About the Author

Alvyn Austin born in Calcutta to CIM missionaries teaches at Brock University, Ontario. He is a trained museum curator as well as a scholar and his diverse work includes historical sites, radio documentaries and the book Saving China.

Reviews

Choice
"An excellent study of the single most important Protestant mission effort in China. . . Highly recommended." Andrew T. Kaiser
-- Taiyuan Regional Director, Shanxi Evergreen Service
"For the modern expatriate China worker seeking to be God's vehicle for blessing the Middle Kingdom, China's Millions provides essential background reading. The issues raised in Austin's narrative of the enculturation of the gospel in northern China are as relevant today as they were when Hudson Taylor's pioneers first began working in Shanxi. Humanitarian relief, cultural misunderstandings, folk religion and sectarian beliefs, disunity and suspicion -- all these factors continue to influence Christian work in modern China. In analyzing the strengths and weaknesses, the successes and failures, of so effective an organization as the China Inland Mission, Austin has produced a book of immense practical value. China's Millions should be read and digested by anyone seriously committed to building God's kingdom in China." Daniel Bays
-- editor of Christianity in China
"A rich, lovingly crafted, and elegantly written study. . . Probably the single largest contribution is the sympathetic yet sober and objective portrayal of Hudson Taylor as a person, along with insightful profiles of a whole host of other CIM worthies, power brokers, and assorted oddballs. Embedded in this informative (and often entertaining) narrative (which skips, rather than plows, through decades of history) comes an implicit interpretation of the institutional growth of the CIM as an organization. . . Austin's portrayal of the formidable Pastor Hsi is deft, a real contribution in itself." Donald Lewis
-- Regent College
"A carefully crafted and superbly researched work that breaks new ground in our understanding of Protestantism's early roots in China."