Red Victory In China May Mean A Christian Formosa

By DOUGLAS HYDE The sweeping victories of the Communists in China are opening up new possibilities of the evangelisation of the neighbouring island, Formosa.
For into North Formosa are crowding today many Chinese Christian refugees, laymen and priests, bringing with them their Catholic Faith and a hope that out of present defeats may come a hitherto unforeseen victory.
They will be led in their work by Mgr. Yu Pin, Archbishop of Nanking, himself a refugee, who has been given the task by the Holy See of establishing a new diocese there.
Mgr. Yu Pin paid London a flying visit this week, on his way to the Continent from America, where he has been for the past six months. Before returning to Asia he hopes to call at Fatima. " With my country face to face with the Communist problem," he told me, " we shall very much need Our Lady's assistance, and we have to spread devotion to Our Lady and the rosary throughout China."
Over breakfast in his London hotel. be told me of his hopes and fears for Asia. Ironically enough, in appearance he is rather like a benevolent-looking version of Mao Tse Tung, whose Communist forces have driven all but some 500 Christians out of the Archbishop's diocese of Nanking and whose aim is the destruction of all religion in China.
NO HEROICS
The policy of the Church in China, be told me, is not to encourage the faithful to become martyrs. With only some four million Christians in the whole country, they represent less than one in a hundred of the population. Heroics, therefore. would achieve little but their physical extinction.
Whilst the aims of the Communists in China are identical with those in Europe, their methods are likely, he believes, to be different. They will not need to resort to the creation of schisms, or to elaborate plots. Their numbers are so great and those of the Christians so small as to render such things unnecessary. The Church wants, therefore, to save her people for the future. All those bishops and clergy who have been outspoken in the past. all Christians who are known for their leadership, are leaving the occupied areas, although others are still going in. The native clergy in particular are being hounded down to-day and so are being got down to the South or over to North Formosa.
In the occupied areas Communist action committees on the Czech model have been established in the Catholic schools and colleges, and Revolutionary History has already been made an obligatory subject. As they are converted by such means into places of Marxist instruction, so they will be abandoned, since to maintain them at the Church's expense would be simply to play into the Communists' hands.
STILL HOPE FOR THE SOUTH Mgr. Yu Pin has not by any means written off the whole of China as lost. He believes that militarily there is the hope that the Nationalist forces may be able to hold out in the South, which could be used as a base from which to organise resistance and revolt, which