God's Double Agent (40 page)

“We feel threatened!” a delegate from the Chinese government yelled out. I’m not sure how she made the claim with a straight face. The Chinese delegation immediately pressured the Secretariat of the Human Rights Commission to expel me and all of the Woman’s Voice International delegates. Although he refused to expel the others, the security guards standing next to the angry Chinese delegation grabbed me.

I was escorted to the security room, where a female Chinese diplomat was standing next to me to register their complaint. “We feel threatened by this man.”

At that very moment those torture devices were being widely used against hundreds of thousands of victims of conscience in their country—especially women. Even the manufacturer described its product as “an ideal tool for the Chinese law enforcement officials.”

“How can you be threatened by just six seconds of demonstration when your government shoves that into the mouths of people like Sarah Liu?” I said.

Without any sort of investigation or hearing, they yanked my UN badge off my neck, forced me out of the room, and threw me into a UN police car.

China, of course, had manipulated the whole procedure. After I left, their delegation virtually ground the Commission proceedings to a halt for nearly an hour by making excessive demands upon the Secretariat’s time and immobilizing the regular proceedings of the Commission.

Later, I was asked to testify before Congress about this incident, and I summed up my UN experience by saying, “About nine years ago, I was forced into a police car and taken from my home to prison by the Chinese Public Security Bureau in Beijing for alleged illegal religious activities. Sadly, this is the second time I have been put into a police car, and the UN security guards did it. The only reason I was treated like that was because of a complaint filed by representatives of torturers.”

Sadly, my testimony at the United Nations ended up getting A Woman’s Voice International suspended for one year and did nothing to help save Pastor Cai. In fact, he and his attorney had been informed that the government told the court to prepare to sentence him for fifteen years, which was five times the original sentence.

Meanwhile, in China, far away from the false outrage of the well-heeled UN delegates, a PSB agent apprehended the attorney we’d hired to defend Pastor Cai. President Bush was coming to Beijing to discuss the upcoming Olympics, and China was doing everything it could to make sure their human rights violations wouldn’t factor into their talks. Our attorney was forced to temporarily relocate to a town a hundred miles from Beijing. Even though Pastor Cai was in jail and his attorney was forced into hiding, they were still in the heart and on the mind of the leader of the free world.

“What I say to the Chinese is . . . a free society is in your interests,” President Bush said during his speech with Japan’s Prime Minister Koizumi. He said that China should let people “worship without state control and to print Bibles and other sacred texts without fear of punishment.” In fact, the theme of his Asian tour was religious freedom. When he went to China, he visited Gangwashi Church, my former church whose seventy-year-old pastor had been yanked from the pulpit during that
near-riot. After listening to a translation of the sermon through a headset, President Bush and the First Lady stood on the steps of the church and said, “The Spirit of the Lord is very strong inside your church. It wasn’t all that long ago that people were not allowed to worship openly in this society. My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly.”

It didn’t take long for the media of the Chinese government to connect Bush’s comments about religious freedom and Bible printing to Pastor Cai. He was released after serving only three years.

President Bush proved time and time again that he had a heart for religious freedom.

In April 2006, I invited seven Chinese human rights activists to Washington, DC, for the Freedom in China Summit 2006 conference. Four were able to attend the conference: attorney Guo Feixiong, known as a “barefoot lawyer” from the Guangdong province, because of his efforts on behalf of marginalized groups; legal scholar Li Baiguang, who had taught house church leaders about their legal rights and demanded the government comply with its own religious policies; law professor and blogger Wang Yi; and one of China’s most prominent essayists, Yu Jie. Lawyer Gao Zhisheng, constitutional law scholar Dr. Fan Yafeng, and lawyer Zhang Xingshui were unable to accept the invitation, as Chinese security forces blocked their travel. After the conference, the four dissidents traveled with me back to Midland to spend some time at ChinaAid. That’s when I received a very important telephone call from the White House.

“President Bush would like to meet you and your fellow dissidents in the Oval Office to discuss religious freedom,” I was told.

I was elated. Although I’d formally requested to meet with the president before the conference and had several high-level
meetings in the White House, I didn’t receive any indication that a meeting with President Bush would actually occur.

I was asked to provide a list of the names of the people I would like included in the meeting, and when I hung up the phone I immediately began formulating my list. I couldn’t suppress a smile as I wrote down the names of my four guests, knowing their lives would be forever changed by this official White House invitation.

The three Christian dissidents were having a Bible study with my staff in our ChinaAid office. The fourth, Mr. Guo, was not a believer and had chosen to skip the Bible study session. When I got back to the office, I excitedly told Wang Yi, Yu Jie, and Li Baiguang the news.

“Who’s going?” Yu Jie and Wang Yi asked.

