Abstract

In 1918, the China Continuation Committee (CCC), a Protestant organisation in Republican China that aimed at fostering greater cooperation among mission groups, appointed a special committee to promote the widespread use of the National Phonetic Alphabet, a set of phonetic symbols officially promulgated by the Beiyang government in the same year to standardise Mandarin pronunciation. It was hoped that the work of the special committee, known as the Phonetic Promotion Committee (PPC), would improve biblical and general literacy in China.

This lecture explores the history of the PPC from its inception to 1922, when it ceased to be the CCC’s special committee. It illustrates how the PPC emerged and operated as an organisation of the Sino-Foreign Protestant Establishment (SFPE) in early Republican China. It argues that the PPC can be seen as a case of how Chinese Protestants and Western missionaries of the SFPE collaborated to serve the needs of the nascent Chinese republic with enthusiasm, expertise, and experience, contributing to the promotion of mass literacy and the spread of Mandarin as a national language.

About the Speaker

George K. W. Mak is Associate Professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy and Associate Director of the Centre for Sino-Christian Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is also Associate Editor of Ching Feng: A Journal on Christianity and Chinese Religion and Culture. His academic interests include Bible Translation, History of Christianity in China, Religious Publishing, and Sino-Foreign Cultural Relations. He authored Protestant Bible Translation and Mandarin as the National Language of China (Brill, 2017) and recently co-edited Christianity and Education in Modern China with WONG Man Kong (HKU Press, 2024).