National Review: Bush's China Moment

By Ann Noonan, New York coordinator, the Laogai Research Foundation.

February 21, 2002

During President Bush's meetings this week with present and future leaders of the People's Republic of China, advocates of religious freedom, both inside and outside of China, are hoping that he will be a strong voice for the millions of Chinese Christians and members of other religious and spirituality groups, including Vatican-affiliated Catholics and Falun Gong practitioners, who are oppressed by the PRC's government.

China watchers have been increasingly critical of the regime's bloody handling of its "religious problem," with severe crackdowns that have resulted in mass arrests, destruction of churches, torture, and the deaths of incarcerated worshipers. Still, they believe that an alignment of events and situations — the PRC coming to terms with its new acceptance in the World Trade Organization, increased pressures from external civil liberties and religious-freedom organizations, and, they hope, a strong statement from President Bush — will force a change that will halt the regime's current brutal practices.

The country's policies concerning organized religion and spirituality groups were explicitly discussed at a PRC conference in Beijing this past December. More recently, official government documents were smuggled out of China, and made public February 11th by the Committee for the Investigation on Persecution and Religion in China. The CIPRC study, "Religion and
National Security in China — Secret Documents from China's Security Sector" was prepared at great personal risk to many. According to Carol Lee Hamrin, a China scholar and former analyst with the State Department, "The secret [PRC] documents alone are extremely rare and incredibly important."

These documents demonstrate — for the first time — how China's government has officially orchestrated a crackdown campaign directed by their central-party leaders. According to these internal documents, Hu Jin-Tao and other party leaders know of and encourage the torture of their fellow-countrymen. These papers detail the lengths that PRC is taking to identify and ban a variety of "cults" which are considered a "crawling danger to domestic security and defence."

China's ambiguous definition of "evil cult" can be applied so arbitrarily that almost anyone in an
unregistered group can be accused of belonging to one.
While the 14 "cults" listed in these documents don't even satisfy the Chinese Communist Party's own definition of the word, the expense and resources the CCP has invested in spying on spirituality groups and church members — both at home and abroad — is astounding.

On February 13th, the U.S. House Congressional Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights once again served as "a conduit for presentation of new information and evidence derived from testimonials from victims of Chinese torture and persecution, to help ensure a place of prominence for human rights and religious freedom issues in the upcoming discussions between US and Chinese officials." In her opening remarks, Subcommittee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen urged President Bush to "Let the U.S. send a message throughout China and
throughout the East Asian region and the world that this country proudly stands with the oppressed and will continue to fight for their right to practice their religion and beliefs."

Testifying before the subcommittee, Paul Marshall of the Freedom House Centre for Religious Freedom stated that his organization "is alarmed by mounting repression against the major religious and spiritual groups in China — Protestant Christians, Roman Catholics, Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong, and Uigur Muslims," and provided a clergy list from Fides News
Service of "33 people in need of prayers, bishops and priests, some who have disappeared altogether, others unable to minister, confined to strict house arrest."

"Our list gives the names of 33," said Marshall, "but there are at least 20 more without even a name."

An analysis by Freedom House of the CIPRC report stressed how the secret PRC religion documents "show that China's government, at the highest levels, aims to repress religious expression outside its control, and is using more determined, systematic and harsher
criminal penalties in this effort. […]

As to what the average American can do to respond to religious persecution in China, the Committee for the Investigation on Persecution and Religion in China — based on interviews with leading Chinese scholars — suggests:

Just as some people said Chinese leaders were more anxious to meet Bill Gates than Bill Clinton, there are many influential groups with clout in China ... from investors to educators to [United
Nations-affiliated 'Non Governmental Organizations'] providing disaster relief or development assistance, many of them international, not solely American. They need to be made more aware of the problem and asked to be part of the solution. […]

Of course, George Bush is no average American. This week, as he meets with PRC officials, Christians and defenders of religious freedom are counting on him to use this opportunity to directly confront the brutal treatment of Chinese worshipers and to demand a halt to the ongoing campaign of persecution, torture, and death. It must be made clear to the PRC that religious
freedom — or, at the least, the absence of oppressing believers and spiritualists — is the price of dealing with the United States.

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