Four Keys to Understanding China

When applied, they turn the foolish speaker into a wise-sounding one; the counterproductive tactic becomes strategic. Propaganda is replaced by engagement, anger by understanding, and arrogance turned into humility.

What are they? The four keys for understanding China!

They work like this. Whenever you reach a conclusion about China, whether in the area of business, diplomacy or religion – stop. Say nothing, and calmly remind yourself that, whatever you have concluded, China is still...

• a lot more political than you think
• a lot more paradoxical than you think
• a lot bigger than you think and
• a lot more fragile than you think.

Chastened, you revise your viewpoint and your planning.

If Paul Crouch, president of the California-based Trinity Broadcasting Network had realised how paradoxical China was, he would not have declared in May 2000 that all reports of persecution were grossly exaggerated.

If John Martin, author of an August 2001 article in a British Christian monthly, had realised how big the Chinese church was, he would not have entitled his piece, "Thumbs Down to Chinese Bible Smugglers."

If advocacy activists really knew how fragile China was, they would not be so quick to resort to the language of jihad against the Chinese state, which rallies the populace behind the very leaders they want to unseat.

The trouble with these keys, though, is that they are not clipped to the "thought key-ring" of the western visitor. "Westerners – through no fault of their own – are congenitally ill-equipped to understand China," says Nanjing theologian Ji Tai, "because they come with assumptions so basic to their thinking it never occurs to them to set them aside."

Strong stuff, but he is right. It does not come naturally to us to use these keys. After all, how can we possibly grasp how big China is when most of us come from countries a fraction of its size?

China contains the world's largest church (60–80 million Christians) and the world's largest unevangelised population (1.2 billion).

That's a paradox to savour!

Or as a US-based economist confided after his visit to China: "I'm used to dealing with unemployment numbers in the few millions, but I began to realise that China may have an unemployed workforce of well over 200 million – and my profession simply does not have mathematical models large enough to make projections on that sort of scale."

These keys work for many areas, but we shall apply them primarily to the church in China. They result in not only a more rounded understanding, but also a more radical one.

Key 1: Everything is more political than you think

"In China, everything – and I really mean everything – is political!" says Dr Tan Che Bin, a Taiwanese Bible scholar and expert on the church.

In the West, it is common to say, "Oh, that's an economic or religious question, not a political issue." We demarcate the religious from the economic, the social and the political, keeping them in discrete spheres. This is the legacy of the doctrine of separation of church and state, which runs through the mind as well as the society.

In China, there is no such demarcation. Thus, when house churches refuse to register with the state church, it is not only a religious act, but at its very basis is viewed as a political act!

Every act in China – to the mind of China's leaders – expresses either a pro- or anti-government sentiment.

Every event in China is usually explicable in terms of the politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Take an issue like the much-vaunted "construction of theological thinking" of Bishop Ding, president of Nanjing's Jinling Theological Seminary. For two years now, the former head of the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) has directed a campaign to ensure that his liberal theology becomes normal fare from TSPM pulpits.

Those who oppose his liberalism have been sacked, pastors are compelled to read his writings and everyone important in the official apparatus is loyalty-tested on his principles.

To the Western observer, this just looks like a theological spat. Ding is out to replace evangelical thought with liberal thought. He may be a touch heavy-handed, but theology is what it is really about!

Not so! It's really about politics. You can see this on three levels.

First, the term 'construction' is a political term with a precise meaning inside China. "In this country, everything is under the Party, and there are two types of construction: of organisations, which control all movements, and of thought, so everyone thinks like the leader or leaders," says Ji Tai.

This campaign is traceable to a speech by Jiang Zemin in the early 1990s that called on the Party organisations to actively guide religion to "make it compatible with socialism."

All "construction" of thought and of organisations is ultimately a Party-directed affair in China.

Second, Ding himself – according to Nanjing insiders – launched this campaign to show the Party he was still useful.

After retiring at age 80, Ding wanted to keep his place on important committees. The best way to prove he was still needed was to say to the CCP leadership: "Look, the leaders of the China Christian Council (CCC) and the TSPM are not theologians; you need me to actually ensure that Jiang's intention is carried out."

This campaign keeps Ding at the political centre.

He changed his tune to do it, also. All throughout the 1990s, Ding travelled the world telling everyone how positive it was that the TSPM was so evangelical.

His job then was to tempt Western evangelical leaders into engagement with the official church and weaken their links with the house churches in the process.

But now that he plays no role in this international agenda, evangelicals are suddenly the problem.

Third, Ding is a pawn in a much larger political game – Ye Xiaowen's game.

Ye's accession to the head of the Religious Affairs Bureau (RAB) in the early nineties was a surprise. He was young, bright and ambitious. Yet the job usually goes to an aging bureaucrat who ends his days there.

But Ye does not want this to be his "graveyard shift," so he is out to make an impression. He is putting all the resources of the RAB behind Ding's campaign, to catch the eye of political superiors who will be impressed as to how he has whipped Protestants along the socialist line.

