Christian missionaries have been active in China since Roman Catholics belonging to the Jesuit order arrived in the early 17th century.

As early as in 1625, the end of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), a tablet was unearthed in western Xi'an City of Shaanxi Province. Carved on the tablet were the words Monument to Nestorian Church in China. When it was dug out, the tablet was basically intact and the words were still clear enough to be recognized. The tablet is 2.36 meters high, 0.68 meters wide, about 0.25 meters thick and is about two tons in weight.

People find that a cross is carved on the top of the tablet with lotus and clouds beside it. There is an epigraph of 1,695 characters in 36 lines with 62 characters a line carved on the tablet. Names and positions of some people are carved on the margins and at the end of the epigraph. Each name is in both Chinese and Syriac. Further more, each person is accompanied with his/her position in churches, such as primate, Chinese godfather, presbyter, friar, priest and doctor, etc. The epigraph was composed by a person who called himself Monk Jingjing of the Nestorian Church and written by Lv Xiuyan, a local official of Taizhou. According to the epigraph, this monument was erected in 781 during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The Nestorian Monument in China is one of the four famous stone carvings in the world and is highly regarded as a historical relic. It is the earliest and the most convincing evidence of the dissemination of

Christianity in China.

However, all the Christian missionaries had difficulty converting the Chinese in ancient China because Christianity was associated in the popular mind with Western imperialism. By 1949 there were only 3 or 4 million Christians in China, less than 1 percent of the total population.