Bob Fu founded China Aid in 2002 to bring international attention to religious persecution and human rights violations in China. Bob's memoir is titled “God's Double Agent.”
Federal Newswire
How did China Aid come into being and what is its mission?
Bob Fu
I was a seminary student at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Back [in] that time, fax machines were still working, so I was receiving facts about the persecution in China.
Many of [the victims] I knew. They were pastors from the grand church to the house church. Leaders kept telling me they were being arrested, detained, and tortured, simply, of course, for organizing a house of worship and a prayer meeting.
Sometimes on a Saturday night - daytime Sunday in China - I would hear the cries from those brothers and sisters when they were being attacked by a group of the public security officers in the middle of their worship. I could hear their chairs [being] knocked down. They were telling me “Pastor Fu, please pray for us, please help us.” I [had already] come to the US… and started enjoying the very fabric of religious freedom, speech, freedom of association and assembly.
How could I sit silently without at least getting my phone and calling a few brothers, sisters, and Christian leaders to pray for them, and also to speak up for them?
That's how the ministry of China started back in the year 2002, when we learned a group of our House Church leaders were sentenced to death. That was the launching day.
From that time on we started engaging and exposing those [who were] persecuting and encouraging those who are [being] persecuted. We supplied financial support for the family, prisoners, hiring lawyers, engaging rule of law training, and for biblical training.
Those are the pillars of this ministry. Back in the Bush years, they made religious freedom one of the top foreign policy initiatives, and that helped a lot.
When we came here in 1997, there was a hot debate on the renewal of Most Favored Nation [status for China]. The WTO, and President Clinton I think, certainly made a huge strategic mistake. We continue to fail today by delinking [human rights] with trade and other business initiatives. That gives the CCP a hand in continuing the persecution.
Federal Newswire
As trade with China normalized in the 1990’s, how were you still able to access important leaders?
Bob Fu
Back to Bush 41, 33 years ago was the golden time in the sense of sympathetic voices from policymakers from both the National Security Council to President Bush himself. Of course, in Congress there's still a group of very principled leaders such as former Congressman Frank Wolf, Congressman Chris Smith–who's still serving–and many others.
They are very focused on the religious freedom issue. Every time we organized a delegation from China consistent with the human rights lawyers and with underground church leaders, we were always invited to the White House at the National Security Council, with the attending audience coming from those in the President’s circle.
President Bush personally told me the reason he scheduled his visit to China [to include] a weekend so he could schedule a Sunday worship in a government-sanctioned church. He said he couldn't go to a house church, and he wanted to make a point to the Chinese people.
We got so many church leaders and even top political dissidents released. Because of that kind of a top public and private diplomacy, it’s now a totally different scenario and reality.
Federal Newswire
How different is Xi Jinping as a leader of the Communist Party, and how much of this problem is from the transforming of the Communist Party?
Bob Fu
I'm glad you touched on this issue. During the end of the Bush years, in terms of their China policy, I received a phone call from a good friend in the National Security Council saying “we have done so much.” I said, “well, I think that entanglement with business interests were across party lines.”
Both the Republicans and Democrats are guilty of those appeasements. Of course, aggressive and greedy American companies also became lobbyists for the CCP's agenda. Some became a kind of volunteer for the CCP's ideological interest.
Back in the 1990’s, there were voices in Congress against the CCP's human rights record. But when you get into the twentieth century, Xi [complained that] whenever there is a bill on China 90% positive, 10% is kind of a negative. So, you have tens of millions of dollars from a US company lobbying to kill it. I think it happened that both in Bush and Obama's time, and even Trump's time there was heated battle.
I did see a major shift during President Trump's time. I think you have to see Xi Xinping's own policy. China didn't help their allies in greedy corporate America by launching a Cultural Revolution 2.0.
They're lobbyists, and I think American Western society in general [woke] up. Plus, I think of the policies from Secretary Pompeo to President Trump. The first time we had the international religious freedom ministerial summit in the State Department, it was hosted by Vice President Mike Pence, with the Secretary of State on stage inviting up those victims of persecution.
We also established this international religious freedom alliance. It's telling to see Jinping tell persecutors that religious freedom is no longer just talking points.
This dialogue… became one of the highest level national foreign policy initiatives. You have President Trump inviting these victims to the Oval Office. He talked with them for one-and-a-half hours.
Taiwan even established an ambassador at large for international religious freedom. That gave us a lot of room at least to pursue and help religious freedom.
Unfortunately, both in President Obama's time and especially currently with President Biden's administration, religious freedom kind of went backward.
Federal Newswire
What is life like for Christians in China?
Bob Fu
Our brothers and sisters in the underground churches under Xi Xinping's brutal dictatorship are, across the board, being persecuted. One of the first wars Xi Xinping launched as he took office was a so-called “forced emulation of the cross” campaign.
Basically, all of a sudden, overnight a wooden cross on the rooftop of the church building was designated as a national security threat, and the government mobilized hundreds of thousands of bulldozers and basically destroyed and burned all these crosses on the rooftop. Those churches that have a building are government sanctioned and are so-called 3 self patriotic movement churches.
