The Chinese Orthodox Church (simplified Chinese: 中华东正教会; traditional Chinese: 中華東正教會; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Dōngzhèngjiàohuì, Russian: Китайская православная церковь) is an autonomous Eastern Orthodox Christian church in China. An organized Orthodox presence was maintained in the region as early as the 17th century as a child of the Russian Orthodox Church, which granted the Chinese Church autonomy in 1957 amidst its ongoing suppression in the Soviet Union.

Christianity is said to have entered China by the apostle Thomas around the year 68 AD, as part of his mission to India. There is also speculative evidence to suggest the missionary of a few Church of the East Assyrian Christians during the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220AD).^{[self-published source]}

The earliest archeological evidence of Christianity in China, is from the Church of the East in the seventh century. The Eastern Christianity of that period is commemorated by a stele and the Daqin Pagoda of Xi'an. Though it was suppressed in the ninth century, Christianity was reintroduced in the 13th century. It again declined rapidly with the coming of the native Chinese Ming dynasty in the 14th century.

The religious and missionary spirit of the Russian Orthodox church towards China was considerably minimal and was often a low priority compared to strategic, political, and diplomatic interests.

During the 1680s, Siberian Cossacks along with a few Orthodox clerics, created a settlement at Albazin on the Amur River. The Kangxi Emperor considered Albazin within Qing territory so he set out a force of 10,000 troops to assault the Russian garrison there. Most of the Cossacks retreated back to Siberia while 30 joined the Qing army.

After the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689, along with other concessions, a biannual Russian caravan was allowed to enter Beijing for trade. These trade caravans would soon lead to it being closely knit with the ecclesiastical Russian mission. The mission was at first meant to cater to the Albazinians in Beijing. In the late 1690s, Peter the Great saw Russian trade in Beijing as a potential method to press for Russian interests in China so he sent an Archimandrite priest to China. He also requested that priest and clerics be trained as missionaries and ordered the Metropolite of Kiev to dispatch two or three monks along with a priest to Beijing so that they could learn Chinese. A Russian-Chinese negotiation in 1713 brought the first archimandrite priests to Beijing to cater to Russian merchants and the Albazinians.

The first mission establishment was begun in 1715 at Beijing by an Orthodox archimandrite, Hilarion. This mission is first recorded in the Russo-Chinese Treaty of Kyakhta (1727). Under Sava Vladislavich's pressure, the Chinese government conceded to the Russians the right to build an Orthodox chapel at the ambassadorial quarters of Beijing. The mission published four volumes of research in Chinese studies in the 1850s and 1860s. Two clerics became well known for scholarship in the subject, the monk Iakinf and Archimandrite Palladius, who also compiled a dictionary.

The Boxer Rebellion of 1898–1900 targeted foreign missionaries and Chinese converts to Christianity. The mission suffered greatly, and the Boxers burned the mission's library in Beijing.