God's Double Agent (35 page)

During our time at the center, however, we received the very disturbing information about the five South China Church leaders’ death sentences, which had been pronounced just a few days prior on Christmas Day. We also received multiple pages of smuggled-out testimonies of torture from those arrested in the South China Church.

“Let’s just pause,” I said, “and ask God what we should do in response to this information.”

Our hearts were heavy for our brothers and sisters being persecuted for their faith, and we cried out to God on their behalf.

“Actually,” Beau said after we had prayed, “I’m going to lead
a delegation with two current congressmen to visit China in a week or so. We’ll be the first United States congressional delegation to visit there since the attacks on 9/11.” In January 2002, he was assigned to talk about religious freedom issues with the Chinese president, and we were thankful to have that direct line of communication with such a world leader.

At the retreat, we discussed various ways to help the South China Church, and decided to help to provide a good legal defense. We hired a Christian attorney in Beijing to help coordinate a legal team of fifty-three lawyers, and decided to ask believers in all of our various networks to help cover the costs.

“I know we can get Christians to donate money,” I said. This draconian use of force to obliterate the church and the trumped-up charges disturbed people throughout the world. “But who’ll collect it?”

“We could have an organization sponsor it,” someone offered. “They could accept the donations and then designate the money for legal assistance.”

However, one Christian organization after another turned us down. No one was willing to accept the funds because they feared retaliation by the Chinese government. Without a nonprofit organization to sponsor us, the donations would not be tax deductible. Though I didn’t feel like I had the energy or the inclination to start my own nonprofit organization, I decided I had no choice. I had to help the South China Church.

When I got back home to Philadelphia, I sat in my attic where I set up an “office,” meaning a chair and a tiny desk next to boxes of Christmas ornaments and summer clothes.

“Justice for China,” I wrote, as I brainstormed names for my new organization. I crossed it out because it seemed too clinical.

“Just China,” I wrote down, but that sounded too selfish.

“ChinaAid,” I wrote. I wasn’t sure if it was catchy, but it did give me some room as I figured out the mission of the
organization. “Aid” could encompass a great deal of activities, after all, from flood relief to legal help.

In 2002, one man’s guilty conscience sent political shockwaves all over the world. An official in China’s Ministry of State Security felt terrible about how he’d been treating the various religious groups. He’d been told evangelical Christians, Falun Gong, Tibetan Buddhists, Uighur Muslims, and Roman Catholic bishops were all “cult members,” and was given very harsh protocols to deal with them. The official decided he could no longer execute the protocols, so he left his position, turned over top secret government documents to a man in New York named Shixiong Li, and went into hiding. Other officials in China’s PSB provided documents as well, which were smuggled out of the country by a network of Christians.

When Shixiong Li, president of the Committee for the Investigation on Persecution of Religion in China, or CIPRC, contacted me and spread the documents out on a table, I knew we had a treasure trove.

“Only twenty-eight copies of these were made,” Shixiong told me. He’d grown up in a Chinese gulag, after the PSB had put his parents in prison. “And here’s one of them.”

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

“You mean what are
we
going to do with it?” Shixiong said, smiling. “Will you be the executive director of CIPRC?” he asked. Though I was already stretched so thin in my life, I wanted to be a good steward of the material so many people had risked their lives to smuggle out of China.

When I went home and told Heidi of the new developments, her face fell. She’d spent the whole day running tedious errands in one of the largest cities in America, though she had just received her driver’s license and had trouble communicating in English.

“What should I do?” I asked her late that night after everyone else had gone to sleep. Heidi’s eyes were bloodshot, her hair was mussed, and her shirt was covered in baby spit.

“How much does the position pay?” Heidi asked, trying to find at least some silver lining.

“Zero dollars.” At the time, I made videos of Chinese Christian testimonies for Voice of the Martyrs, which paid five hundred dollars per month. We were able to live on that, since we didn’t have to pay for our car or lodging. I knew I had a responsibility to Daniel and Tracy, but as we looked at them, tucked so sweetly into bed, our consciences were quickened.

“There are so many ‘Daniels’ and ‘Tracys’ in China who are orphans because of those protocols,” Heidi said, fighting back tears. “We must speak out, even if it’s . . . hard.” Her voice broke on the last word.

And so, I assisted Shixiong in translating these top secret documents, which we compiled into a 141-page booklet called
Religion and National Security in China
in cooperation with human rights partners at Freedom House, Voice of the Martyrs, Open Doors, Compass Direct, and the UK’s Jubilee Campaign
.
We were all on edge.

These documents demonstrated for the first time in history how China’s central party leaders knew of and encouraged the torture of people who belonged to “cults.” Their fourteen “cults” were described as a “crawling danger to domestic security and defense,” but their definition of “cult” was so ambiguous and arbitrary it could be applied to almost anyone in an unregistered group. Also, the documents showed how extensively the Communists spy on members of these groups—both in China and abroad.