Furthermore, according to a Hong Kong-based China watcher, "Ye wants to use Ding's thought as a model for all the religions to attempt compatibility with socialism."

Ding's ideas, plus the sudden rise of Falun Gong, came along at just the right time for Ye, who's RAB was slated for slashing cuts in resources by up to one third at the beginning of 1999.

A theological spat on the surface, a political hornet's nest underneath.

The core of any religious issue is always political, even the 2.6 million Bibles that the Amity printing press produces each year. Why is it always 2.6 million?

We are told by CCC leaders that this is the number demanded each year by the various provincial bookshops.

"If it was more," says Peter Dean, manager of the Amity press, "we would be printing more."

What a miracle of demand and supply then, that each year all the bookshops send their orders to the press and – voila! – it always comes to the same exact figure!

If genuine demand and supply were operative, oscillation would be inevitable.

No, the 2.6 million is a politically-set figure.

Key 2: It's a lot more paradoxical than you think

Nanjing, China, June 2000. Hundreds of worshippers are crammed into two floors of an office building. For three hours people rise spontaneously to pray and share a thought from the Scriptures.

Each time they say "Lord," an explosive, ear-bursting echo comes from the congregants.

Culminating in the breaking-of-bread ritual, they file out past the people coming in for the next service. There will be three services that day, totaling 3,000 worshippers.

So what?

Well, this should not be happening in China. They do not belong to the TSPM, but they are registered.

They are "Shouters," a cult according to the government, but they are legal.

While their leaders get arrested in the countryside, here in the city they are tolerated.

And to cap it all, the very people directing the "anti-cult campaign" – the RAB – have their headquarters on the floor above the church.

Try making sense of that!

China is full of paradoxes, and the Western mind does not handle paradox easily. There is more freedom and more persecution; more unemployment and more prosperity; more nationalism and more westernisation. What gives China such a paradoxical character?

Perhaps one of the main factors is what we might call 'the decentralisation dynamic'.

In 1992 the central government, in a bid to maintain China's economic growth, realised they had to grant the provinces more flexibility in dealing with the outside world. They determined to remove the Beijing bottleneck, and ceded powers to the provinces, whose leaders were then able to meet foreigners, attract business, control investment – all independently of Beijing.

The coastal provinces boomed again under this new freedom, acquiring a more sophisticated character.

The inland provinces declined, mainly due to their lack of attractiveness to foreign investment.

The decentralisation dynamic applies all down the line, even to religion.

Provincial CCC leaders in Zhejiang province court foreign speakers without consulting the old centre of authority, which was Nanjing.

They run printing presses, commission devotional books, and develop relationships with political provincial leaders that may result in a more tolerant attitude to religious practice.

That's why you can visit a house church in Shanghai and see members singing at the tops of their voices without fear, and why in Fancheng if they did the same, the police would be knocking on the door before the hymn was over.

The variation is not just coastal provinces versus inland provinces. There are many other factors that complicate the situation even more.

City and countryside are two separate universes, and in the countryside, the prejudices of local cadres still wield almost absolute power. There are rivalries between government and Party organs, between central and municipal authorities, even between Party departments and – perish the thought – between leaders.

Then there is the 'paper-victory syndrome' where, on paper certain realities are declared to "be", but on the street, or in the pew, quite another reality goes on.

China scholar Kim-Kwong Chan remarks: "The China Daily only reflects the wishful thinking of the top leadership."

On paper, Ding's theological campaign appears to be winning. Pastors are being called in; they are writing essays on his thought; they are being approved for further service.

In reality, most resent "Ding Thought" and do their utmost to subvert it in ways that are effective, though not noticeable.

So you generalise at your peril about what is going on in China today!

Key 3: It's a lot bigger than you think!

The American economist referred to earlier spoke to some very high-ranking officials during his visit to China. They treated him to some very privileged information – which is why he wishes to remain anonymous – about the impact of China joining the World Trade Organization (WTO).

They reeled off some statistics: 100 million farm labourers are already idle, so joining the WTO will kill the inland agricultural sector and put them formally out of work.

In the first six months after joining WTO, leaders expect 50 million workers from heavy industry to be out of work.

To this dismal total must be added 150 million migrant workers in the current economy.

In other words, we are looking at an internally-displaced population in China of possibly 300 million in the next two years.

This is a worst-case scenario, and the benefits of WTO will hopefully outweigh the disadvantages. Regardless, the ruptures will be enormous.

But it's the sheer scale that was so mind-boggling to the economist. He said: "To go into a trade treaty knowing that it might put 300 million people out of work – more than the entire population of the US – and still be regarded as beneficial, finally made it sink in for me that China is very big, uniquely big, and that its leaders have to work on a scale we cannot even imagine."

This goes for the church, too.

Brother Zhang is an itinerant evangelist in Anhui. He began his preaching ministry in 1987. In two years time, just over 2,000 members belonged to his network of churches he had laboured to plant.

