About Amity Foundation

Amity Foundation

The Amity Foundation is an independent Chinese social service organisation founded in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, on 18 April 1985 on the initiative of Chinese Christians led by Bishop K. H. Ting. Headquartered at 71 Hankou Road, Nanjing, with a Hong Kong office, it works in education, public health, social welfare, community development, environmental protection and disaster relief in China and beyond. At its fortieth anniversary in 2025 it reported having raised some six billion yuan over its history, benefiting tens of millions of people in more than thirty countries and regions, with nearly one thousand staff and China's highest, 5A, social organisation grade. Its best-known affiliate is the Nanjing Amity Printing Company, a joint venture with the United Bible Societies that became China's sole authorised Bible printer and one of the largest Bible printing bases in the world, passing 286 million Bibles printed in more than 280 languages for 158 countries and regions by November 2025.

Founding in Nanjing in 1985

Amity was founded on 18 April 1985 by Chinese Christians led by Bishop K. H. Ting, then president of the China Christian Council, and joined, as its own official history puts it, by people from all walks of society. Ting was China's last Anglican bishop, ordained in 1942, president of Nanjing Union Theological Seminary from 1953, and the leading figure in the post-denominational re-emergence of Chinese Protestantism after the Cultural Revolution; he conceived Amity as the church's service arm in society — a faith-motivated organisation devoted, in the words of early accounts, to the general social betterment of the Chinese people rather than to evangelism. The foundation began with just three staff members. Its name, Amity — friendship — expressed its founding purpose: to let Chinese Christians contribute visibly to their society's development, and to build friendship between China and the world through practical service. Its mission is summarised in its anniversary theme and statements as abundant lives, more justice and a better world, and its fortieth anniversary in 2025 was celebrated under the theme "Love Is Eternal," drawn from the words Bishop Ting quoted from First Corinthians at the printing company's celebrations: "Love never ends."

The Amity Teachers Programme and Education

Education was Amity's first field. In the mid-1980s China urgently needed English teachers, especially in the interior, and the Amity Teachers Programme, begun in the foundation's first years, recruited teachers from churches and partner organisations around the world to teach English, Japanese and German in Chinese teachers' colleges and universities — often, as the United Church of Canada recalled at the fortieth anniversary, in remote areas where few others would go. The programme's stated aim was to improve the English level of students at normal universities and colleges so that graduates would carry better language teaching into wider areas after graduation. Alongside it, Amity developed service learning programmes bringing young volunteers from around the world into Chinese social organisations, and scholarship work including the Amity Pfrang Scholarship Programme, established in 2001, which has supported over three thousand needy students from poverty-stricken families. Education remains one of Amity's flagship fields four decades on, from rural schooling support in underserved areas to international educational exchange.

Health, Welfare and Community Development

From education, Amity's work broadened into the full range of social service. Its programme fields, as listed in its official materials, cover public health, social welfare, community development, environmental protection and disaster relief, and its later phases took in healthcare, orphan care, poverty alleviation and emergency response alongside education. The Orphan Fostering Programme provides psychological support as well as access to education for orphans. Disaster relief became a standing capability, deployed in China's earthquakes and floods and, as the foundation internationalised, abroad. In recent years the greater part of Amity's income has come from within China itself — one anniversary account put ninety per cent of funding from domestic donors, much of it through online fundraising — marking its evolution from a channel for overseas church aid into a domestically funded Chinese NGO, described at its fortieth anniversary as the fourth largest NGO in China. It has opened offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Nairobi, Kenya as hubs for disaster relief, poverty alleviation, healthcare and education work in Africa, and an international office in Geneva that facilitates its advisory role with the World Council of Churches.

Elderly Care, Disability and the Nanjing Community Model

Amity's home city of Nanjing is its laboratory for social service. Its elderly care work ranges from the Amity Rengu Nursing Home to the International Philanthropy Valley, a joint project with the Civil Affairs Bureau of Qixia District that provides institution-based, community-based and home-based care for the elderly, combining nursing with rehabilitation and hospital care, and supporting a network of elderly care bases. Its Papa and Mama's Canteen project provides free or affordable lunches and neighbourhood companionship for older people living alone, and its Friends of Alzheimer's work builds dementia-friendly communities. For people with disabilities, Amity runs services including a community centre at Shanshuiyuan serving people with intellectual and physical disabilities, and the Amity Bakery, which provides vocational training and employment for people with learning difficulties — projects frequently shown to visiting international partners as the human face of the foundation behind the famous printing press. In 1997 the State Council named Amity a National Exemplary Organization for Helping the Disabled. These Nanjing services embody the foundation's method: professional social work, delivered in partnership with local government and community organisations, growing out of a Christian ethic of service but open to all.

