TSINCHOW, DIOCESI of. — In the southern part of Kansu Province (northwestern China).
Erected as an apostolic prefecture under the name of Southern Kansu on 28 Apr. 1905, by division of the apostolic vicariate of Kansu (v. LANCHOW), and entrusted to the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Scheut), in a new territorial reorganization carried out on 8 May 1922, the apostolic prefecture having been suppressed, the apostolic vicariate of Eastern Kansu was erected and entrusted to the Capuchins of the regular province of the Rhineland–Westphalia. On 3 Dec. 1924 it received the name of apostolic vicariate of T.; on 25 Jan. 1930 it ceded 17 civil subprefectures for the erection Pingliang (v.); on 11 Apr. 1946 it was elevated to a suffragan diocese of Lanchow. It has an area of 45,000 sq. km. As of 30 June 1950, out of a total population of approximately 2,500,000 inhabitants, there were 8,548 Catholics and 424 catechumens, 28 priests, of whom 18 were Chinese, and 33 sisters, of whom 11 were indigenous. Its institutions included 3 hospitals, 8 dispensaries, 1 orphanage, and 33 schools.
The first Christians of T. were faithful who had emigrated to Kansu from the neighboring civil provinces of Szechwan and Shensi in the second half of the previous century. From 1876, a missionary of the apostolic vicariate of Shensi brought them the Sacraments once a year; from 1881, however, a Scheut religious began to reside in this territory, and was soon followed by others. In 1905 there were 10 priests, with 775 Christians and 522 catechumens; in 1922 the baptized had risen to approximately 4,000: although not fiercely persecuted as in many other regions of China, Catholicism here too encountered opposition from the mandarins and the pagan followers of Confucianism.