YING-KOW, DIOCESI of. — Situated in the southern part of Manchuria (North China), it comprises eight civil prefectures, namely Haishan, Tai-an, Pechen, Panshan, Haicheng, Y.-k., Kaiping, and Fuhsien, with a total area of 22,218 sq. km.
It was erected on 14 July 1949, by detachment from the archdiocese of Moukden, of which it is a suffragan. The population (2,406,526 inhabitants) is entirely Chinese, and the language spoken is more or less that of Pekino (Northern Mandarin). It offers great ease of travel, owing to the development of the railway lines, and, after Moukden, is in this respect the most favored of all the missions in Manchuria. Administratively, the aforementioned eight civil prefectures belong to the same province of Moukden, which is the most important and most populous, if not the largest, of the nine provinces of Manchuria. Before the communist regime was established in China, this mission numbered approximately 10,000 Catholics. The priests of the Society of the Foreign Missions of Paris, to which the diocese is entrusted, were forced to return to their own country, leaving 7 indigenous priests in place. The cities of Y.-k., Kaiping, and Haishan had long-standing Protestant (Presbyterian) missions which, before the present state of affairs, showed a certain degree of activity. Taken as a whole, their adherents were fewer in number than the Catholic faithful. In the less important localities, on the contrary, their presence was rare, indeed almost nonexistent. The Mohammedans in the Pechen region alone numbered approximately 14,000. In general, they lived apart, without engaging in proselytism. There were four primary schools, but, having been closed during the years of Manchoukouo, they were never reopened. The Protestant schools suffered the same fate. There were 11 churches capable of accommodating from 400 to 1,000 faithful and 38 chapels. In the city of Y.-k. there was an orphanage; a home for the elderly; a workshop; and a dispensary which in 1947 had treated 11,908 patients.