Asia/Pacific Updates

Crackdown on China House Churches

Informed sources report that the Public Security Bureau has begun to crack down on house churches in Beijing. Such churches have enjoyed increased freedom in recent years, with many meeting openly. The Shouwang house church of more than 1000 members, mostly intellectuals from the nearby university, has been renting 2 floors at Haujie Plaze for Sunday School and worship. But the PSB has ordered that the rental contract be terminated.

Other recent events include the disruption of a baptism in a Beijing suburb, and the closing of a training school. ChinaAid president Bob Fu believes the crackdown is taking place to prepare for the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party.

Full report in The Christian Post.

Violence and Death in China

According to China state media, violence in the western region of Xinjiang has left at least 140 people dead and more than 800 injured. Officials say that protests by Muslim Uighurs in the city of Urumqi erupted into violence on Sunday, as demonstrators attacked passers-by and set fire to vehicles. Police restored order, and several hundred people have been placed under arrest. Uighur groups blame police for violent suppression of a peaceful protest.

This is the bloodiest suppresion of protest in China since the Tiananmen Square massacre twenty years ago. The death toll is expected to rise.

Uighurs are ethnically Turkic Muslims who make up about 8 million of the 20 million population of Xinjiang. China re-established control of the region in 1949 after crushing the short-lived state of East Turkestan. Since then, large scale immigration of ethnic Han Chinese has left the Uighurs fearful of losing their traditional culture. Since 1991, there have been sporadic incidents of violence in the region.

                                                -- from BBC News

    

Recantation, Repentance, Revival

During the violence of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Chinese Christians were forced to recant and deny their faith. Those who refused were brutally killed. Before the rebellion was quashed, 188 missionaries had been killed, as well as over 50 of their children. Nearly 2000 Chinese Protestants were martyred, and as many as 30,000 Catholics.

Reports such as these spread throughout the land: "Liu Ming-chin, a chapel-keeper, was bound to a pillar in the temple of Yu Huang. He kept preaching to his persecutors. One of the Boxers in a rage cried, ‘You still preach, do you?’ and slit his mouth from ear to ear. A Bible-woman, named Wu, was taken to the same temple and bound to a pillar. She was beaten across the breasts, but never uttered a cry. Then a bunch of lighted incense was held to her face till all the flesh was burned off. Then her feet and hands were cut off. Finally she was carried out of the temple, hacked to pieces, and burned."

Pastor Wang Ming’s flock of 1,600 met in 90 small groups within a 20-mile radius of Ching-chou Fu. The Boxers said it would be sufficient that one leader recant for all the Christians in the district, and, tormented, he did so. He reasoned that he would thus protect his people, and besides, he merely had to sign a document pledging to “no longer practice the foreign religion.” Since Christianity was universal and not a “foreign religion,” he saw a loophole in the wording.

Once the conflict was over, he realized that he had dishonored the Lord and that, through the ages, God had used suffering and even martyrdom to strengthen the Church. By implying a want of faith in Christ and denying his people the spiritual blessing that only comes from trials, he had sinned. But by confessing this to his people, he regained his joy, and the missionaries observed that his public repentance and the congregation’s tears of forgiveness marked "a breaking up of the hard crust of the Chinese phlegmatic temperament." So though he was once broken by the threat of terrorists, Wang Ming's brokenness before God and his people brought revival.

                                                        -- from Kairos Journal.

Praying for a New China

June 4 marks the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, in which Chinese soldiers opened fire on thousands of student protestors, and armored tanks rolled over the crowds, killing hundreds. The violence followed weeks of demonstrations in favor of democratic reforms, and heralded a crackdown by the authoritarian communist regime.

In advance of the anniversary, China removed known dissidents from the city. Police occupied the public square on the day of the anniversary, and banned all media from the site.

Christan leaders from the US and China gathered in Washington, DC, to hold a prayer service and remember the victims of the massacre.

