[2] In a 1935 essay, Zhu Weizhi—both a pious Protestant and a fervent nationalist—wrote that "Jesus was a leader of great integrity who led the proletarian masses in the struggle against Roman imperialism.
[4] In writing Wuchan zhe yesu zhuan (無產者耶穌傅) or Jesus the Proletarian, Zhu was greatly influenced by "On the History of Early Christianity" by Friedrich Engels and Foundations of Christianity by Karl Kautsky.
[5] He also found inspiration in texts like The Proletarian Gospel of Galilee by F. Hebert Stead; The Days of His Flesh by Magee College theologian David Smith; The Call of the Carpenter by Bouck White; and Musansha Iesu (米澤尚三) by Japanese socialist and Congregationalist minister Naozo Yonezawa.
[6] Moreover, the collapse of the Kuomintang and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party allegedly enabled Zhu to "see more clearly" that Jesus was a proletarian.
[5] Chin Ken Pa describes Jesus the Proletarian as "one of the two main works on Christian socialism in China", together with The Revolutionary Carpenter by Zhang Shizhang (張仕章).