CHINA: Persecution of Church to escalate as Zhejiang experiment goes national

This article first appeared on Morning Star News

Persecution of Church to escalate as Zhejiang experiment goes national.
by Elizabeth Kendal

In October 2012, South China Morning Post ran a series of articles on China’s looming leadership transition. One line might prove prophetic, although not in the way intended: “For clues about how China’s leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping might manage the world’s second-largest economy, Zhejiang province is a good place to start looking.”

After explaining that the years that Xi Jinping spent in Zhejiang (2002 to 2007) – as party secretary and as governor – “are regarded as a transformative period, during which Zhejiang expanded its private sector and moved toward cleaner, more innovative industries,” the author posits that as President of the People’s Republic, Xi Jinping would doubtless work the same magic on a national level.

Similarly, for clues about how President Xi Jinping intends to manage religion and what is possibly the world’s second-largest evangelical Christian population (after the USA), Zhejiang province is a good place to start looking.

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President Xi Jinping 

Since assuming office in March 2013, President Xi Jinping has worked doggedly to consolidate power around himself as the “core” or hexin. To this end, Xi has been purging dissent (primarily through an ‘anti-corruption’ campaign), escalating repression, increasing censorship, tightening the reins on civil society. Reportedly a compulsive micro-manager, Xi has moved at speed to acquire control over every aspect of government. Australian academic Geremie Barmé has labelled Xi China’s “COE” or Chairman of Everything.

In the spirit of Lenin and Mao, Xi maintains that all elements of society should “serve socialism” and “be consistent with Marxist-Leninist thinking”. Positing Communism as an “attainable goal” of the Party, Xi has revived Chairman Mao’s dictum about the Party’s tight control over culture – particularly creative arts, literature and religion.

CCP moves to Sinicize Christianity

China analyst Willy Lam opines that it is no accident that President Xi’s campaign to “Sinicize Christianity”, so as to put Christianity into the service of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was launched in Zhejiang.

“The aggressive Sinicization of Christianity, which started in 2013, is evidenced by the new policy of the so-called wujin (五进; literally “five penetrations” or “five introductions”) and wuhua (五 化 ; literally “five transformations”), which was initiated in Zhejiang Province. Xi, who was Party Secretary of Zhejiang from 2002 to 2007, apparently wanted to start this experiment in a region which has centuries of interaction with Christian organizations in the West.”

See: Xi’s Obsession with “Cultural Renaissance” Raises Fears of Another Cultural Revolution 
By Willy Lam, China Brief, 8 Feb 2016

Lam’s revelation that Xi had wanted to launch his experiment “in a region which has centuries of interaction with Christian organizations in the West”, begs the question: “Why?” Was Xi testing the waters to see what a Western, or even a domestic, response might look like?  The reality is, Zhejiang – and particularly, Wenzhou city – is more than its Western connections, for as Xi would well know, it is nothing other than China’s Christian heartland.

Zhejiang’s business hub, Wenzhou – a city of some 10 million – is believed to have the largest Christian population of any city in China. The proliferation of churches, Christian-run businesses and sizable, influential Christian minority has earned Wenzhou the title, “China’s Jerusalem”. Indeed the city is famous for its many successful Christian entrepreneurs who actively promote Christianity in their workplaces. It is primarily because Wenzhou’s Christian entrepreneurs hold so much economic power that Wenzhou’s churches have had so much freedom for so long. So why would President Xi start his experiment to Sinicize Christianity in Zhejiang rather that some quiet backwater? It is doubtless because if the experiment succeeds in Zhejiang, it will likely succeed anywhere in China.

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The Zhejiang Experiment Begins
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Qucheng Tang Church
June 2015 (CAA)

CCP moves against the Cross

On 8 January 2014 Zhejiang’s Communist Party secretary, Xia Baolong – who had been Deputy Party Secretary under Xi Jinping – was conducting an inspection in Zhoushan (north-east Zhejiang) when allegedly he was suddenly shocked by the proliferation of large churches. While passing a church in Baiquan town, Xia reportedly objected that the cross atop the church was “too conspicuous”, and demanded that the local Religious Affairs Bureau “rectify” the problem by removing it. And so began the campaign to de-Christianize the landscapes and skylines of Zhejiang.