“All of you and Guo,” I said happily.  When I said Guo’s name, however, Yu Jie’s and Wang Yi’s faces fell. During our trip to DC, I had noticed some tension between the dissidents—namely, Yu and Wang didn’t seem to like Guo, but I couldn’t tell exactly why. I was bothered and puzzled by their reaction, but the extent of their disapproval wasn’t apparent until Yu and Wang pulled me aside before lunchtime, ushering me out for a walk and a more private conversation.

“If Guo goes,” they told me, “we won’t.”

“What do you mean?” I asked anxiously. I was very confused and even felt a little threatened.

“We’ll boycott the meeting at the White House if Guo remains on the guest list.”

Apparently, I had unwittingly waded into a schism. Christian activists Yu and Wang had a more modest approach of working within the government system, whereas nonChristian Guo was a human rights defender who fought to reform the system. In fact, Guo, along with Gao Zhisheng, was a pioneer of the lawyers’ human rights movement in China.

Later I learned from the other dissident, Dr. Li Baiguang,
that Yu and Wang had lobbied him to join their boycott if Guo was included, but Dr. Li had declined. He said he wanted to respect my decision as host.

I returned to my office and agonized over what to do next. This wonderful opportunity was being marred by squabbles and turf wars. On one hand, it would’ve been very offensive to disinvite Guo. On the other hand, it would be even more awkward to show up at the White House and have to explain a boycott.

Yu Jie, Wang Yi, and Taiwanese pastor and lawyer David Cheng, who also happened to be visiting Midland, entered the room, and I suggested that we pray over the decision.

After the prayer, Wang Yi and I went to Guo, who was in another room in the ChinaAid office. It was the most awkward moment in my whole life. Wang seriously told him that after our prayer, we felt he should not go to the meeting with President Bush. This might sound very holy—bringing concern over a decision to God for his guidance—but it actually was pretty cowardly. In a sense, we used this prayer to cover a decision I didn’t feel comfortable making. Guo was furious and even called Dr. Fan, lawyer Gao Zhisheng, and Zhang Xingshui to help persuade us to change our minds.

I hesitantly spoke directly to Guo.

“Feixiong,” I said. “I have something to tell you.” With great reluctance and a heavy heart, I began explaining I was no longer inviting him to meet with President Bush.

This was a decision I’d come to regret.

The next day, before I sent Guo to a previously scheduled New York appointment, I explained to him the true circumstances around my decision. Though he seriously disagreed, he respectfully didn’t mar the event with any sort of protest. He simply handed me a letter after I resubmitted a new invitation list to the White House.   

And so, after our dispute, the three dissidents, Deborah Fikes, and I traveled to DC to experience an unprecedented historical
moment for the Chinese house church movement. I tried to push the squabble out of my mind, and to focus on the real significance of the event at hand. The leader of the free world was sending an unambiguous message to China: he was aware of the crackdown on the religious groups, but America valued freedom.

“The president isn’t quite ready to see you,” said Pat Davis, an official from the National Security Council. She was the one who had originally notified me about the Oval Office meeting, and she seemed a little anxious. “My apologies.”

We were sitting outside the Oval Office, uncomfortable in our best suits, and the meeting had been delayed several times. Apparently, there was a faction of advisors in the State Department who passionately opposed our visit. They argued if we were welcomed into the Oval Office—the inner sanctum of power—it would unnecessarily inflame America’s carefully cultivated relationship with China. For several days prior to our arrival, they’d been going back and forth about how to best handle us. National Security Advisor Steve Hadley finally put his foot down and we received our invitation. However, there now seemed to be a last-minute complication.

“Would you like some coffee or tea while you wait?” an aide asked.

Earlier that morning, the White House had received a confidential, urgent memo from US Ambassador to China Clark T. Randt: if these dissidents were honored by an Oval Office meeting with the president, Chinese senior officials had threatened that they could not guarantee the dissidents’ safety upon their return to China. The White House took this to mean they’d be arrested or executed, and knew that they were perhaps placing these men in grave danger.

Michael Gerson, Senior Advisor to the President, who met with our delegation in his office in the West Wing of the White
House during our time in DC, later recounted the behind-the-scenes activity in his book
Heroic Conservatism
:

This development raised ethical questions. Should we cancel the meeting and prevent these dissidents from risking their lives? I considered some analogies. In a previous time, would I have advised Solzhenitsyn or Sakharov to lower their risky profile? Of course not. On a battlefield, would I prevent a soldier from taking on a heroic but risky mission to save others? Not if the soldier knew the odds of failure. A deep reverence for human life does not require us to oppose life-risking heroism.
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Instead of making the decision for us, an official entered our waiting area and told us what had been going on behind the scenes. He left the decision up to us. “Do you still want to meet with the president?”