FUSHUN, DIocese of. — In southeastern Manchuria, on the borders with Korea. It was erected as an apostolic prefecture on 4 February 1932, with territory taken from the mission of Mukden, and was entrusted to the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll); on 13 February 1940 it was raised to the status of an apostolic vicariate, and on 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, to a suffragan diocese of Mukden.
It has an area of 80,914 sq. km. As of 30 June 1947, out of a total population of approximately 5,500,000 inhabitants, there were 11,000 Catholics; 37 priests, of whom 5 were from the Chinese secular clergy; 2 foreign lay religious and 28 nuns, also foreign. The Sino-Japanese War, followed by World War II and, more significantly, the civil war, have taken their toll even among the clergy and have severely limited missionary activity: at the time in question, no statistical data were available regarding auxiliary personnel (catechists, teachers, baptizers, doctors, nurses), nor regarding the seminary and other works, which had previously been quite flourishing.
Christian origins date back to more than a century ago and are due to Catholic families who had emigrated there from the Beijing area, where persecution was raging. Most of the territory of F. was once an imperial hunting ground reserved for the Chinese emperors, and was only opened to cultivation after 1870.