"China is at a crossroad," said Bob Fu, an organizer of the prayer vigil and founder of China Aid, a Texas-based ministry that advocates for religious liberty in China. "We pray in unity that the international community will choose to stand in true solidarity with China's freedom pursuers without any wavering so that a God-fearing, human rights- and dignity-respecting new China will emerge as a blessing to the whole world in the 21st century."

"Following the massacre, many educated people abandoned their trust in the Communist system and searched for other answers," said Paul Hattaway, director of Asia Harvest, which supports China's underground church movement. "This led to thousands of university students accepting Christ in the months following the massacre. Today there are countless Christians in China among university graduates, professors, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs."

David Aikman, former Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine and author of Jesus in Bejing, said Tiananmen Square taught the Chinese church that its hope is in God, not government, and that awareness is now one of its strengths.

"A change of political institution is not enough to get a country moving in the right direction," Aikman told Charisma. "You have to have a moral revolution at the heart of it, and I think that's a very healthy sign."

IPHC World Missions Ministries is connected to a network of underground churches operating in several regions of China.

-- Quotes taken from a report on the prayer vigil in Charisma magazine.

Paying the Price for Freedom

The organization Human Rights in China reports that long-time labor activist Yao Fuxin was recently released from prison after completing his seven-year term on conviction of "subversion of state power."

During his detention and imprisonment, Yao suffered two heart attacks and a stroke. In the Liaoyang Detention Center, he and 19 other inmates were made to sleep on one bed. There, a guard named Lang arranged for two death-row prisoners to watch Yao. Every time Yao closed his eyes to sleep, the two prisoners would step on him.

Yao went hungry often as there was not enough to eat. Vegtables were not washed before cooking, so he ate vegetables caked with mud.

In late 2002 and early 2003, as the weather got cold, Yao did not have enough clothing or warm bedding. He was placed near an open window, and would often wake up covered with snow.

Yao expressed that he felt it was his duty to fight for the interests of the people and the country, and that what he suffered was a price he was willing to pay.

 

The full HRIC report can be found here.  

China: Religious Freedom?

China is impressing the world with their athletic performance at the Beijing Olympics. But when it comes to basic freedoms, they have a long way to go.

This Sunday article in the Dallas Morning News says it well: 

Today in North Texas, hundreds of thousands of Christians will go to church. The police will not pull them over and take them into custody to prevent them from worshiping as they choose. This is America.

It's different in China. As of this writing, Hua Huiqi is living underground somewhere in the country. Mr. Hua, a Beijing house church pastor who has endured intense harassment from the communist government, was arrested on his way to a Protestant service attended by visiting President Bush and Dallas Theological Seminary President Mark Bailey. The Chinese Christian activist escaped from his police guards and went into hiding.

After the worship service, Mr. Bush, who earlier angered the Chinese government by criticizing its human rights record, commendably stood on the church steps and rebuked authorities, saying, "No state, man or woman should fear the influence of loving religion."

But fear it the communists do. As The Dallas Morning News' Jim Landers reports, Christianity is booming in China, in part because the social and economic upheavals the billion-strong nation is living through are leaving many searching for deeper spiritual meaning.

The communist leadership, though, sees religion as a threat. Believers who worship in government-sanctioned churches are generally left alone. Christians and followers of other religions who refuse to accept the government yoke are considered outlaws.

According to the U.S. State Department's 2007 Human Rights report, China is guilty of "serious human rights abuses," including violent suppression of unauthorized religious practices. A 2006 United Nations investigation found widespread government torture in China, with particular abuse inflicted on house church worshipers, Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims and members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.

The Chinese government insists that there is no religious persecution in China. It's a lie, and, given the intense persecution of believers, it's an especially wicked one. China has made phenomenal leaps forward in its development over the past two decades. That's to be admired.

But China will not obtain, nor will it deserve, the respect it craves until citizens like Hua Huiqi can come out of the shadows.