PAOTING, DIOCESE OF. — In northern China, it is located in the central-western part of Hopeh Province. It was erected as an apostolic vicariate on 14 February 1910 under the name Central Celi, through division from the Northern Celi vicariate, and was entrusted to the French Lazarists.
On 15 April 1924 it ceded five civil subprefectures, which together Chengting (v.) formed the mission of Lihsien, now Ankwo (v.). On 3 December 1924 it changed its name to the present one; in 1931 it passed to the Chinese secular clergy, and on 11 April 1946, with the establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in China, it was raised to the status of a suffragan diocese of Peking.
It covers an area of 12,000 sq. km. As of 30 June 1947, out of a total population of approximately 2,000,000, there were 79,000 Catholics, 72 priests (7 of them French Lazarists), 8 major seminarians, 2 lay religious brothers, and 85 sisters (only 7 of them foreign). Among its works were 1 hospital, 2 dispensaries, 1 orphanage, and 1 laboratory. All schools were closed. In 1899 the mission counted 12,000 Christians, of whom 2,000 were massacred by the Boxers in 1900; by 1902 they had risen again to 12,700, in 1905 to 26,283, and in 1910, the year of the erection of P., to 72,531, partly ceded to Lihsien in 1924. Thus the greatest growth of Christianity in P. occurred in the first half of the present century.