Amity Printing: The World's Largest Bible Printer

The foundation's most famous enterprise began as Bishop Ting's dream of a Bible printing company "of our own," which would meet the spiritual needs of Chinese Christians on one hand and help fund Amity's social work on the other. An agreement signed on 22 March 1985 between Bishop Ting, as president of the Amity Foundation, and the Reverend Jim Payne of the United Bible Societies established the venture; the Amity Printing Company was formally set up as a joint venture in Nanjing in 1987–88 and produced its first Bibles shortly after. The plant, on an 85,000-square-metre site with some six hundred workers, was designed to produce 600,000 Bibles a year; by 2008 its capacity had reached six million a year and was doubling toward twelve million. The milestones accumulated: 50 million Bibles by 2007, the 100 millionth copy on 8 November 2012 — of which sixty million were being read in China and forty million in other languages around the world — and more than 286 million copies in over 280 languages distributed to 158 countries and regions by November 2025. It took twenty years to print the first fifty million Bibles and only five years to print the next fifty million. The company is China's only authorised Bible printer, printing for the Chinese church through the China Christian Council and Three-Self Patriotic Movement, and also produces dictionaries, reference works, literature and teaching materials. United Bible Societies donated paper when the press opened and has continued to subsidise its work; church giving programmes abroad, such as the United Methodist Advance, support Bibles in China's ethnic minority languages.

A Bridge Between China and the World Church

From its founding, Amity served as a bridge. It was created so that overseas churches could partner with Chinese Christians' own service organisation rather than acting independently in China, and its partner network — the United Church of Canada, the Methodist Church in Britain, the United Methodist Church, the World Council of Churches and many others — has sustained teacher exchanges, project funding and institutional friendship for forty years. The fortieth anniversary celebrations in Nanjing on 18 November 2025 drew nearly three hundred guests, including party officials, digital platform representatives and philanthropy partners from China and overseas, with the World Council of Churches' general secretary Jerry Pillay writing that since 1985 Amity had stood as a shining witness to compassion in action, supporting vulnerable communities, advancing education and health, promoting sustainable development and fostering interfaith and intercultural dialogue. The Amity Cup International Table Tennis Philanthropic Tournament, bringing together Chinese and American young people through sport, is a recent expression of the same bridge-building instinct.

Recognition and Standing

Amity holds China's highest social organisation evaluation grade, 5A, and at forty years old employs nearly one thousand staff across its foundation and service institutions, up from three at its founding. Ecumenical and official recognition has followed its service record, from the 1997 national exemplary award for helping the disabled to its standing, reported at its fortieth anniversary, among the largest NGOs in China, with the greater part of its income now raised domestically. Its Hong Kong office and its Geneva, Addis Ababa and Nairobi presence give a Nanjing foundation a genuinely international footprint, while its roots remain visibly local: a visitor to its Nanjing facilities can move in a day from a community canteen for elderly residents to a bakery employing people with learning disabilities to the printing plant that supplies Bibles to much of the world.

Legacy

The Amity Foundation's significance lies in the combination it pioneered. Founded by Chinese Christians in 1985, in a country where religious organisations had only recently been permitted to re-emerge, it demonstrated that a faith-based organisation could work openly with government, communities and local leaders, focus on social good rather than evangelism, professionalise over decades, and fund much of its service from a social enterprise — the printing company — and from domestic Chinese giving. It carried a Chinese Christian institution into partnership with the world church on equal terms, and carried Chinese social service abroad to Africa. Four decades after Bishop Ting and three staff began the work, Amity's own summary of its mission — to promote education, public health, social welfare, community development, environmental protection and disaster relief in China and other parts of the world, benefiting more than ten million people — stands as one of the most durable achievements of China's reform-era civil society.