmopolitan China as was the case under the rule of the Tang, “sinicized” Zoroastrianism - the likes of which was practiced until as recently as the 1940s, - was further improved upon during this period of civil infighting. The gods of Sogdian Zoroastrianism were eventually infused into Chinese Folk religion in this way.Even so, what is believed to be the world’s earliest surviving Avestan manuscript written in the Sogdian language, a Zoroastrian prayer called the “Ashem Vohu”, has its origins in this Chinese historical period. The text itself was written in standard 9th century Sogdian using the Avestan script, with Zarathustra addressing God supreme. The preface to the text on the other hand, which is comprised of only two lines was written in a dialect which is similar to that of Achaemenid Old Persian. Notably, the manuscript precedes the next earliest Avestan texts (which were found in Iran and India) by no less than 300 years.The Ashem Vohu - the world’s earliest known Avestan manuscript in Sogdian (discovered by a Taoist monk at Dunhuang, in 1900 and today housed at the British Library):Similarly, the “Princess Jun Zhezhe Letter”, another artefact relating to the Chinese Zoroastrianism also dates back to roughly around the Five Dynasties, Ten Kingdoms era, and according to the British Library which currently has the relic in its possession, “…provides rare evidence of Zoroastrianism in tenth century Dunhuang.”The letter itself was written by a Uyghur noblewoman to her friend Madame Sikong, mistress of the North House, which according to a book published by the British Library “mentions lighting a fire in the Zoroastrian Fire Temple in order 'to bring prosperity along the road’.”The letter written by Princess Jun Zhezhe as can be seen in the British Library to this day:Either during the 5 Dynasties, 10 Kingdoms era or prior to it in the Tang Dynasty, some scholars have proposed that Zoroastrianism may have possibly also spread to both Korea and Japan from China.With regards to the former for instance, a series of burial tombs dating between the 7th and the 9th centuries was recently uncovered in the Korean peninsular’s southeast, which contained a series of sculptures resembling that of ethnic Sogdians. Whilst this by itself does not conclusively prove that Zoroastrianism was transmitted to Korea via China, or even transmitted period, certainly does however leave open that very possibility.In the case of Japan on the other hand, one particular scholar has attempted to prove that certain words in Old Japanese language were actually Pahlavi loan-words. Following on from this assertion, the scholar reasoned that the Sassanian refugees who came to China seeking the intervention of the Imperial Court, must have reached Japan also. In recent times, the theory has become so popular in Japan, that renowned author Seicho Matsumoto even adopted in his historical fiction novels. Similarly, others interpret the existence of a series of mysterious remains, to mean that Ancient Japan must have had Zoroastrian roots some time in the past. Still, current Japanese academia has yet to endorse such allegations.Zoroastrianism During the Song, Yuan and Ming DynastiesMazdaism continued under the Song Dynasty (960–1279) also, but by then had assimilated into Chinese culture to such a degree by the 1100s, that it was now barely recognizable relative to the original Sogdian interpretation.Still, there were a few advantages of sinicized Zoroastrianism, one of which was the adding of new converts amongst the native Chinese, which lay in stark contrast to the Tang Dynasty decades prior in which the faith had been viewed as most inappropriate for a Chinese citizen to take up. Now rather, even members of the Imperial Family were purported to have adopted the Zoroastrian faith. Thus eventually, Chinese Zoroastrianism was recognized by the Imperial Government as just another native religion, and was thus given legal parity with the Middle Kingdom’s “Three Teachings” (三教): Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism, the national ideologies of the Song Empire.The sinicization of Mazdaism was also clear, when we consider how the faith came to be organized under the Song, relative to the Tang before it. Previously as mentioned, a series of foreign secular administrations, the Sabaofu were tasked with managing and organizing the faith (which was natural considering that all its adherents were foreigners). By the times of the Song however, the Chinese Government had usurped the right of foreign powers to administer the Zoroastrian faith in China, and instead placed it under the charge of the “Ministry of Rites” (禮部), which hitherto had had the responsibility of managing all religions in the Celestial Empire.The sole exception was with one particular fire temple in Northern China however, which was managed by the Shi (史) Family, who were ethnic Sogdians. In this case, the Ministry of Rites had delegated their responsibilities onto the Shi household, but continued to support the family by giving them their permission to perform their daily rituals as required by the faith.Even so, this in no way meant that “real” Zoroastrianism did not exist in China however, since the Song Court