Chinese Clamp Down on Religion

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) - In the 1960s, when he was 12, Gong Shengliang preached to tiny, clandestine groups of Chinese Christians worshipping in farmers' homes.

In the 1980s, he founded his own South China Church and drew thousands of followers. But where the worshippers saw hope for spiritual salvation, China's rulers, who allow only state-monitored worship, saw a threat to their authority, and they banned Gong's group as a cult.

On Dec. 8, after being tried in secret, he was sentenced to death for rape and ``using a cult to sabotage the enforcement of state law,'' according to human rights monitors and members of his church who obtained a summary of the ruling. They said two of Gong's colleagues also were sentenced to death.

If true, it is the heaviest penalty known in recent years in a Chinese crackdown on independent religious activity.

``I'm very happy to be imprisoned for Christ. I hate only that I am unable to pay back all debts, those of spirit and of money,'' Gong, 51, wrote in a letter smuggled from prison in December.

Until recently, the campaign against Christian groups was overshadowed by China's effort to crush the Falun Gong spiritual movement. But the treatment of underground Christians is drawing increasing attention, and could be an issue when President Bush visits Beijing this week.

Bush expressed concern over a Hong Kong man arrested last year bringing Bibles to another banned Christian group. He was sentenced to two years in prison but then released Feb. 9.

After that sentencing, the U.S. government appealed to China to ``meet international standards on freedom of religious expression and freedom of conscience.''

On Wednesday, the Vatican's missionary news agency released the names of 33 bishops and priests it said were either detained or being kept under strict police surveillance and forbidden to worship.

It said about 20 more priests, their names not known, were also being detained.

The Chinese leadership ``has never given up its idea that religious freedom can only be a controlled semi-freedom,'' the agency, Fides, said.

Yet even as Chinese leaders vow to continue their crackdown, Chinese Christians and religious activists abroad say some officials are pushing for a deal with underground groups - to let them worship openly if they register with the government.

That would end the threat of arrest for millions of Christians, but the groups have refused registration in the past, and whether they would accept now is questionable.

China officially sanctions only Protestant congregations that are affiliated with a government-approved organization, and a Roman Catholic church whose bishops are acceptable to communist officials and not appointed by the pope.

But the legal churches are dwarfed by the underground churches. Religious scholars abroad say the country of 1.3 billion people has as many as 50 million underground Protestants and 10 million Catholics, compared with 10 million and 4 million in the official churches, respectively.

City dwellers find in Christian values a replacement for jaded Marxist doctrine. Farmers find community and comfort amid jarring social and economic changes.

While Catholic churches follow Vatican doctrine, many Protestant movements follow charismatic leaders and unorthodox practices.

Gong started his South China Church in 1988 in the central province of Hubei. It spread through eastern China, opened two seminaries and started a publishing business.

Since it was banned, members have met in secret, defying pressure to join the legal church.

The official church ``doesn't allow ministers to preach on how Christianity should be part of our daily lives, except that good Christians should all be patriotic Chinese who support the Communist Party and all official policies on religion,'' said Wang Shulin, former head of South China Church's branches in the central industrial city of Wuhan.

Wang spoke in a crowded Beijing restaurant, watching the door for security agents. With him was Gong's niece, Li Pin, a former church leader in the eastern province of Shandong. Both are on the run from police, sheltered in the capital by church followers.

They say authorities confiscated 2 million yuan ($244,000) and church properties, arrested more than 20 church leaders and demolished the homes of five families who gave Gong refuge before his August 2001 capture.

At Gong's trial in Hubei, six women testified that he raped them, according to a handwritten summary of the trial obtained by supporters from his lawyer. The record gave no details of the proceedings.

Church members say female church followers were tortured with electric batons into making the accusations.

Also condemned to die were church organizers Hu Yong, 25, and Xu Fuming, 26, while 13 other people received penalties ranging from suspended death sentences to 20 years in prison. All are appealing.

Treatment of house churches varies widely. In some regions, they operate openly, advertising services with neon lights. Elsewhere there are frequent reports of church leaders being jailed and tortured.

Rumors of a more liberal policy emerged from a three-day meeting in December attended by President Jiang Zemin and other top officials.

But few details have emerged, and the message in state media was mixed.

Jiang was quoted as promising closer consultations with ``religious circles, especially on major issues concerning religion,'' but also as warning against ``infiltration by overseas forces under the cover of religion.''

Religious activists abroad say the strategy could be to embrace mainstream Christians while isolating more unorthodox groups. That way Beijing could enlist the help of Christians in coping with social stresses as state industry cuts millions of jobs.

Chinese government officials realize they have ``a major social order problem over the next five years and they need all the allies they can get,'' said Alex Buchan, who follows religion in China for Compass Direct, a Protestant-affiliated news agency in Santa Ana, Calif.