This rang true to me. Since we’d moved to Philadelphia, I noticed Chinese people sitting in cars outside my house for hours. Sometimes Heidi was afraid of running errands with the children. Were we imagining things? Or was it possible that
China had sent agents to Philadelphia in an effort to kidnap me . . . or even worse?

One rather chilling sentence encouraged local police to “purify the area” after religion had been introduced. Also, the documents detailed the use of secret government agents to infiltrate Protestant house churches, as well as ordering “forceful measures” against the Falun Gong, a relatively new spiritual discipline first introduced in China in 1992 that focuses on morality, meditation, and slow-moving qi gong exercises. In addition to the documents, we identified more than twenty-three thousand people arrested since 1983, and collected statements from five thousand torture and persecution victims in twenty-two provinces and two hundred cities.

Jonathan Chao helped write all the detailed footnotes for the documents, so I tried to credit his effort by making an editorial note at the end of the booklet. “Footnotes by Chinese church historian, Dr. J. C.”

“Why did you use my initials in here?” he said, when he first read the hard copy of our report. “The PSB will figure out that’s me in no time!”

To calm Jonathan’s nerves, I reprinted all of our materials without attributing him in any way. We were all afraid. Friends and even people associated with the United States government had warned us about what we were about to do. “China has assassinated people for much less,” one said.

In spite of our apprehension, we pressed ahead. On the morning of Monday, February 11, we held a press conference at West 51st Street in New York City, which not coincidentally was ten days before President Bush was to meet with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. We chose to hold the press conference in New York City instead of Washington, DC, because it was just months after the September 11 attacks. New Yorkers hadn’t wanted to
know so much about terrorism, but now they had stared it in the face and were resolved to fight it.

Shixiong approached the podium and cleared his throat. The reporters packed several rows of seats, and cameras flashed when he began speaking. “Today, we disclose confidential Chinese documents that were brought to us by brave people at the risk of their lives. We’d like to let these bloody documents speak for themselves, so that you can see what today’s religious freedom really means to the Chinese Communist Party!”

The reporters typed furiously on their laptops as he stepped away from the podium and I approached. I wished I’d brought some water. My mouth had gone dry, and I feared I might open my mouth and no sound would come out. I’d never held a press conference before.
Who will deliver the news if not me?
I thought, so I took a deep breath and began.

“We want to further push for religious freedom for the Chinese people,” I said before explaining the Chinese government was engaging in “double talk” by saying they had religious freedom while issuing secret orders to crush religious groups. I encouraged President Bush to shine a bright light on the human rights abuse when he visited China, to send a message to President Jiang: America values freedom.

It all felt a little crazy, to be sure. Here I was, a guy with poor English trying to direct the conversation of the leaders of the most powerful countries on the planet. Though we’d hoped our efforts would get attention and we made sure President Bush received a copy of our report, we weren’t prepared for what happened next.

Our document release made the front page of the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the
Financial Times
, the
London Times
,
Agence France Presse
, and
South China Morning Post
in Hong Kong.

“Listen to this,” I said to Heidi in the aftermath of the release, when I’d retrieved a copy of the
Washington Post
. “A China
specialist in London examined our documents and said this ‘could be among the most significant internal documents on religious persecution in China seen in the West.’”

“I’m proud of you,” Heidi said, as she paused at the door. “I really am.” She was leaving to go fill some prescriptions with her mother, father, and babies in tow.

When I finished reading, I looked up to see that Heidi was already out the door, and I was alone in the house for a few moments. There, in the rare silence of our home, I was overwhelmed with gratitude over what we’d been able to accomplish. I knew my father didn’t know about any of this, but I just wanted to hear his voice. I picked up the phone, dialed the number, and waited for his familiar voice. He’d never felt so far away. Qinghua answered the phone.

“Hello, sister!” I greeted. “I just wanted to check on you.”

“Everything is fine,” she said, raising her voice. “We are all very fine at home.” She paused, and I could hear the phone being muffled. She was weeping.

“Is Father okay?” I asked, to which she repeated, almost robotically, “We are all very fine at home.”

I knew. They’d gotten to them. After phone calls to family friends, I found out the PSB had gone back to my hometown after the document dump. No one was willing to explain the details, but I knew that my aged, disabled father was in trouble, and I needed to get him out of China. But how? I was barely able to escape as a relatively young man. How could he escape with agents monitoring his every move?

As I agonized over my father’s predicament, I flipped on the television to see a joint press conference between President Bush and President Jiang in Beijing. Human rights advocates were wondering if Bush would risk ruining the goodwill of the visit by bringing up religious freedom. Though I had to run to campus for my Greek class, I sat down on the sofa and turned up the volume on CSPAN. Bush and Jiang were standing behind
flower-decorated podiums on a stage with both American and Chinese flags. Jiang spoke first in Chinese, explaining several issues on which the two countries agreed. Then Bush gave his own review of their visit. “Our talks were candid, and that’s very positive. The United States shares interests with China, but we also have some disagreements. We believe we can discuss our differences with mutual understanding and respect.”