The Sunday Telegraph [London]: China's Christians called to prayer by mobile phone

By Damien McElroy

(Filed: 24/02/2002)

THE working day was over when a 30-strong group of businessmen, doctors and software executives gathered at dusk last week, on one of the highest floors of a Beijing office tower.

The location of the meeting had been a secret until that day, communicated in furtive calls on mobile telephones. Exchanged passwords then confirmed the time and the place. As the Beijing rush hour filled the streets below, the assorted group of professionals began their prayers.

These clandestine Christian worshippers, who declare themselves Protestants, are forced to go to such extreme lengths to evade detection and persecution by the communist authorities.

It was their plight to which President Bush referred on Friday in a blunt speech during his visit to China. Mr Bush told Jiang Zemin, his Chinese counterpart, that "freedom of religion is not something to be feared but to be welcomed. Faith gives a moral core and teaches us to hold ourselves to high standards".

The president's words are almost certain to go unheeded. The participants in the prayer meeting in the Beijing office block know that exposure could lead to imprisonment and persecution. Outsiders are treated with extreme caution and rarely trusted to attend a service. The price of betrayal ensures that the Gospel is spread discreetly, behind closed doors.

"In the market economy, people worship wealth and money, but many of us found that when we had enough we wanted something more," said Zhang Na, 28, a banking official and a long-term member of the prayer group. "Over the past 50 years many of China's strongest traditions, such as Confucianism, have been lost. Christianity, for many people like me, is filling that void."

[…]

Ms Zhang laughs at the idea of attending one of the Patriotic Association services. "The preachers simply parrot government policy in their sermons," she said, "banging on about unity with Taiwan and the need for stability and order in society. They always have a religious understanding that reflects the government line."

Like Ms Zhang, most of those attending the illegal services have prospered following the Chinese government's partial adoption of a capitalist economy. Religious tolerance, however, is unlikely to follow in the wake of economic liberalism. More than 23,000 people have been arrested for unauthorised worship since 1983. At least 123 people have been sentenced to death, mainly for association with the Falun Gong movement. Roman Catholic bishops have spent decades in jail, Protestant evangelicals have found themselves on death row and thousands of Falun Gong members have been sent to mental asylums.

Leaked government memos show that undercover agents have been deployed to root out Falun Gong members and underground Catholics, in addition to anyone participating in banned religious gatherings.

[…]

Last Friday, as Mr Bush addressed the Chinese nation on state television, the Beijing group broke off its own service to listen intently to his call for tolerance.

"Tens of millions of Chinese today are relearning Buddhist, Taoist and local religious traditions or
practising Christianity, Islam and other faiths," said Mr Bush. "Regardless of how or where these believers worship, they are no threat to public order. In fact, they make good citizens."

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