After five years, he found himself running a network of 40,000.

In 2001, Zhang calculated that he had approximately 3,000 co-workers serving a membership of 450,000. He is projecting 70,000 growth for the next year.

"We try to set up to disciple about 200 new believers a day!" he said. Although this growth is not shared equally in all provinces, there is no doubt that over the last 20 years, China has enjoyed the largest revival in the history of Christendom.

Even the most conservative totals of Christians in China start at 30 million. The 2000 edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia puts the number at 89 million – higher than most China watchers are comfortable with.

But this all started from a base of 700,000 in 1949.

Failure to remember the size of the Chinese church results in the likes of John Martin, writing in the August 2001 edition of a British Christian monthly, Christianity and Renewal, to declare that smuggling Bibles into China has become "... unnecessary."

This is because, argues Martin, the Amity Bible Printing Press can legally print 2.6 million Bibles each year inside China and would print many more if orders were given to it.

Setting aside the political naivete of assuming that Bible printing in China is a simple matter of supply and demand, one wonders how big Mr Martin considers the Chinese church to be? He is obviously assuming that whatever its size, the Amity press can meet the need.

But if the Chinese church totals at least 60 million, then his argument sinks without a trace.

Most tactical controversies on helping the church in China hinge on how large you believe the church to be. If it's only 30 million or so, then the "legal" methods are sufficient to meet the need. If it is 60 million and up, then every method needs to be employed.

Key 4: It's a lot more fragile than you think!

Dr Carol Hamrin stole the show in Philadelphia at the 2001 Brandywine Consultation, a conference organised by the new Institute for Global Engagement.

For 25 years the China analyst at the US State Department, she told this parable to a startled audience:

"You are a powerful king with a large army. You march to engage the enemy, who is perched at the top of a high cliff. The cliff is bristling with guns, and they are shouting taunts from the top.

"It looks like war is inevitable.

"But as the standoff continues, you discover this is an incomplete scenario. Spies tell you that around the back, the way to the cliff is neither sheer nor well guarded, and many of your friends have managed to sneak in to the enemy city.

"Their forays and contacts have resulted in a discovery – the king of the enemies is more like the Wizard of Oz! He is weak. His kingdom is unravelling.

"But he has one great asset keeping him in power – the confrontation on the cliff. Continue to threaten him and the citizens have to rally behind him. Pull back, and his kingdom might collapse from within."

Dr Hamrin's meaning was clear: China is a fragile superpower; the Party's grip on power is more tenuous than it appears. Its leaders are insecure and weak and responding to their bluster with brute force is ultimately counterproductive.

Yet in the fragility lies the invitation to engagement – if taken sensitively. This has vital implications in the realm of assisting Chinese Christian prisoners.

John Bryan Starr in his recent book, Understanding China, correctly writes "the most consistently successful efforts on behalf of Chinese religious ... dissidents were private, not public."

He was referring to Catholic businessman, John Kamm, who has been responsible for more releases of prisoners than anyone else. Yet he issues few press releases and stays in the background.

Writes Starr, "He was effective because he understood the importance of working slowly and quietly with his Chinese interlocutors to get them to agree without their losing face."

This is not to argue that public truth-telling – even the naming and shaming variety – is never appropriate; only that effective intervention must take into account the illusions of strength.

Indeed, fragility also requires urgent and vigorous intervention. The Chinese Christian revival appears on the surface strong and vibrant, yet as one leader from the Born Again movement confided, "Half of our members are one unanswered prayer away from moving on from Christianity to other gods."

Many Western missions take Scriptures and books into China and lead training seminars for house church leaders, all in the conviction that the revival is vulnerable and the gains are not 'locked in' until the majority of Christians are deeply rooted in the faith.

Moses Xie, at 82 one of the elder statesmen of the house churches, told journalists in 2001: "Millions have come to be saved by Christ, but only a few at this point are mature enough in Christ to come under his Lordship.

"We have a daunting task of discipleship ahead and need the resources of the entire worldwide body of Christ to meet it."

The invitation from house church movements is for western ministries to get more involved directly with them.

Running the risk of government ire is nothing considering what is at stake: either a revival that dissipates without a trace or one that changes the very fabric of Chinese society permanently!

Conclusion

The point of these four keys is merely to engender humility – the prerequisite for effective involvement with the Chinese church. The country will surely continue to baffle the outsider, but it is vital to remember that one never arrives in China to a vacuum.

There are forces lined up to present caricatures of the Chinese church for western consumption. These range from the deliberate lies and propaganda of officials to well-meaning but ill-informed generalisations from individuals and groups, both foreign and local.

The Western visitor must not arrive naive into this maelstrom of impression, information and misinformation. Putting the pieces together may result in a Picasso rather than a Rembrandt, but that may be a sign of truth.

In the words of Tan Che Bin, "When it's messy, still mysterious, and yet marvellous, you are starting to get an inkling of the real story of the Chinese church."

(Article from Compass)