This was never a campaign about building regulations. Rather it was in every way an attack on the church to (literally) bring down Cross and rein in the church, so as to force the church to bring her message and her administration into the service of the Party.

Wenzhou, 21 July 2014 (UCA)

In its battle against the cross and the church in Zhejiang, the CCP has forcibly removed from some 1800 crosses from their churches, much to the distress of faithful believers for whom the cross is the ultimate symbol of grace, salvation, transformation and hope, for the individual and the nation. Not only have crosses been removed, but dissenting churches have been demolished and protesting church members have been beaten and arrested.

In April 2015, as the campaign lurched into its second year and casualties mounted, Beijing-based Christian human rights lawyer, Zhang Kai (37) wrote on his blog: “Seeking justice, promoting reconciliation and advancing rule of law are an historic mission, called for by God, that Christian lawyers must answer and cannot shirk. Confronted with cases of oppression of Christian belief, more Christian lawyers are willing to withstand the pressure and walk alongside those who suffer.”

CCP moves against lawyers

On 1 July 2015 the CCP enacted a National Security Law which paved the way for increased nation-wide repression and persecution, purportedly in defence of “national security”.  Dr Eva Pils, a China law expert at King’s College, University of London, opined that the national security law “manifests a neo-totalitarian ambition to reach into every sector of society”. Maya Wang, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, expressed concern that the law “includes elements that define criticism of the government as a form of subversion”.

Then, in a massive crackdown commencing on the weekend of 11-12 July 2015, the CCP arrested some 300 prominent human rights activists and lawyers, including several who were defending religious cases, in particular cases from Zhejiang. By this time, Zhang Kai had relocated to Wenzhou where he had taken up residence in a local church and was advising churches on their constitutional rights. Despite having been temporarily detained on 10 July – during which time he was interrogated and warned not to get involved – Zhang persisted in providing legal advice to more than 100 churches. On 14 July, in the midst of the crackdown, Zhang Kai announced the formation of “Lawyers for Protection of the Cross”, a group of some 30 Christian lawyers from across the country who would take on the Zhejiang church cases.

Zhang Kai was arrested on the night of Tuesday 25 August 2015, and “disappeared” into China’s secretive and notorious “black jail” system, accused of “inciting disorder” and “spreading fiction”.

CCP moves against TSPM

Chongyi Church: youtube

Also criticizing CCP policy in Zhejiang was Pastor Gu Yuese, the senior pastor of China’s largest CCP-approved and registered Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) church: the 10,000-strong Chongyi Church in the Zhejiang capital, Hangzhou.

Hoping to protect themselves from “blowback” (negative consequences), the Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) and associated China Christian Council (CCC) cut Gu loose, officially dismissing him on 18 January 2016. 

Pastor (Joseph) Gu was arrested on 27 January 2016, and “disappeared” into China’s “black jail” system on charges pertaining to corruption. The very fact that the TSPM and CCC thought they could protect themselves, shows the degree to which they had misread the situation.  On 29 January, the authorities arrested Li Guanzhong, chairman of the CCC in Zhejiang’s Pujiang County and senior pastor of Puyang Christian Church in the city of Jinhua. Li and his wife Zhang Shuzhen were likewise “disappeared” into China’s “black jail” system and held incommunicado, without access to legal representation, on criminal charges pertaining to corruption. Like Gu, Li had protested CCP policy in Zhejiang. In July 2014 he had resisted CCP pressure to destroy his own church’s cross. In January 2016 he resisted the CCP’s order that all TSPM churches fly the Chinese flag.

By early February 2016 eight influential TSPM and CCC leaders had been arrested and were being held incommunicado on criminal charges pertaining to corruption.

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Zhejiang Experiment Goes National
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New Regulations for Churches 

On 8 September 2016, the Chinese government released a deliberative draft of its new Regulations on Religious Affairs. While Friday 7 October was designated as the day the government would stop receiving public comments and bring the law into effect, no public announcement has as yet been made.