actually came to appreciate the faith for what it was worth, thereby permitting the Persian variant still to be practiced in the Middle Kingdom by visiting merchants, in an effort to return the Empire to its former cosmopolitan self, when it had been under Tang rule. Despite this generosity, the reality was that Zoroastrianism in China was now a dying religion. The majority of fire temples which still existed then, had really been built centuries prior under the Tang.And so by the times of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279), all mentions of Zoroastrianism in Chinese records and literature both had ceased. This was to continue under Mongol occupied China during the Yuan Empire (1279–1368) also, and it is only towards the end of the dynasty that we see the first mentions of Zoroastrianism in over 200 years. Even then however, it is an indirect mention which concerns itself with the actions of a Buddhist monk turned peasant turned rebel leader called Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋), who joined a revolutionary and millenarian sect called the “Red Turbans” (紅巾), which were themselves related to the Zoroastrian inspired “White Lotus Society” (白蓮教).Zhu Yuanzhang entering the city of Nanjing (1356), during the Red Turban uprising against the Yuan Dynasty:Otherwise, there were very few further references to Zoroastrianism from the start of the Southern Song, to the fall of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).Zoroastrianism During the Qing DynastyThen begun the most recent phase of Zoroastrianism in China, with the arrival of Parsi merchants in 1736, courtesy of the Portuguese Empire (1415–1999). Throughout the 18th century, the Parsis immigrated to cities all along the south China coast, where they then set up ethnic communities in Macao, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Cemeteries and Zoroastrian fire temples followed naturally in accordance with the religious needs of the newly arrived immigrants.Like their forebears, the Parsis excelled in trade and this eventually earned them the scorn of several parties, one of which was the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) itself who complained how “Parsis were the most crafty and greedy amongst all foreign merchants”. The prosperity of the new Zoroastrian community then only continued to draw the ire of the Chinese Government, post the conclusion of the First Opium War (1840–42), when they exploited their status as favoured subjects of the British crown, in order to acquire an immense level of wealth which came directly at the loss of the Middle Kingdom itself.Several years after in 1847, the Parsis then further vexed the Chinese when they announced plans to construct a Zoroastrian site at Guangzhou for the purposes of ex-carnation. The Qing Chinese disapproved of their intentions however, thereby forcing the Parsis to compromise, leading them to build a burial-style cemetery with stone coffins instead. Sometime thereafter, spurred on by envy and rage, the Zoroastrians were forced to depart from Guangzhou after they were driven out by their jealous Hindu and Jewish rivals.Subsequently, the Parsis settled in Shanghai instead, where they quickly resettled and constructed another Zoroastrian fire temple by 1866. The temple was characterized by a large gate at its north and a fire altar within. After this, the Zoroastrians were mainly left on their own to worship for the most part, now free from both trial and tribulation.Zoroastrianism in Modern ChinaWith the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 however, persecution against organized religion was quickly back on the agenda, and Zoroastrianism was like all faiths whether foreign or native, singled out for express condemnation.Fearing for their lives, the Zoroastrians of the People’s Republic quickly departed from Communist China, subsequently arriving in Hong Kong, where they were then reassured by the British authorities that the right to Freedom of Religion still existed in the port city, unlike the land from which they had just departed, where radical anti-theism and totalitarianism now reigned supreme. Shanghai’s Zoroastrian fire temple was destroyed for instance, despite attempts to preserve it during the infamous Cultural Revolution (1966–76), which had sought to liberate China from all influences of the past.And it would only be after the Chinese Economic Reform (改革开放) of 1978, that a new wave of Parsis then felt safe enough, to return to Mainland China and practice their faith out in the open.Which then brings us now to the modern era, where as of the early 21st century it is estimated that there are presently 3,000 Zoroastrians in existence still, in contemporary China. The current community though small, is relatively stable. However, since converts to the faith are few in number, it is believed that Mazdaism in the Mainland faces an imminent existential crisis, which is currently forecasted to arrive in the coming decades. It should be noted though that this is an issue which threatens the existence of Zoroastrianism all over the world, and not just in China.A Zoroastrian rite being performed in contemporary Hong Kong today:Currently, a few Chinese