China2000

Compass News (18.12.2000)/ HRWF International Secretariat (19.12.2000) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The Chinese government sponsored an International Symposium on Evil Cults in Beijing November 8-10 that urged local authorities not to inquire too closely into the beliefs of accused cults. Instead, authorities were encouraged to assess whether they are "harmful to society" a catch-all criterion that some house church leaders fear could lead to their own movements being classed as cults.

Nearly 60 academics from all over the world attended the Beijing Symposium, and it was full of predictable denunciation of the Chinese folk religious movement, Falun Gong. But it was a recommendation buried beneath academic verbiage that caught the eyes of some house church leaders: "We should not excessively debate whether it is a genuine religion or not. We should mainly view it from the angle of whether it is harmful to the society."

According to a Shanghai-based house church leader, "Every house church movement could be accused of being "harmful to society" simply because we refuse to belong to accredited religious bodies, which leads them to say, 'You must be a cult because you are being so secretive."

Interestingly, many house church leaders interviewed express surprise that the government did not crack down harder this year. Said one in Xian, "It is like the government has been distracted with Falun Gong." Another in Beijing added, "In practice, many authorities are able to distinguish between a genuine Christian house church and a very unorthodox Christian sect or cult, but local police are often not so discerning."

At the same time, a prominent China ministry profiled the secretive "Two Grains of Rice" (Er-Liang-Liang) Christian cult. The ministry released its findings to Compass on the understanding they would not be named.

The sect, also known as the Blessed Group (Meng-Fu Pai), or the Disciples, is growing rapidly in the provinces of Hebei, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Shangdong and Yunnan. Estimates start at 100,000 members and up. Members are put on starvation rations and told to pray not to Christ but to the founder of the movement, San-Shu, who claims to forgive sins.

Members also undertake dangerous fire baptisms and refuse medical treatment. Various provincial governments outlawed the movement in 1995. The sect teaches that military rebellion against the government is legitimate, referring to police as the "great locusts" of Joel 1:6.

The research of the China ministry makes it clear how hard it would be to classify the "Two Grains of Rice" sect as an orthodox house church movement, however much Scripture may be quoted back and forth.

Started in 1982 by a man called Ji San Bao, he changed his name to San-Shu after becoming a Christian. Then he quickly began to propound heretical viewpoints. Citing the New Testament Scripture 1 John 4:2-3, he claimed to be "the second manifestation of Christ in the flesh." He married again, to a woman called Hsu-Shu, who claims to be the living manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

Members of the group must pray in the name of these two leaders. San-Shu claims that only he has the right to forgive sins. Followers must write down all their sins and pass them to him for forgiveness. If he decides to put them into an "ark of the covenant," then they are forgiven.

San-Shu also claims to determine when the coming of the "kingdom of Zion" will take place, and proclaims that the new Zion is in fact the Chinese city of Xian. Stories of miracles abound surrounding his ministry, though his power comes also from the fact that his disciples sell all they have and deed their property to his movement. However, he is believed to be under arrest at the moment.

The nickname "Two Grains of Rice" comes from a doctrine unique to the group. They link the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000 from two loaves and five fish in the Gospel of John, chapter six, with the widow's "handful of flour and a little oil" in the Old Testament verse in I Kings 17. They claim these items are the "bread of life," and thus each meal should be a kind of miraculous feeding.

So a person should eat no more than two grains of rice at each mealtime to experience a miracle of multiplication. If a person eats more than two grains, it is a sign they lack faith and have not repented. Not surprisingly, there have been cases of starvation and severe malnutrition among many of the followers.

Another peculiar doctrine concerns baptism. San-Shu takes the words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3:11 that "the one who comes after me ... will baptize with fire" quite literally. The rite of baptism in the cult involves passing through live flames and sometimes of throwing infants through flames.

"The cult really only flourishes among the very poor peasants that live in isolated communities, though it is also making inroads among the unemployed," a house church leader in Xian commented. "The challenge is to give these cult members some real biblical teaching, and the whole cult is organized to deny us access to bring this teaching."

Yet it is remarkable that the Chinese house church movements have remained largely orthodox in their Christian teaching, despite a repressive government policy which makes the teaching of the Scriptures a hazardous activity. Bibles are still in short supply in many rural locations, and Bible teachers have to conduct their seminars in secret.

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Places of worship razed in Chinese crackdown

Campaign focuses on heavily Christian city of Wenzhou

by Frank Langfitt

Baltimore Sun (15.12.2000)/ HRWF International Secretariat (18.12.2000) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Beijing, members of at least 40 Protestant congregations on China's southeastern coast are looking to celebrate Christmas elsewhere this year after local officials destroyed their churches and places of worship.

