For a long time, the closed door policy of Qing dynasty isolated China from all the western countries. The missionaries also had the fear of going to China until 19th century. Inevitably, the first Opium War broke out. As a result, China was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which stated that Hong Kong was ceded to the United Kingdom and China had to open to the foreign trade. With missionaries coming, the Christian education was in a process of gradual development.

In the beginning, the missionaries had the aim of training local missionary and spreading their ideas through natives. However, there still were some reasons which made them to hesitate. (1) They had no direct responsibility for education and they were not the proper men. (2) The supreme purpose of education was to cultivate talent, impart knowledge and promote the development of science, which did not satisfy the gospel of preach. (3) Related to money issue, the money they received from Church was supposed to be used directly in missionary work rather than educational work. (Peter, 2009, p. 44) In order to eliminate these kinds of concern, a missionary conference was held in Shanghai in 1890. According to records, Calvin Mateer proclaimed that “mission school were for evangelization”, “education was the means and tools for evangelism”. (Peter, 2009, p. 44) By more people doing so, the missionaries gradually accepted a truth that the more education the natives received, the friendlier they were to western preachers. Consequently, the missionary education turned out to enjoy a boom in Hong Kong.

As time goes by, trying to achieve a better result of missionary work, missionaries enlarged the range of school subjects. “The Burton Commission Report of 1922 gave a new directive to Christian colleges, namely to be more efficient, more Christian and more Chinese.” (Peter, 2009, p. 45) As Peter states, the Christian education benefited thousands of people, enabling them to obtain advanced ideas and creative knowledge.

Nevertheless, during the Anti-Japanese War, the social and national reasons became the barriers to the development of