Source: http://rlprayerbulletin.blogspot.com/
Date: June 7, 2023
CHINA: PERSECUTION LOOMS OVER HONG KONG
By Elizabeth Kendal
In March 2018, TIME magazine published an article by Laignee Barron entitled Guerrillas for God: How Hong Kong’s Pastors Are Delivering the Message to China’s Christians. ‘Hong Kong,’ writes Barron, ‘with its greater freedoms and religious liberties, has played a vital role in oxygenating the growth of Christianity on the mainland… While Christianity is undoubtedly thriving in mainland China, faith is permitted only in official, “patriotic” churches; unregistered houses of worship may be prolific, but they are also subject to periodic crackdowns… For these underground congregations – which are illegal, if often ignored – the Hong Kong Christian establishment offers a vital lifeline, supplying everything from monetary support, to Bibles, to blacklisted Christian literature, to training and assistance founding new churches. The gospel is smuggled over the border in every format imaginable: broadcast on pirate radio waves and disseminated through USB flash drives.’ Barron quotes Hong Kong’s retired Catholic Cardinal Joseph Zen who explains that the mainland churches ‘need our help because we are in the freer world and they are not'.
Even as those words were being published, changes were underway [see RLPB 665 (5 Oct 2022)] that would hasten Hong Kong’s removal from ‘the freer world’. At a meeting of the National People’s Congress in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, President Xi Jinping was elected to a second term and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) legislators were amending the constitution to remove presidential term limits. If Xi spent his first term (2013-2018) consolidating power, escalating repression and testing policy (mostly in his old stomping ground of Zhejiang), he would spend his second term establishing his authority – especially over Hong Kong. In early 2019, Beijing made controversial changes to Hong Kong’s Basic Law. This triggered protests, which in turn triggered a violent crackdown. For twelve months Hong Kong resembled a war zone. In February 2020, with the protests subdued, President Xi installed Xia Baolong as Director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office. A ‘ruthless enforcer’ and close ally of Xi, Xia Baolong gained infamy among Chinese Christians when he led the CCP’s 2014-15 campaign to remove crosses and demolish churches in Zhejiang province [RLPB 538 (26 Feb 2020)]. On 30 June 2020 Beijing passed national security legislation into Hong Kong (HK) law, bypassing HK’s legislative council, effectively ending the ‘one country, two systems’ era [RLPB 555 (24 Jun 2020)].
Selling Sinicisation. Hong Kong 18-19 May 2023 (China Christian Daily, 23 May 2023)
On 18-19 May 2023, for the first time ever, a seminar on ‘The Sinicisation of Christianity’ was held in Hong Kong. The event was jointly hosted by the China Christian Council (CCC, an official umbrella organisation for China’s Protestant churches), the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM, the government-controlled Protestant body) and the Hong Kong Christian Council. The Chinese delegation of 24 attenders included TSPM chairperson, Rev Xu Xiaohong, who presided over the seminar, CCC president, Rev Wu Wei, five TSPM academics and other clergy. Around 120 Protestant leaders from Hong Kong attended the seminar.
The CCP portrays sinicisation as ‘Christianity with Chinese characteristics’, and a positive step towards a healthy nationalism that rejects colonial impositions. In practice, however, sinicisation requires religion (Christianity and Islam) serve the State/CCP. Indeed, the primary obligation of sinicised Christianity is to lead the people to love and obey the CCP. According to the high level CCC and TSMP officials who addressed the May seminar, sinicised Christianity is ‘patriotic’ Christianity, and true Hong Kong Christian patriots will sinicise their churches – as occurs on the mainland. The implication is that anyone who rejects the order to register with and function as a tool of the CCP will be branded unpatriotic and treated as a threat to national security – as occurs on the mainland.
The May seminar undoubtedly heralds the end of an era for Hong Kong’s estimated ‘850,000 Christians (12.4 percent of the population), roughly 1500 churches, 35 Bible Colleges and multiple Christian media organisations [RLPB 514 (7 Aug 2019)]. Five years after that TIME magazine article was published, Hong Kong is no longer ‘in the freer world’. Beijing will now move to fully assimilate the Church in Hong Kong into the mainland’s CCP-controlled Church. As on the mainland, the choice facing Hong Kong’s Christian leaders is: (a) to submit and assimilate with the CCP-controlled Church to avoid persecution, OR (b) to move underground and assimilate with the mainland’s unregistered (and therefore illegal), sorely persecuted Church. A very dark period of arrests and persecutions looms.
PLEASE PRAY THAT OUR MERCIFUL GOD WILL:
- fill Hong Kong’s pastors and leaders, ‘with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so [they might] walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy' (from Colossians 1:9-12 ESV). May the Church in Hong Kong receive all the wisdom she will need to navigate the increasingly treacherous path ahead.
'Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of his servant [Jesus]? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God' (Isaiah 50:10 ESV).
- grant the Chinese Church patience and persistence in prayer, along with endurance and faithfulness in glorious hope as the Lord works out his eternal purposes concerning President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party, the nation of China, and the Chinese Church that will one day be free!
AND just as the Church in Hong Kong has long supported the Church on mainland China through the provision of education and much needed resources, may China’s long-persecuted house church movement be preparing, even now, to support the faithful Church in Hong Kong to endure the coming persecution.
‘Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity! ... For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ (from Habakkuk 2:12-14 ESV, emphasis mine).