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Religion's Rise Stirs New Strife in China By
CHARLES HUTZLER
They're Christians, part of an evangelical movement that is gaining converts across the country as ordinary Chinese reject the state-run church. To the government, this secret meeting by 80 or so farmers is especially worrisome: They are members of the South China Church, a group that Beijing labeled a cult seven years ago. "These are difficult times," Wang Junhui, a 24-year-old preacher, tells the meeting. "In different places and to different degrees, our brothers and sisters have been captured." The plight of groups such as the South China Church suggests that the simmering conflict between church and state in China is intensifying. Religious groups of all kinds are mushrooming, displacing the Communist Party as people coping with rapid economic and social change seek guidance. While experts believe Buddhist groups and folk religions are drawing the biggest number of followers, Christianity is rapidly making inroads, thanks to concerted proselytizing. Its believers have more than tripled in number over the past decade to at least 35 million, scholars estimate. Christian groups
present special challenges to the authorities. Unlike Falun Gong,
the homegrown spiritual movement the authorities have largely quashed,
Christianity is a legally recognized religion in China, making attempts
to stamp out the groups trickier. And the country's Christians are
linked to a world-wide community of believers, turning China's treatment
of the South China Church into a source of friction with the U.S.
and other Western The church itself has experienced internal controversy. Gong Shengliang, the group's charismatic founder, and 12 followers were found guilty of carrying out revenge beatings of people who allegedly informed on the group to police. Their families and some followers concede that the church members probably did commit the crimes. Mr. Gong also was convicted of raping female followers. Originally sentenced to death, he and four aides were resentenced to prison terms of 15 years or more in a hastily conducted retrial in October. Mr. Gong has denied the charges and has been refusing solid foods since mid-November to protest authorities' refusal to let him appeal his life sentence. Besides imprisoning its leadership, authorities have put more than 100 church followers in jails and labor camps in the past 18 months, according to Christian activists. Four believers acquitted in Mr. Gong's retrial in October were rearrested and sent to labor camps, they say. And adherents say police continue to harass them, demanding they join the state-run religion, called the Three-Self Church. Far from buckling, the South China Church remains active. Its half-dozen leading members who have evaded capture crisscross the country, keeping in touch with the group's congregations. "I spend a lot of time praying on buses," says Wang Tonggui, a farmer who oversees church activities in a swath of east China . The church also is creating problems abroad for the Chinese government. Evangelical church groups in the U.S. and Germany have pressured their governments to discuss the church's plight with Beijing. The Bush administration did so again last week in meetings on human rights in Beijing. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner says he found explanations from Chinese officials unconvincing, particularly as to whether the women were raped by Mr. Gong. "It turns out they probably weren't," he says. The rise of Mr.
Gong shows the pull of his form of charismatic Christianity in rural
China . Raised by his grandmother, who was converted by Western missionaries
in the 1930s, Mr. Gong was one of a handful of figures who canvassed
the poor corn and rice farms of central China for converts from the
mid-1970s. In the 1980s, he and another preacher, Xu Yongze, began
to After Mr. Xu was
arrested in 1988, reportedly on his way to see the Rev. Billy Graham
in Beijing, Mr. Gong struck out on his own. His South China Church
grew quickly, based in part on Mr. Gong's flair for organization.
He created a cell-like hierarchy reminiscent of a revolutionary underground,
with lieutenants reporting up a chain of command. He set up a magazine
and Run-ins with authorities intensified. Police detained believers and levied fines for illegal religious activities, often ransacking their homes and confiscating furniture, pigs, a coffin and, in one case, the equivalent of $3 in cash, according to adherents. In 1995 the Public Security Ministry banned the group as an illegal cult. In 1999, with police pressure mounting, some church members and other locals began informing police about the group's meeting places and the whereabouts of leaders. Police began tearing down the group's meeting halls, they say. It was then, say several church insiders, that revenge beatings began -- 16 in all. In its verdict after his first trial a year ago, the Jingmen City Intermediate People's Court found Mr. Gong guilty in the very least of encouraging his lieutenants by telling them in a meeting to "pull out the nails" - a euphemism for recalcitrant individuals. Mr. Gong, in a letter dated Oct. 21, acknowledges that some of his followers may have assaulted informants "out of anger," but he vehemently denies that he encouraged the beatings. Rather, he says, it was the government's policy of recurring arrests, fines and intimidation that took their toll on his adherents. Police, he writes in his letter, "stripped believers of their freedom of belief and turned them into a hostile opposition." Write to Charles Hutzler at charles.hutzler@wsj.com. Updated December 24, 2002 http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB1040685445250389913-search,00.html?col
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