Born in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province in China to missionary parents, Philip Francis Price and Esther Wilson Price, he was educated in the United States at Davidson College (BA 1915), Columbia University (MA 1923), and Yale Divinity School (BD 1922; PhD 1938).
In 1927 Price made a translation of Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People, a basic text of the Nationalist Party, which established a close relationship with Chiang Kai-shek (he and Chiang were both born in Zhejiang).
James Yen to set up an experiment in Christian village life just outside Nanking.
[4] He described these experiences in his book, The Rural Church in China [5] During much of the 1930s and 1940s Price was not only a spiritual advisor to Chiang Kai-shek, but he also worked for the Nationalist government translating speeches, writing speeches, and during World War II he was director of a military English-language school for Chinese soldier translators.
[6] After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the Nationalist government sent Price to the United States to promote American support for China.