The time Matteo Ricci brought Catholicism to China in the late Ming dynasty to the present can be roughly divided into three periods. The first period was the end of Ming Dynasty to the ban on Christianity in the latter years of the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, a period spanning the late Ming and the early Qing lasting 130-140 years, a period that can be described as the initial phase. The special features of the period were that a large number of talented missionaries introduced new European scientific knowledge to China as well as preached, a large number of catechisms were published and most Christian converts were intellectuals. Matteo Ricci arrived in Beijing in 1600 and Diego de Pantoja in 1601. They presented the emperor with a sympathique clock, a bible, A Map of the Myriad Countries of the World and a harp. The emperor gave them and others permission to reside in Beijing and Ricci, possessing rich knowledge of East and West, made many acquaintances in the ranks of scholar-bureaucrats. After his death Nicholas Longobardi took up a position in the church. He had a view of Chinese rites that was  different to Ricci’s  and sparked off a dispute between the Vatican and the Qing court over rites. Narrowly defined, this refers to the dispute between Kangxi and the missionaries with respect to the worship of Confucianism, the missionaries believing that the Confucius Birthday Ceremony and respect for ancestors were in breach of Roman Catholic dogma. ( Note 1)  In the later years of the reign of the Kangxi Emperor the “rites dispute” broke out within the church, the result of which was that the Vatican banned the worship of ancestors and the holding of the Confucius Birthday Ceremony. This order, involving Chinese customs, led to the Kangxi Emperor banning Roman Catholicism. This marked the start of the second period, the period in which Christianity was banned in China. The ban was in force in the reigns of the Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing emperors, sending the Catholic Church completely underground. It was only able to emerge from the shadows after the Opium War  when the ban was lifted in the reign of the Daoguang emperor,.Giuseppe Castiglione arrived in China as a missionary but was well treated during the period that Christianity was suppressed in the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong periods because he was a painter in the palace and didn’t take part in any missionary work.He gradually lost himself and was later mainly referred to as a painter not a missionary

In Niccolò Longobardo and His Traité sur quelques points de la religion des Chinois Li Wen-chao thinks that the although Ricci and the other members of the “adapting school” met the psychological requirements  of the scholar-bureaucrats and found a way that Chinese scholars could accept Christian belief on a psychological level, having a historic effect on the spread of Christianity in China that was hard to predict, however, from the angle of dogma and theory, by simplifying Confucianism as “classical”, the adapting school intended to ignore the evolution of Confucianism in China’s history. The non-adapting school represented by Longobardo, had Christianity as their starting point. Overall, they rejected the idea that Confucian theory and Catholic dogma were compatible and noted the basic differences between Christian culture and Chinese culture.  (Note2)The lifting of the ban on Christianity at the end of the reign of the Daoguang Emperor was the third period, the period of revival and development. Although religious conflict was frequent in the late Qing, it was mostly limited in scale and short-lived and, on the surface at least, people were free to preach and believe in Christianity and there was no order from the highest ruler to eliminate Catholicism. Even the Boxer Rebellion was not openly ordered and would only last a short time. 1860, the 10th year of the reign of the Daoguang Emperor, was a year of great significance for the spread of Christianity, being a watershed in which the Qing court ended its ban on Christianity.Article 6 of the Sino-French Treaty of Peking signed in 1860 included the imperial order of January 25, 1846, the contents of which were as follows: The people can build Catholic churches where they want and those who detained missionaries without good reason in the past should be punished.Compensation should be paid for the Catholic schools, cemeteries, and buildings seized when Catholicism was suppressed and should be passed to the missionaries by the diplomats of the French Embassy in Peking. French missionaries should also be allowed to buy land and build churches where they want. In this period, state power brought victory to the Western missionaries in their struggle with the government of China but laid the seeds of future conflict. 

The cause of conflict between missionaries and the people was often cultural differences and very different ways of seeing things, leading to misunderstanding and dispute. To improve this situation, Christian missionaries used cultural education to promoted exchange between missionaries and the people and passed Western culture on to Chinese people, allowing them to understand the West, thus reducing the chance of misunderstanding and dispute.In the process of cultural education the missionaries also came into contact with Chinese culture and acquired a new understanding of Chinese society, leading them to adjust the strategy they used to spread Christianity. Another strategy used to spread Christianity was through charitable endeavors, which was a traditional method used by Christians to spread religion, the only difference being that in China it was done on a large scale. The objective of these charitable endeavors was not just to put an end to suffering, it was also intended to save people’s souls. The charitable medical activities show the values of Western medicine and Western culture, including religious culture and Christian charitable medical work .(Note 3) As well as providing medical treatment, social relief work such as epidemic prevention work was also carried out, bringing people and missionaries closer through the carrying out of charitable work. Rather than asking if dogma was merged into Chinese culture and discussing its adaptation and non adaptation, it is better to see a fact, the fact that Chinese culture attached importance to “people” not distinct “truth” and then we might be able to more clearly understand this historical process.

（Note 1）http://catalog.digitalarchives.tw/dacs5/System/Exhibition/Detail.jsp?OID=5034599。
（Note 2）http://catalog.digitalarchives.tw/dacs5/System/Exhibition/Detail.jsp?OID=3324882。
（Note 3）http://catalog.digitalarchives.tw/dacs5/System/Exhibition/Detail.jsp?OID=538429。