Both were going to pay a heavy toll from persecutions: Pierre Wu Gosheng, Joseph Zhang Dapeng, Pierre Liu and Jochim Hao as well as the Fathers Augustin Zhao, Joseph Yuan, Paul Liu Hanzuo and Thadée Liu were executed from 1814 to 1840.

In 1775, the Company of Jesus was suppressed. Lazarists replaced Jesuits in their various missions throughout China and at the Court of Peking. Two of them will be martyred at Wuchang, in Hubei: François-Régis Clet in 1820 and Gabriel Perboyre in 1840. Before that, another European, the Franciscan P. Lantrua de Triora was executed in 1816, in Hunan.

From 1842 on, the signing of the unequal Treaties - putting an end to the opium war - gave free access to Westerners to the five Chinese harbors, and granted diplomatic protection to foreigners, and therefore to Missionaries. But it also changed the situation Christians were in. The French Negotiator of the Wampoa Treaty, Théodore Lagrenée, obtained an edict of tolerance towards Christians, which was neither published, nor ever really applied, but which justified the interference of France in Chinese religious affairs.

In 1840, Rome entrusted the Island of Hainan to the Foreign Missions, as well as the Southern Provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, which were used as passageways to gain access to Sichuan, Guizou and Yunnan, where Jean-Baptiste Vachal was denounced and arrested in 1851. He died in jail, after three months of torture and abuse, on April 11. Three years later, a new missionary, Auguste Chapdelaine, arrived in the region. Arrested once and then released, he was arrested a second time and sentenced to death, along with four Chinese Christians from Guangxi. He died in an iron cage suspended to the gateway of the Yaoshan Court, on February 26, 1856.

The Guanxi Apostolic Prefect, His Lordship Guillemin, decided to intervene politically to better protect his mission, and he denounced the murder of his companion as a violation of the Wampoa Treaty. The Government of Napoleon the Third took advantage of this pretext to pass alliance with the British, which set off the Second Opium War. In 1858, the Tianjin Treaty condemned China to pay a compensation fee of 12 million Taels and demanded the degradation of the magistrate responsible for the execution. The Chapdelaine issue is an example, in Chinese history, of the involvement of missions in the political and commercial interests of Western countries, to the detriment of their religious vocation.