The regulations give the CCP total control over religion. Unregistered and unapproved religious activity will no longer be tolerated; registered churches will be obliged to follow strict guidelines; and all building will be tightly regulated, doubtless to reduce Christianity’s visibility, just as in Zhejiang.

Click here to see an English translation of the deliberation draft: New Regulations on Religious Affairs.

New Regulations for Lawyers

Not only has the CCP set the stage for a flood of persecutions and prosecutions against the church, but it is also poised to hamstring and tightened the noose around China’s human rights lawyers.

When Zhang Kai was arrested in August 2015, he was held in solitary confinement and in darkness for six months until 25 February when, under extreme duress, he made a televised “confession” in which he repented of his “crimes”, retracted his criticisms of the CCP, and advised other lawyers against getting involved. Upon his release on 23 March, Zhang returned to his mother’s home in Inner Mongolia subject to strict bail conditions that he stay out of politics and refrain from speaking to the media.

In late August Zhang posted a video on WeChat in which he retracts his former statement, which he said was made under duress after experiencing a six-month detention that was “all black and no daylight”.  On 31 August security police from Wenzhou City surrounded Zhang’s mother’s Inner Mongolia home, arrested Zhang and took him away. 

When the Ministry of Justice’s amended “Administrative Measures for Law Firms” come into effect on 1 November, then all China’s lawyers will be officially banned from speaking out about human rights abuses. Even silent protests, such as walking out of a courtroom, will be prohibited.

Click here to see report by China Human Rights Defenders (CHRD): Revised Measures on Law Firms Further Curb Independence of Chinese Lawyers, 3 Oct 2016.

So, for clues as to how President Xi intends to manage China’s churches, “Zhejiang province is a good place to start looking”, for the Zhejiang experiment is about to go national.

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Selected background pieces by Elizabeth Kendal

The Chinese Communist Party and the Cross over Zhejiang, 9 April 2014

Legitimising Persecution,  (National Security Law) 15 July 2015

Attorney Zhang Kai ‘Disappeared’, 2 Sept 2015

A New Cultural Revolution is Upon Us, 10 Feb 2016

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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She is the author of Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and, After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016). See www.ElizabethKendal.com

Syria: Blinkered in Aleppo

by Elizabeth Kendal - 24th August 2016
first published by Lapido Media, using the title "Aleppo Horror: Be careful whose side you're on"


Is the Western media blinkered in the midst of Aleppo horror?

FOR every bloodied child in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, there is a bloodied child in the government-held west of the war-torn city.

While an estimated 250,000 people remain in the rebel-held east, more than a million – including some 40,000 Christians – remain in the government-held west.

Churches – which operate freely in western Aleppo – describe the fighting in July as the worst they have ever experienced. On one day alone in mid July, some 250 rebel rockets rained down on Aleppo’s Christian quarter in the space of four hours.

Struggle

On 25 June, the Syrian Government launched the Castello Operation aimed at severing the rebel supply-line that runs through the north of the city en route to Turkey. Advancing under Russian air cover, Syrian forces approached the Castello Road from the north and from the south in a pincer manoeuvre.

source

By 26 July the rebel supply-line had been cut and two days later, rebel-held eastern Aleppo was besieged. The government opened three humanitarian corridors and promised four more.

The strategy is as old as war itself: cut the supply, besiege the city, increase the pressure and then open the vents to allow the escape of human shields and surrendering fighters.

Syrian forces liberated Homs by this means. Indeed, the US-backed, mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces recently liberated Manbij from Islamic State this way.

But if these rebels have learned anything it is how to fight asymmetrically. Aware of the propaganda value of human shields, the rebels convince them to stay.

In this they were aided by US Secretary of State John Kerry who echoed rebel claims that the humanitarian corridors ‘could potentially be a ruse’.  Consequently, only a few dozen families trickled out, with most opting to stay.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu described them as ‘hostages’, claiming they actually were unable to flee as the rebels had mined the humanitarian corridors and set snipers over them.

