Patriotic Cooperation

In Patriotic Cooperation, Diana Junio offers an account of a cooperative venture between the Nationalist government and the Church of Christ in China, known as the Border Service Department, that carried out substantial social programs from 1939 to 1955 in China’s Southwestern border areas.

Numerous scholars have argued that Chinese state-religion relations have been characterized primarily by conflict and antagonism. By examining the history of cooperation seen in the Border Service Department case, Diana Junio contends that these relations have not always been antagonistic; on the contrary, under certain conditions the state and the church could achieve a mutually beneficial goal through successful cooperation, with a strong degree of sincerity on both sides.