The Communist Manifesto the Prussian police. At their trial in Cologne 18 months later in late 1852 they were sentenced to 3–6 years' imprisonment. For Engels, the revolution was "forced into the background by the reaction that began with the defeat of the Paris workers in June 1848, and was finally excommunicated 'by law' in the conviction of the Cologne Communists in November 1852". After the defeat of the 1848 revolutions the "Manifesto" fell into obscurity, where it remained throughout the 1850s and 1860s. Hobsbawm says that by November 1850 the "Manifesto" "had become sufficiently scarce for Marx to think it worth reprinting
The Christian Manifesto signatories can be interpreted in two ways: a relatively high number of signatories testifies to the success of Wu and the campaign to accommodate to the communist government. Conversely, the number of people who did not sign the manifesto count as people who did not want the Chinese church to sever its links with foreigners. It was feared that the NCC, which had facilitated cooperation between Chinese Protestants and foreign missionaries since 1922, would lose its independence. Most appear to have signed the document out of patriotic sentiments, not because of fundamental agreement with the actual provisions of the manifesto: