U.S. Church Leaders Push Chinese On Religious Freedom Critics Say Clerics Are Being Manipulated By Communists

Braving charges of manipulation by China’s Communist regime, three U.S. religious leaders met with President Jiang Zemin on Thursday in a high-profile bid to initiate a dialogue on religious freedom.

The clerics declined to detail the contents of their talk with Jiang but said they expressed concern over reports of religious persecution to Chinese authorities.

“We can tell you we’ve had very meaningful dialogue. … We were not lectured,” said the Rev. Don Argue, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Argue, Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York and Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J., will visit religious leaders in Nanjing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Tibet and Hong Kong before returning to the United States and delivering a preliminary report on their trip March 5. Journalists have not been allowed to accompany the delegation.

The visit, decided upon during October’s summit between Jiang and President Clinton, highlights concerns that increasingly affect Washington’s human rights policies and Sino-U.S. relations.

Even before the delegation arrived, religious groups and human rights organizations questioned whether the clerics would get an objective picture of religion in China or whether they would be used for propaganda purposes.

“They were invited not just to start a dialogue but to investigate religious freedom,” contends Joseph M. Kung, president of the Stamford, Conn.-based Cardinal Kung Foundation, a human rights group focusing on religious freedom in China. “They cannot get an accurate picture by just hearing the official side of the story.”

The clerics would neither confirm nor deny any plans to visit clandestine “house churches,” which the Chinese government views as illegal and human rights groups say are the focus of police harassment.

The clerics said Clinton chose them for this trip because of their experience in human rights and religious diplomacy, not for their critical stance toward Beijing.

“The three of us were selected because we have proven records of being friends to China,” said Argue, whose group lobbied for continuing “most favored nation” trading status for China.

By contrast, the influential Christian Coalition tried last June to block Clinton’s renewal of China’s trade privileges because of alleged religious persecution.

Human rights groups charge that China’s Communist regime uses legislation and police force to keep religious groups under strict government control, and to defuse challenges to their political power from charismatic cult leaders and undercover foreign missionaries.

China has not taken foreign criticism of its religious policy lightly and has launched a vigorous propaganda counteroffensive. In numerous recent editorials and policy papers for foreign consumption, Beijing has denied persecuting Chinese citizens for their religious convictions, much as it denies imprisoning them for their political beliefs.

Even as the U.S. clerics tour Beijing, a group of Chinese officials are on a 10-day visit to the United States at the invitation of evangelist Billy Graham.

At a news conference in New York on Wednesday, delegation leader Ye Xiaowen, head of the Chinese Cabinet’s Religious Affairs Bureau, dismissed a recent State Department report’s allegations of religious persecution in China, ascribing them to American ignorance about China and a “Cold War mentality.”