Had the family of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh – whose gut-wrenching image adorned newspapers across the globe last week -   escaped through the humanitarian corridors opened then he would not have ended up sitting bloodied in the back of an ambulance. Moreover his brother, Ali, 10, would not have died.

On 31 July, rebels belonging to Jaysh al-Fatah (Army of Conquest) launched a counter-offensive in south-western Aleppo, and by 6 August had broken through the siege. Western mainstream media cheered loudly for what the Institute for the Study of War described as ‘a major victory for al-Qaeda in Syria’.  On 7 August the Jaysh al-Fatah Operations Room released a statement declaring its intention to take the jihad into western Aleppo so as to capture the entire city.

Rebels

Jaysh al-Fatah is an al-Qaeda-led rebel coalition dominated by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and Ahrar al-Sham (a Salafist outfit modelled on the Taliban). Because the Jaysh al-Fatah coalition also includes a few much smaller US-backed militias, Jaysh al-Fatah profits from US weapons and US protection. To quote the Russian President, the ‘terrorists’ might be ‘rough and cruel people, but they’re in no way primitive or silly’.

The US has proscribed Jabhat al-Nusra (Jabhat Fatah al-Sham) as a terrorist organisation and agreed with Russia that it should be targeted. However, the US has not been able to convince its ‘good rebel’ proxies to disengage from their al-Qaeda affiliated allies - and this has hampered US anti-terror efforts.

Convincing US-backed rebels to disengage from Jaysh al-Fatah will be even more difficult now that Jaysh al-Fatah – which already holds the provincial capital of Idlib – has achieved such success in Aleppo. Islamic fighters – including displaced Islamic State jihadists – will be flocking to join the ranks of Jaysh al-Fatah now.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in western Aleppo is deteriorating rapidly.

Electricity is limited and, due to recent fighting, the flow of water and the main supply line have been cut, meaning water, food, fuel and medicines are all scarce.

As the rebels – around 95 percent of whom are foreign: Chechens, Saudis, Uzbeks, Chinese Uyhgurs among others – press in on western Aleppo, loyalist Syrians feel both the war and the prospect of slaughter inching closer.

‘Hope’

Despite the dire situation, western Aleppo’s churches of all denominations continue to serve and minister as funds are pumped in from churches and Christian advocacy groups on the outside.

Aleppo’s Saint Elias Cathedral (Orthodox) is caring for some 4,000 families recently displaced from southern Aleppo’s 1070 district – half of them Muslim, half of them Christian.

Similarly, Jesuit priest Fr Ziad Hilal said the churches are working to feed the hungry, regardless of their religion.

He said: ‘We have a big kitchen, this kitchen was sponsored by ACN (Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need) and other associations, and a lot of people come – we give about 7,500 meals every day. 

‘It is a lot, and the team is a Muslim and Christian team, and a lot of the people who benefit from these meals are Muslims. So, on one side things are dark, things are sad – on the other hand we see the activities of the Church there and how the people, especially the Christian associations, are helping. These provide a sign of hope. Our mission is important there.’

That Western mainstream media cares so little about the plight or fate of loyalist Syrians is nonsensical, for of all the groups in Syria today, loyalist Syrians (non-Islamist Muslims, Alawites and Christians) are the group with which most westerners would have the most in common. Instead, the media apparently cheers rebels who represent everything they abhor and would slaughter them in a heartbeat. If there is one thing al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) agree on, it is the treatment of infidels.

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Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She publishes a weekly Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin to help facilitate strategic prayer; serves as the Director of Advocacy at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom; and is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at the Melbourne School of Theology.

Elizabeth Kendal has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and, After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).  

For more information see: www.ElizabethKendal.com

Middle East Crisis Entirely Predictable

Sir John Chilcot right to say hindsight not required
by Elizabeth Kendal

How often do you hear it said that the current crisis in Middle East is “unprecedented”?

Despite being routinely parroted by our political, academic and media elites, this assertion is absolutely false.

Those who make this claim are either embarrassingly ignorant of history, or desperate to excuse their utter cluelessness and/or deflect criticism from their catastrophic policy failures.

