Everything that you knew about China is wrong (2)

In my previous post, I wrote about a Newsweek article whose cover-page was “Every thing that you knew about China is wrong.” It dealt with 6 myths about China that were related to its politics and economy.

While these were useful general information to me, they were not the topics that I was really concerned with. For someone like me, topics like freedom to exercise one’s faith, openness of hearts to the Gospel, areas of ministry where foreigners can be useful are more relevant.

Today let me deal with the freedom to exercise one’s faith in China. In other words, let me share with you the “security” situation – particularly for foreigners to share their faith. This is an area that has probably changed as fast as the way China has opened up its doors to do business with the outside world.

When China opened its doors to do business with the outside world, it also inevitably opened its doors to foreigners coming in (as tourists, English teachers, businessmen). As the number of foreigners came in, it obviously became impossible to keep an eye on each one of them. I believe that the Chinese government would like to keep an eye on each foreigner if it’s possible, but realizes that this is impossible.

The only “mass” way that it can keep an eye on foreigners is software that monitors internet communications. Therefore, one has to be very careful when communicating via internet. I am pretty sure that the level of sophistication of this type of software is improving to make up for the decline in “personal” surveillance.

At “street-level” the freedom of religion has improved greatly in the past few years. The “underground” church is now more appropriately called the “unregistered” church now because though they are illegal they no longer meet underground. Most congregations meet fairly openly – so long as they are not too large (say, not over 50 – 100 people).

As a general rule the authorities close a blind eye to such congregations – unless there are special reasons to show who’s in charge (eg. during the Olympics, before a major event such as National Day). Even on such occasions, a police raid is often little more than a “show” to warn the congregation that they are being watched and therefore should not do anything to spoil the “major event” that is coming up.

Most foreigners still think that Chinese Christians worship at great risk to their lives. I remembered attending a missions’ conference in Philippines where a film on the Chinese Church was shown just before I preached. It was a film that was distributed by a well-meaning Christian film distributor (who probably got this film free from its Hong Kong producer).

The film showed the sufferings of Chinese Christians during the Cultural Revolution (which ended 30 years ago). During the show almost every one was teary-eyed. At the end of the film, during the prayer meeting the Filipino Christians literally cried out in prayer for their suffering Chinese brethren! I was so embarrassed by their sincerely mistaken prayers. Needless to say, I did not recruit any Filipino to serve in China during that conference!

I had a difficult time explaining to the Filipinos, that if I showed a movie of how Filipinos suffered under the Japanese during World War II and represented it as if it was the situation of the Philippines today I would be telling a lie.

I’m afraid that if we do not keep ourselves regularly updated about the present situation regarding the freedom of religion in China, we too might be found to be liars!

The difference is that we don’t need to wait 30 years to be out of date in China.

Often last year’s news is already ancient history in China!

Because of this I have to re-evaluate our China strategy at most yearly – preferably six-monthly.