The demolition campaign is part of a crackdown that has claimed not only churches but also hundreds of privately built local temples for folk worship in Zhejiang Province, Chinese officials and state-run newspapers say.

Most of the destruction appears to have occurred in the past month. However, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a Hong Kong group, says about 1,200 temples and churches have been demolished or shuttered in the province since late 1999.

Chinese officials say the buildings were targeted because they were never approved by the government, which is trying to control the spread of homegrown religion and other practices it sees as potential threats to its monopoly on power.

For instance, at Zhejiang's Yangshan Temple, which was blown up earlier this week, mediums and fortune tellers reportedly offered to heal visitors' diseases and exercise evil spirits.

"This is like attacking Falun Gong," said Lu Tianlei, an official with the propaganda department in Zhejiang's Wenzhou City, referring to the spiritual meditation group the Chinese government outlawed last year. The temples and churches "did not follow the procedure of the state."

Since last year, Beijing has waged a war to destroy Falun Gong, which claims millions of adherents. Although it failed to break the group, the nationwide crackdown has led to the deaths of more than 70 members in government custody, according to the Hong Kong center.

Religion is one of the most sensitive issues for China's authoritarian regime, which permits various forms of worship - including Christianity, Taoism and Buddhism - but requires that groups register with the government and submit to official oversight.

The Communist Party, increasingly unpopular here, fears that religion could be used as a platform to challenge its already shaky legitimacy.

The recent demolition campaign focused on several areas in Zhejiang Province, particularly Wenzhou, a city of more than 6 million people known for its energetic merchant class and deep religious roots. Protestant and Catholic missionaries began converting people in Wenzhou beginning in the latter part of the 19th century when the city became a treaty port. With more than 700,000 Protestants and several hundred thousand Catholics, it has a higher percentage of Christians than any other municipality in China.

China's state-run media rarely - if ever - publicize demolition campaigns because it only invites international condemnation. This time, though, the government gave some media a green light to report on the demolitions.

Late last month, the Wenzhou Daily reported that thousands of government employees and Communist Party cadres in Zhejiang's Ruian City demolished 28 unapproved "religious sites" and 356 small temples, occasionally using dynamite when needed.

An article in the Wenzhou Qiaoxiang newspaper ran a photo of a piece of heavy machinery tearing the roof off a yellow building that had served as a temple.

The reasons behind religious crackdowns in China are often complex. It is not entirely clear exactly what prompted this one or whether it is part of a coordinated national effort.

Joseph Kung, who chronicles the plight of China's underground Catholic Church for the Connecticut-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, attributes the recent campaign to the coming holiday season. "Every important date on the calendar - Christmas, Easter - there is always some sort of arrest, detention, blowing up of churches," Kung says. "They never fail."

Chan Kim-kwong a religious scholar and researcher in Hong Kong, thinks the demolition springs from various factors, including local officials' desire to curry favor with their provincial bosses before end-of-the-year evaluations.

Local salaries and budgets are based in part on how officials carry out certain policies, such as cracking down on unregistered places of worship. Many local governments ignore these edicts for long stretches while the offending communities operate with great autonomy.

All of the churches that were destroyed in Wenzhou, for example, had been standing for months, if not years.

"They have been turning a blind eye," says Chan. Local officials want "to show the government that they are doing something."

Demolition campaigns are not uncommon in China. Last year, government officials in coastal Fujian Province - just south of Zhejiang - dynamited and bulldozed more than 20 unregistered churches. Some were huge, expensive structures paid for with the wages of overseas Chinese who worked in garment factories and restaurants in the United States and Europe.

One church, situated near the airport outside the provincial capital, Fuzhou, stood about 80 feet high and resembled a redbrick version of the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

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Two more Falungong members reported dead in Chinese police detention

AFP (07.12.2000) / HRWF International Secretariat (08.12.2000) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - Two more followers of the Falungong spiritual movement have died after maltreatment in Chinese police detention, a human rights group said Thursday.

The deaths bring to at least 74 the number of group members who are reported to have died in suspicious circumstances while in police custody since the Falungong was banned in July last year, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

Wang Huachen, 32, a worker at the Jinhua Group in the city of Huludao in the northeastern province of Liaoning, jumped from a fourth storey window at a public security office on November 18 and later died in hospital, the center said.

Wang had been repeatedly beaten since being arrested on November 7 for his beliefs in the spiritual group in an effort to make him sign a written recantation of his belief in the spiritual group, the center said.

An official at the Jinhua Group confirmed to AFP that Wang had died, but was unaware of the circumstances of his death.

In another incident, Zhao Jing, 19, from Jilin in the northeastern province of Jilin, died after jumping from a police car in Hebei province, the center said.