3 U.S. Clerics in China for Talks on Religious Freedom

Braving charges that they will be manipulated 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 content of their talk with Jiang but said they expressed concern to Chinese authorities over reports of religious persecution.

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

Argue, Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the New York-based Appeal of Conscience Foundation, 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 U.S. 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.”

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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 in June to block Clinton’s renewal of China’s trade privileges because of alleged religious persecution.

Intensive lobbying in Washington by religious groups has recently produced legislation such as the Freedom From Religious Persecution Act, which is to be debated by the upcoming session of Congress and could have serious implications for China. If passed, the legislation would ban foreign officials involved in religious persecution from entering the United States and reform U.S. refugee and asylum policies to benefit victims of such abuses.

The clerics’ visit comes as China is experiencing a grass-roots explosion of religious activity. Chinese officials count about 100 million followers of various religions, but millions more practice in secret. Church leaders say thousands of new temples and churches--legal and illegal--are being built each year in China.

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Human rights groups charge that the Communist regime uses legislation and police force to keep religious groups under strict government control and to defuse challenges to its 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. Jailed clerics are scorned in official media as common criminals, ethnic separatists or sexual deviants who use religion as a cloak for their crimes.

Even as the U.S. clerics tour China, a group of Chinese officials is on a 10-day visit to the U.S. 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 recent State Department allegations of religious persecution in China, ascribing them to American ignorance about China and a “Cold War mentality.”