academics are also attempting to challenge the traditional notion that Zoroastrianism was seldom spread during its centuries long presence in Imperial China. A Professor Lin Wushu to that extent, insists that Zoroastrianism was propagated in pre-modern Chinese society as there was nothing in the scriptures which explicitly prohibited it, from being spread to unbelievers.Indeed, to further reinforce his contention, Lin also notes how scholars during the dynasties which succeeded the Tang, frequently mentioned that there were many converts amongst the Chinese people. Another academic, Chen Yuan after examining the spreading of the faith during the Chinese Golden Age, concludes that the impact of Zoroastrian faith on Postclassical Sino society was surely “extensive”.In other news, a tomb complex was also discovered back in 2014 around western China, which raises the possibility that Mazdaism may have in reality began in Central Asia. Up until then, it was taken as common knowledge that the roots of the Zoroastrian faith had been derived from the pre-historic Indo-Iranian religious system, and that only after Zarathustra himself had introduced the faith to what is today China’s Xinjiang province and Tibet autonomous region, that the religion finally appeared in the areas east of Central Asia.The 2014 findings however, shed doubt on conventional understanding when it was proven firstly from the state of their remains, that the individuals who had been buried here were subjected to a Zoroastrian burial (via excarnation) thereby implying that they were followers of the Mazdaism faith, but secondly, that the bodies themselves were also 2,500 years old - the oldest of its kind in Eurasia. Chinese academics thus argued based on these facts, in addition to the discovery of no less than 7 previous tombs within the same remote western county, aside from another 30 burial chambers within the extended area, raised the possibility of a Zoroastrian faith which in reality began not in Iran, but rather in Central Asia.Shown below, is one of the 40 tombs discovered around Western China which may prove that Mazdaism was actually founded in Central Asia, and not Persia:Conclusion (and TL;DR)Thus, Zoroastrianism has had a fairly long and rich history in China.The faith which first came by way of Sogdian merchants, was then subsequently uplifted by a successive number of Persian, Uyghur and Sogdian immigrants. The Chinese tolerated the practice of the faith during the Golden Age of the Tang Dynasty, but ultimately felt as though the teachings of Suluzhi, would be best off had it remained a foreigner’s religion. This was not a problem for the Zoroastrians however, as Mazdaism was not inclined to proselytize to the unbeliever, unlike its Nestorian Christian counterpart to cite one example.Zoroastrianism was then subjected to a brutal wave of persecutions, which begun first with the An Lushan Rebellion and peaked with state intervention during the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution, based on the premise that the teaching was merely a perversion of Buddhism. Over the succeeding decades, aside from seeing a few prominent converts here and there, and possibly also being spread to Japan and Korea, the faith for the most part was protected and left alone by state authorities, thereby escaping all official mentions from the 1120s onward.Mazdaism eventually returned to China however, when a wave of Parsi merchants immigrated to the Qing Dynasty around the 1700s. Communities were built and fire temples were set up until at last, the Zoroastrians drew the ire of the State, and of their Jewish and Hindu rivals, which forced them to depart southern China for Shanghai. Still, such resentment was ultimately nothing however when compared to the persecutions which was yet to come, upon the establishment of radical and unchained Communism, which ultimately drove the faith out of the Mainland, and into Hong Kong.And there it remained (and to a degree still has) until the 1978 reforms of Deng Xiaoping, which prompted the most recent wave of Parsi immigration to begin. Today Zoroastrianism faces many existential difficulties in its effort both to survive and remain relevant, but otherwise is left alone to worship in peace for the most part, by the Chinese authorities and people alike. And there it exists to this day, a mere remnant of a former glory which once was centuries prior.SourcesReligion in China - WikipediaZoroastrianism in the Far EastZoroastrian Sects Post Arab InvasionTomb asks where Zoroastrianism beganGreat Anti-Buddhist Persecution - WikipediaZoroastrianism in China (www.chinaknowledge.de)List of countries by Zoroastrian population - WikipediaZhu Yuanzhang, the First Emperor of the Ming DynastyDimitris Almyrantis - Was religion during Ming China Zoroastrianism?How, like Christianity in Japan, Zoroastrianism was purged from ChinaZartusht Ashavan - What is the history of Zoroastrianism in China?Sogdian Aryan Trade. Silk Roads. China & ZoroastrianismCHINESE-IRANIAN RELATIONS i. Pre-Islamic TimesShort note on Zoroastrianism in CHINAZoroastrian prayer, the Ashem VohuGuangzhou massacre - WikipediaEnd of Zoroastrian Rule of IranThe Persian Prince PiroozChang'an - Wikipedia