SINING, APOSTOLIC PREFECTURE of. - It comprises the entire civil province of Tsinghai or Kokonor, in west-central China.
It was erected, under the name of S. from the capital city where the Ordinary resides, on 4 February 1937, and entrusted to the Society of the Divine Word. Its territory had until then Lanchow (v.). It has an area of approximately 700,000 sq. km. As of 30 June 1948, out of a total population of approximately 1,500,000 inhabitants, there were 3,722 Catholics and 1,376 catechumens; 12 priests, including 1 Chinese; 1 major seminarian and 16 minor seminarians; 22 nuns, including 12 natives; 16 catechists and 12 teachers. Its institutions included 1 hospital, 4 medical dispensaries, 1 orphanage, 1 foundling home, and 8 schools.
It seems that in the 6th-8th centuries the preaching of Nestorian missionaries reached these regions; that in the 16th century the Jesuits arrived there, followed in the 18th and 18th centuries by the Franciscans; but these may have been missionaries who had taken refuge in those remote and peaceful regions in order to escape persecution. Proper preaching begins with the arrival of the Scheut missionaries, who, having arrived in 1878, remained there until 1922, when they moved to Mongolia, leaving the mission of Kansu, to which the province of Kokonor was united, to the Divine Word religious, who had been on the spot for about ten years.