When those leaders were not cooperating with the government demolition campaign, they ended up being imprisoned, and some were sentenced to 10 to 14 years imprisonment for not working with the government to tear down their cross. This is the kind of thing that we see the Communist Party fight against. To use Ambassador Brownback's words, “the CCP launched the war against God.”
For the first time since the Cultural Revolution, we have seen millions of Chinese Christian children being forced to sign a Communist Party prepared form to renounce their faith in public.
We have seen the government basically mandate that all the churches have to put a portrait of Chairman Mao, under whom at least 80,000,000 people died, on the pulpit of the church.
Congregations have also been forced to sing the Communist Party's national anthem before their worship services. This is really a Cultural Revolution 2.0 or maybe 3.0.
At every church in the four corners, in front of the pulpit, and outside the church, facial recognition cameras have to be installed so that they can recognize and sort out if there is anybody under 18 years old who are forbidden to enter into the church building.
[They’re also looking for] Communist Party members, military service members, any civil servants, or educators, and teachers. These are so-called 5 forbidden policies not allowed to enter into a church building. And there are serious consequences, from losing public benefits, to losing their jobs or being kicked out of their schools.
This is happening right now in China. But our brothers and sisters know, of course, this is the nature of the CCP. They want to control and destroy even perceived spiritual enemies. As a fellow Christian, we know it's spiritual warfare. It's not a battle of flesh and blood.
The revival among the churches will continue. My friend Pastor Wong Yi, who President Bush met in the White House back in 2006, became a house leader and was sentenced to nine years imprisonment for preaching the Gospel of John 3:16: “for God so loved the world.”
My Chinese-American friend, Pastor Don Hall, received seven years imprisonment for setting up 16 schools in the Burma-Chinese border area for 2,000 children who otherwise would not have an education opportunity. He’s still serving.
This is the current reality, but we know in this world that no matter what a party or ideology may do, the Word of God and the church cannot be removed. Maybe physically they can destroy them, but we all know I mean the church can never be destroyed as the body of Christ.
Federal Newswire
How can citizens help in China and other areas affected by China’s crackdowns?
Bob Fu
The CCP is both a domestic threat in China and a global cancer. What is known as the CCP’s long arm, their transnational repression [wing], even led the FBI to set up an office on the CCP's threats on US soil.
We started the conversation [by stating this was a] consequence of a miserably failed policy. [We thought] appeasing the CCP–by giving them more trade, technology, and money–would incentivize them to democratize and grow the middle class. Where's the middle class in China? They kind of became the peasant class.
I think the CCP is in perhaps the worst economic crisis since their reopening in the 1980's. Where is the democratization?
Everybody from the left and right, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Family Research Council, we all recognize that human rights and religious freedom have reached the worst levels.
We forgot to even mention the concentration camps the CCP engineered in western China. According to the Pentagon's estimate, between one million to three million predominantly ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and some Han Chinese Christians are being [held] in modern day concentration camps by the CCP.
What can we do? Certainly, we should encourage people to keep remembering and to pray for [the persecuted]. That can make a whole lot of difference as [it says in] Hebrew 13 in the New Testament, “remember those who are imprisoned as if we are the fellow prisoners.” If part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers. This is a church metaphor.
On the policy level, I think we certainly need to learn a hard lesson that the more you appease the CCP, the more aggressive they will become. How much did we get after we granted them WTO status?
I have friends in New York City [who] we rescued from China. They went to lower Manhattan to hold a welcome ceremony for President Tsai Ing-wen from Taiwan when she made a stopover, and they were physically beaten up. Three of them were sent to the hospital. Those thugs were all sent by the Chinese consulate. There's a public record on that.
I think we should take note that the CCP also set up their own biolabs in California. Who knows how many more are in other parts of the country? We also have overseas Chinese police stations in New York City, Texas, and other states.
We should ask policy makers to take a very principled and strong push to get rid of the Confucius Institutes and overseas police stations. Make it clear to the Chinese government that if you continue to do this, it will impact your economic supply chain and many other issues.
The US cannot tolerate this. Chinese leaders are enforcing their own kind of CCP laws in American universities. Congress should pass… enforceable bills to have the administration hold the CCP accountable every time they are doing this.
I felt so sad when I saw Secretary Hillary Clinton go to China and tell the Chinese, "the priority is climate change, nuclear issues, and economic issues.” While we agree those other issues are important, we can't differentiate from our core values and constitutional freedoms.
This sent a wrong signal to the dictators, and discouraged our brothers and sisters and those who are persecuted and actually love America. During Covid time, you saw leftist ideology rising up. Communism and socialism became a fashion to be promoted. That's very dangerous. I think we should certainly be on alert.
Federal Newswire
Where can we go to find out more about your work?
Bob Fu
For those of you who want to join the fight for freedom, liberty, and religious freedom, go to www.chinaaid.org. We play a role in supporting those who are persecuted, but also in advancing religious freedom and rule of law at the policy level.
You can set up a prayer meeting or advocacy group to help the lawmakers in your community understand the issue and push for concrete actions to tackle this existential threat, to not only America [but] our civilization.
