[The following report is from the Digging in the Walls section of O Timothy magazine, Volume 5, Issue 5, 1988. David W. Cloud, Editor. This material cannot be placed on BBS or Internet sites without express permission from the author. O Timothy is a monthly magazine. Annual subscription is US$20 FOR THE UNITED STATES. Send to Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org. FOR CANADA the subscription is $20 Canadian. The Way of Life Internet web site is http://www.wayoflife.org/ .]

Hong Kong churches will continue to be administered by local people without interference from China after 1997, according to Bishop K.H. Ting, president of the China Christian Council and head of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM). Speaking at a press conference in Hong Kong, he said, "We Christians in the north will not interfere and would not tell Hong Kong Christians what they should or should not do."

He added, however, that China would be unlikely to welcome Hong Kong or foreign missionaries to start evangelistic work in China. "For the last 30 years, we have tried very hard to make Christianity in China Chinese, and therefore we shouldn't like Christianity to pick up a Western image again," he said.

Although his remarks seemed designed to calm the fears of Hong Kong Christians, the overall impact of the press conference was less than encouraging as far as many Christians were concerned.

Their argument lay not so much with his comments about Hong Kong's future as with his comments about China's present. In that conference Bishop Ting stated that Christians in China suffered only during the years of the Cultural Revolution.

He denied reports that Christian leaders had been arrested in recent years and months, that worship was restricted to TSPM designated places, that evangelists were not allowed to approach Chinese under the age of 18, and that Christians were not allowed to accept Bibles from overseas sources. And any Christians who were in prison "must have committed some crimes," he said.

"These statements directly contradict internal Communist Party and TSPM documents, and letters and reports from many Chinese Christians," a representative of the China Ministry Department of Christian Communications Limited, reported to PULSE.

"Many Christians suffered terribly in the years prior to the Cultural Revolution," he said. "Since 1978, under China's open door policy, religion has been tolerated. However, many Christian evangelists and other have been arrested in recent months, and many more live in fear." He stated that in the last year at least 200 Christians have been arrested, interrogated, and in some cases sentenced to prison. In addition, he reported that TSPM internal documents explicitly restrict the freedom of people to worship in undesignated places and to evangelize children and youth. All of this is known to many Hong Kong Christians who maintain communications with friends and relatives in China.

"Now that the officially-recognized leader of the Chinese church has openly denied what is known to be the facts of the situation in China, can much reliance be placed on his other statements about the future of the church in Hong Kong?" the CCL representative asked. (PULSE, 5/18/84)