“There are people in jail right now, in China, for possessing bibles. The bible is one of the most smuggled items into China. Chinese officials routinely execute Christians for their temerity to hold something higher than the government. These are brave people.”
Let me qualify what I am going to say with some credentials:
I lived in China proper and in Hong Kong for 12 years. My wife is Chinese and my PhD is from a Chinese university.
You can go to almost any book store in China and buy a Bible. They don’t put people in jail for reading the Bible there. In fact I have a good friend who became a Christian by reading a Bible that she checked out of the University of Beijing Library. There is no need to smuggle a Bible into China. (The Bible was part of a donation of books to the library from Bill Clinton after his re-election in 1997)
There are three reasons that people are arrested for smuggling Bibles into China.
1. It is illegal to bring any printed matter into China that was not printed in China unless you have special permission. You get the same jail sentence for taking the New York Times into China as a Bible. There is a famous case of a Hong Kong professor who took a scientific article on biology into China to show to a friend in Shanghai. Because the article was printed in Taiwan he was arrested and thrown in jail. It isn’t just Bibles taking any printed matter into China will get you in a lot of trouble.
2. All materials in China must be in the official “simplified” Chinese rather than the traditional Chinese that is used in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. This is sort of the same idea a the English first movement in the US
3.The churches are supposed to be self lead, self funded and self propagating. So it is the act of an outsider coming into the church that is an issue not necessarily their faith, lack there of or doctrinal positions. I know missionaries that regularly go into China and do legal work there. There are ways they can do it. Obeying the law in this case makes the communist less afraid of religion and provides an opportunity to minister to the cadres. Other times missionaries go into China as teachers or professionals and evangelize over dinner. (http://www.elic.org/)
This is not to say that that the PRC does not try to exert some control upon the churches. But for the most part they are free to preach and teach whatever they want.Look at the statement of faith about the Three Self Churches I’ve placed a link to below. The one area that I know of where there is significant interference in religion by the government is the issue with Catholic Priest being appointed from within the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Churches not from Rome.
The former Vice Premiere Wen Jai-Bao regularly attended Church with his wife but as a Communist party member was not allowed to call himself Christan.
There are three areas that I know where churches have a real problem in China.
One is that there are supposedly “foreigner churches” and local churches though I as a Westerner was never refused entry into a Three Self Church given the rule rules the legal churches work under it was sort of problematic. However, I was not a tourist and as a permanent resident of Hong Kong could be considered a citizen.
The second area the legal churches have problems is that they do not engage in the corruption that is endemic in the governmental. They refuse to pay the “Tea Money” (Bribes) to government officials to get to the front of the line and thus have a difficult time getting the building permits and other documents needed to build or renovate buildings
Third, which is similar to the first is that Churches stand against the corruption and lawlessness in Chinese society. They are persecuted at times because the powerful cadres don’t want to have their families charge for the cost a firing squad. It is the Christians in China, not the CCP that is taking the lead in ridding Chinese society of corruption and that make the government look bad serving the poor.
The Chinese Churches don’t need you to take them Bibles. They need you to setup a scholarship for Chinese Pastors to receive better training. They need you to set an example. They may at times need your money if you can legally get it to them (For example: Building a factory but setting the top floor aside that can be rented to the legal churches for a nominal rent) Most of all they need your prayers.
Do not assume that things that happened in the 1960’s and 1970’s are still true today. At least in the larger cities people in China are free to attend churches and the churches are free to preach the Gospel. At least that is what I have observed and experienced
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Self_Patriotic_Movement
Amen, brother. Our church partnerships with Quijing Normal University in Yunnan Province. We have two students at our home right now. They are here for about six weeks but they will soon switch to another family. Our
church has had this program for about fifteen years. They are very eager to hear the Gospel and accept it.
Thank you for informed sanity on this thread and subject. I lived in China for 9 years, posted regularly on FR from China and attended church in China. There were people on here then telling me that was impossible.
As expats we set up our own Sunday service meetings that included some of the nationals that worked for us. The Shanghai authorities contacted us and said they would like us to meet at the church, not where we were meeting. They were not really asking. They told us.
We met at the local church at a time after the Chinese language services. What was interesting was seeing all the different Christian customs from people around the world.
Well, that is completely different from what I hear from missionaries. OK.