Francis Wilson Price

Francis Wilson Price, sometimes known as Frank W. Price (1895–1974) was a missionary of the Presbyterian Church in the United States in China.

Biography

Born in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province in China to missionary parents, he was educated in the United States at Davidson College, Columbia University, and Yale Divinity School.[1]

After working with the International YMCA and the Chinese Labour Corps in France during the war, he earned a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School in 1922.[2] When he returned to China in 1923, his ability in the Chinese language and his faculty position at Nanking Seminary allowed him access to many Chinese friends and colleagues. In 1927 Price made a translation of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People,[3] a basic text of the Nationalist Party, which established a close relationship with Chiang Kai-shek (he and Chiang were both born in Zhejiang). In the early 1930s, he was influenced by the Rural Reconstruction Movement of Y.C. James Yen to set up an experiment in Christian village life just outside Nanking.[4] He described these experiences in his book, The Rural Church in China [5] After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Nationalist government sent Price to the United States to promote American support for China.[6]

In 1952, after he and his wife were held in detention for nearly two years, he was deported from China. He became director of the Missionary Research Library in New York.[1]

References
  1. Brown, G. Thompson. "Francis Wilson Price (1895–1974)". Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity. Retrieved 5 November 2019.
  2. "Price, Frank (Francis) Wilson Collection: Biographical Sketch" (PDF). George C. Marshall Foundation. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-02-06. Retrieved 2014-02-16.
  3. The translation went through at least 14 editions, the last in 1985 WorldCat
  4. Fairbank, John (1982). China Bound: A Fifty-year Memoir. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 91–92.
  5. Price, Frank W. (1948). The Rural Church in China, a Survey. New York: Agricultural Missions.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link) The original printing plates for the book were destroyed in Shanghai in 1940, but this revised version was published in 1948.
  6. Akio Tsuchida, "China’s 'Public Diplomacy' toward the United States before Pearl Harbor," Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 17.1 (2009), 56-88.

Further reading
  • H. McKennie Goodpasture, "China in an American, Frank Wilson Price: A Bibliographical Essay;" Journal of Presbyterian History 49 (1971): 353-364.
  • "A Short Biography of Dr. Frank W. Price," Shenandoah Presbytery [no date]
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