Lafcadio Hearn reports on June 1, 1893 about Christians targeting Japanese kids for conversion by giving them money & trying to buy land (many Japanese even those in poverty refused to sell) to set up missions
Postwar Japan: Japanese who did convert to Christianity were derisively called “rice Christians” by other Japanese. The derogatory nickname implied that missionaries provided material or financial benefit as inducement to converts.
Taiwan - people at that time called Catholciism “powdered milkism” (naifenjiao) or “flourism” (mianfenjiao).77 And the Church was known as the “flour church.” … Although most of Taiwan’s population rejoiced in its newfound prosperity… not everyone on the island found these processes comforting. Protestant missionaries… discovered that economic progress was hindering Christian expansion.
The term itself has xtian origins & is 1st mentioned by an english, one william dampier, when they found that missionaries converted more people through material benefits than preachings.
Dutch used it in 1630s before Dampier. Taiwanese aborigines were given rice & garments to tame & colonize them through Christianity, so they were called cangan (garment)-Christians. This was before Koxinga defeated Dutch & Han settlement picked up in Taiwan