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CHAPTER XIVEVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTSI. EVANGELISTIC MOVEMENTS AMONG STUDENTSIN CHINATheir Initiation, Progress, and ResultsW. E. TaylorI. InitiationThe opening of the second century ofProtestant missionary effort marks the beginning of a well -defined movement to reacli thestudent classes in China. The cataclysm of 1000 wasclosely followed by swift and far-reaching political andsocial changes affecting particularly the student classes.The now famous edict issued by the Empress Dowager in1905 had with the stroke of a pen swept away as if in a nightthe old and time- honoured literati, and substituted in theirplace a new creation a student body with an entirely neweducational system based largely on Western and Japanesemodels. The wide and deep significance of this change isindicated by the government educational returns issued in1910, which reported so forty-two thousand schools andcolleges of middle and higher grade, and a million anda half students of western learning within their halls. InPeking alone the numbers had sprung as if by magic fromfive hundred in 1900 to over seventeen thousand in 1910.This creation of a new student body, assembled togetherfor the first time in Chinese history for continuous study,eager for western learning, and concentrated for highercourses of study in provincial capitals, was the genesis ofa situation which rapidly swung apart the long-closed gatesand as by a miracle opened wide Chinese student classesto Christian approach.The first organized series of meetings toBeginning of j t] government students in China wasthe Movement , . ,, .n n ^held in 1907 under the leadership of Dr.John R. Mott. The results of these first beginnings more