EDITORIAL: Pray for China, a waking global giant

Posted: 10/28/05

EDITORIAL:
Pray for China, a waking global giant

The distant rumble you hear is the sound of China racing to catch up with the rest of the developed world. Without a doubt, it will happen–soon.

A mammoth economic engine drives the process. China is home to 1.3 billion people and a rapidly growing middle class. Aggressive business leaders from America and Europe fill flights to Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai. They're on their way to make the mark of a lifetime. Their entrepreneurial spirit is rivaled only by the Chinese themselves, who are economically (if not politically) free to pursue their dreams. So, China is emerging simultaneously as the world's largest market and its most competitive marketer.

You can see new China in its cities. A drive down a Beijing boulevard illustrates China today: On one end, a warren of shanties. Study them, and you can imagine how Chinese peasants lived a century ago and centuries before that. Next stands a string of communist-era apartment buildings. They're mind-numbingly uniform. They're run-down and dilapidated, deteriorated long before their time. They're also indescribably depressing. Beside them, luxury high-rises scratch the sky. In them, you can glimpse entrepreneurial China's ambition. They point where this awakening giant wants to go–straight up, in style. If you were the betting sort, you would lay good money on the likelihood skyscrapers will replace the apartments and shanties before the Beijing Olympics open Aug. 8, 2008. China will sparkle in the world's limelight.

Of course, China isn't as simple as all that. China is more like the chaotic intersections in its teeming cities. Where pedestrians and bicycles and automobiles all compete for right-of-way. Where the color of traffic symbols seems to have no bearing on what happens next. Where everything takes place at once, in dizzying speed. And where Western expectations–wrecks and utter carnage–rarely occur.

Yes, China is a land of oxymoronic contrast. Although it's communist and socialist, free-market capitalism flourishes, from the souvenir hawkers at Tiananmen Square, to the multinational corporations whose brands dominate sleek office towers. Although China reveres its 5,000-year-old culture, it zestfully latches onto Western icons, from designer clothes, to ever-present cell phones, to luxury vehicles and pirated DVDs of Hollywood's latest movies. Although China is the world's most populous country, the density of its cities combined with the breadth of its expanse means millions of Chinese live in remote rural villages, where architecture, industry and lifestyle have changed little for decades. Although closed to the outside for centuries, China is surprisingly open to the West; traffic signs feature English as well as Mandarin, and shopkeepers and restaurateurs often speak English. You can eat with a fork in Beijing.

The story of Christianity in China also is complicated and filled with contrasts. The government is communist and therefore officially atheist. Since 1954, nondenominational Christian churches have been permitted to register and hold services through the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council, which assures the churches will be loyal to the government. Simultaneously, unregistered house churches have thrived across the country. Although house-church leaders have been persecuted and imprisoned–technically because they are not “patriotic”–their ranks have grown. They have asked Western Christians not to pray that persecution would cease, but that they would persevere, since blood of the martyrs has fertilized the faith.

A team of 19 Buckner Orphan Care International volunteers recently visited China. We could not interact with house-church Christians. Such a large group of Americans would bring dangerous attention. But we attended a Sunday worship service at the registered Ming Road Christian Church in Urumqi. Although some house-church advocates deride the registered churches, we experienced meaningful worship in a packed sanctuary. And although we could not understand the hour-long sermon delivered passionately by a young minister, we comprehended the fervency of the prayers, lifted simultaneously and verbally en masse by worshippers of all ages. We felt the warmth of our reception, as church members lined the aisles to greet us. We worshipped with sisters and brothers.

Combined, the church in China is growing by 30,000 new Christians each day. Pray that God will continue to bless and comfort the churches of China. Pray that God will give them strength and vision and courage. For as China emerges as a world leader, Chinese Christians may guide the 21st-century church.