Surely one of the most pivotal sentences in the 150 page executive summary of Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq Inquiry is one found on page 129 under the heading “Lessons”, subheading “The decision to go to war”, in paragraph 828: “When the potential for military action arises, the Government should not commit to a firm political objective before it is clear that it can be achieved.”

Could the US-led West's objectives in Iraq have been achieved? 

Iraq straddles one of the most volatile religious fault-lines on the planet. Consequently, even the most basic understanding of Iraq’s sectarian dynamics and history would have given anyone considering war cause for concern.

Likewise, anyone with a basic understanding of the Islamic worldview would have known that an invasion of “infidel” forces would have triggered Islamic resistance. Furthermore, anyone with knowledge of the history of Muslim-Christian relations in the Middle East would have anticipated the consequences for local Christians should Islamic resistance be triggered or an Islamic order restored.

The events of 1979—the successful Shi’ite revolution in Iran and the failed Sunni revolution in Saudi Arabia—heightened Islamic and sectarian zeal, and set in motion the wheels of global Islamic radicalisation. One generation later, the Middle East was a radicalised Islamic tinderbox just waiting for a spark. Had Western policy-makers truly understood and appreciated that fact, then they might have heeded the warnings and accepted an alternative. Yes, there were alternatives!

In late 2002, Russian President Vladimir Putin advised the administration of President G. W. Bush that instead of going after Saddam Hussein, it should concentrate on the real sponsors of Islamic terror, specifically Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and put an end to the Saudi funding of Wahhabi extremism.
As terrorism analyst Yossef Bodansky explains: “Russian experts warned that the problem in Iraq was not just Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction, but rather the prevailing radical militant trends. They urged the Americans to be ready to deal with radicalized populations, Sunni Islamist militancy, a radical Shiite population under Iranian influence, the flow of al-Qaeda operatives, and Kurdish-Turkish and Turkman-Arab hatred—all of which were likely to intensify in reaction to an American invasion of Iraq.” The Kremlin’s position was that rather than defeating terrorism, a US-led invasion would actually create and open new venues for terrorism.

In receipt of an abundance of intelligence from all sides, the onus was on Western policy-makers to assess that intelligence. Unfortunately our political leaders were ill-equipped for the task. Lacking knowledge of history and understanding of religion; blinded by arrogance [“where everyone else failed, we will succeed!”] and hamstrung by bias [“we are not going to listen to Russia!”], they were incapable of discerning wisdom from fantasy, or interest-driven propaganda from plain hard reality.

When US-led forces bombed and invaded Iraq in 2003, and removed Saddam and the Baathists by force, they liberated not “the Iraqi people”, but the Iraqi Shi’ites—facilitating the rise of the “Shia Crescent”.

By 2005 Iraq, once part of a north-south Sunni bloc, was fully integrated into an east-west "Shia Crescent" (more accurately known as the Axis of Resistance) with Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1982 vision of a continuous arc of Iranian influence extending from Tehran “to Jerusalem . . .  through Kabala” (in southern Iraq) awaiting only its final installment.

That Iraq’s political realignment would trigger Sunni resistance in Iraq, and have regional implications for oil and gas pipeline politics, and existentially imperil the region’s US-allied Sunni regimes—was entirely predictable.

That conflict in Iraq would attract international jihadists, and result in the genocide of minorities—including the region’s indigenous Christian nation (the Assyrians)—was all entirely predictable to anyone with knowledge of history and understanding of religion.

Sir John Chilcot was absolutely right to reject Tony Blair’s contention that the difficulties encountered after the invasion could not have been foreseen.

“We do not agree that hindsight is required,” Chilcot said. “The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability and al-Qaida activity in Iraq were each explicitly identified before the invasion.”

What a pity the Chilcot report had not been released in 2010, before the US-led West chose to back regime change in Damascus.

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Elizabeth Kendal is a long-time religious liberty analyst and advocate, author of the weekly Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin. She serves as the Director of Advocacy at Christian Faith and Freedom (CFF) in Canberra, Australia, and is an adjunct research fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

Her second book, After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East, (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA) was released in June 2016. For more information see: www.ElizabethKendal.com