For Chinese Activist, Freedom Is Price of Religious Work

Wherever you think the story should begin, I say to Timothy Ho, go ahead.

He pauses for a few seconds before answering: “My father was a preacher in China,” he says, slowly. Ho then describes his family tree, which includes seven other brothers and sisters. One of those sisters had a son named Guoxing Xu, and he is the reason that we’re meeting in a bustling McDonald’s restaurant near Disneyland and talking about a subject that sounds so foreign to Americans.

Xu is 42 and has been in a Chinese jail since June. He was arrested, Ho says, for preaching Christianity in the Bao Shan district near Shanghai.

Over the next 45 minutes, Ho, who lives in Anaheim, talks about his nephew and the religious persecution that persists in China today. It is Ho who went to Shanghai in 1980 and helped his nephew get the visa that would bring him to the United States. And it is Ho, along with some of the other family members, who encouraged Xu to return to China two years later to preach the Gospel, knowing full well it could be dangerous.

The issue of worldwide persecution, much of it directed at Christians, has gotten more news coverage in recent months. To Ho and his large extended family in America and China, however, the story is old hat.

“This is his third time arrested,” Ho says of his nephew. After his arrest in 1989, Xu spent three years in a labor camp, Ho says. The government hasn’t given Xu’s family a reason for his latest arrest and, so far, has refused to let his wife see him. Ho believes that’s because his nephew has been beaten while in custody.

It would be overstating things to say that Ho is on a crusade to free his nephew. At best, Ho says, he’s trying to draw people’s attention to religious intolerance in China at a time when the Chinese government is increasingly soliciting U.S. commercial interests. He would appreciate it, he says, if people wrote polite letters to the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., protesting the imprisonment of Xu and others.

“The Communists, they put up a front,” Ho says. “They say, ‘We now have religious freedom.’ They try to blind Western people. I’m trying to expose this so people understand this regime is still a dictatorship, like every Communist regime before it.”

In July, the U.S. State Department reviewed Christian persecution around the world and criticized China, among other nations, for suppressing religious freedom. Some in Congress would link the issue to U.S. policy toward China, a matter that may be discussed when Chinese President Jiang Zemin visits America this fall.

Obviously, not all Christian preachers are arrested, Ho says. His nephew, he says with a smile, is “outspoken” and knew he was on a list of those being “watched” by the government.

Xu, who is married and has a young daughter, returned to China in 1982 after two years in Southern California because he felt the need to spread Christianity to his compatriots, Ho says. “Different people like my brother asked him not to go back, because my brother is not a Christian. But I encouraged him. I know his determination.”

His nephew hasn’t lapsed into self-pity over his plight. Rather, he says, he converted inmates while at the labor camp in the early ‘90s. During his current imprisonment, Ho says, church meetings have continued at his nephew’s house.

“I’m proud of him. I’m proud of him,” Ho says, firmly. “I think he is a hero in the kingdom of God. As a matter of fact, if you read the Bible carefully, Paul said we are destined to have troubles. That’s our portion as a Christian. Christ suffered for us. Now we have to follow his example and suffer for him.”

A self-taught preacher, Xu read the Bible long into the night while in the United States, Ho says. The number of Christians in China has been put at 70 million, Ho says, a huge leap forward from the 2 million when the Communists took over in 1949.

Ho pictures a day--and not far off--when China will allow complete religious freedom. It will take international influence and the continuing enlightenment of Chinese society, he says.

In the meantime, I ask, does the family fear that Xu will be forgotten in prison?

“We know that God cares for him,” Ho says. “That we are sure of. All we want is that God’s will be done. But on the other hand, we will do our best to make the case known to people, so people can pray for him, people can try to get him released, if possible. But even if he is executed or something like that, he is a martyr. He is a martyr for God.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com