The China Aid Association, or ChinaAid for short, describing itself as a non-governmental organization in the US, focuses on some issues in the People’s Republic of China like human rights, the persecution of Christians, the detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang re-education camps by the Communist Party of China, Tibet issues and the “One Country, Two Systems” policy in Hong Kong. Celebrities who have been rescued from China include blind rights defender Chen Guangcheng, AIDS activist Gao Yaojie, and rights protection lawyer Gao Zhisheng and his family.
I.“Christian Institutions”on Stilts of The Gospel
On the homepage of the ChinaAid, there is a line from Matthew 25:40: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” Another scripture matches this, “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’” (Matthew 25:45) “whatever you did” in Matthew refers to Matthew 25:42-43, “For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink; I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.”
Then the scripture cited in the Gospel of Matthew goes, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (Matthew 25:46) In other words, the ChinaAid declares a Confession of faith with a sentence on its website: those who are not in ChinaAid’s “vision” will go to hell and those in this “vision” hold orthodox beliefs.
This Confession of faith dominates the entire organizational framework and actions of the ChinaAid. However, ChinaAid’s interpretation paradigm is not Matthew Gospel.
The theme of the Gospel of Matthew is that the Son of God, brought the kingdom of God, and that the Son of God forborne God’s wrath and punishment against sinners so that believers in Jesus could enter the kingdom of God. Matthew 12:28 says, “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
In Matthew, Jesus had five lectures: the first is in Matthew 5-7, the theme of which is that the proclamation of the Son of God brought about the kingdom of God; the second in Matthew 10, dealing with the relationship of disciples to the world, which makes it clear that Christians must be persecuted and that it is brave to flee when persecuted; the third in Matthew 3, concerning the final judgment and redemption of the kingdom of Heaven; the fourth in Matthew 18, revealing the relationship between disciples and disciples serving one another; the fifth in Matthew 24-25, the theme of which deals with the return of Christ and visions of the eschatological process, including the prevalence of Antichrists and false prophets. In Matthew, Jesus foretold his death and resurrection three times, culminating in the vicarious redemption indicated by Jesus’ crucifixion and death in Matthew 26-27.
It can be said that this complete Confessions of faith, based on biblical beliefs, is intentionally or deliberately figure-headed by the ChinaAid.
Ⅱ. “ChinaAid” is in Essence a Hybrid Heresy
The ChinaAid values not preaching the forgiveness of sins in the Gospel of Matthew but denouncing social injustice. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16) ChinaAid emphasizes the use of God’s word to prove their righteousness (“they” refer to righteous members like John the Baptist, Job, and Mordecai). They are not seeking after the kingdom of God or God’s righteousness but the maintenance of social justice.
ChinaAid regards itself as a “quasi-civil enforcement agency” of the “International Religious Freedom Act” of the US in China. The main difference between ChinaAid and orthodox house churches is that the fundamental goal of the former is not to spread the Gospel but to focus on the specially defined “religious freedom”.
The faith path of ChinaAid is not to deny the trinity, justification by faith, and the duality of God and man, but a hybrid heresy that overlies this fundamental belief in the truth.
Its President, Reverend Fu Xiqiu, never knows anything about the Bible, never preaches, and never serves in a church. Instead, his works center on politicizing the church and undermining the Gospel.
Ⅲ. Why Disregarding the Safety and Security of Xinjiang Han Christians?
The practice of supporting Muslim forces that persecute people all over the world fully proves that what the ChinaAid is looking forward to is not “a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13), but a secular, humanistic, and “righteous” country in its ideal. They think they are doing justice, upholding justice, raising their voices and suffering for it, but the focus of their faith have shifted from heaven to earth, from eternity to the temporal, from heaven to the earthly, earthly kingdom (Philippians 3:19-21).
This is why the business in Xinjiang has become the focus of ChinaAid recently. Xinjiang became Muslin when Buddhist believers were massacred in 960AD (the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period). Besides, 1862 witnessed the genocide of 20 million Han people during “the Hui Nationality Turmoil in Tongzhi Period”. Both happened on the eve of the collapse of or during the collapse of central authority. Today, fights against extremism, terrorism and separatism raised by the Central Government of China aim to stabilize order and uphold justice.
In the US, ChinaAid’s partners include the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the Lantos Foundation, Barnabas International and some other organizations. Its advisers include US Representative Frank Rudolph Wolf, David J. Kramer, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and William Inboden, a former White House staffer. This connection is part of America’s global political intentions, and its Christian attributes are disguised. It can be confirmed that even if it is Christian, the ChinaAid is full of the heresy of secularization theology, which is a “hybrid heresy” fishing in troubled waters.
Regardless of the safety and security of Han Christians in Xinjiang, the fundamental purpose of the ChinaAid is to please the politics of both parties in the US, especially the politics of the Democratic Party, which also opposes Christianity. As Fu Xiqiu’s doctoral thesis in London shows, he wants to “cross” the forces of Liberal Anti-Christian John Rawls with Neo-Calvinist AhamKuyper, who advocates the globalization of Christianity into a hybrid force could not be surpassed even by American parties themselves.
ChinaAid has few supporters and informants in Xinjiang due to its long-term activities among Han Christians in mainland China, thus making it difficult to obtain first-hand information about Xinjiang. Essentially, this gives rise to the suspect that ChinaAid’s materials concerning Xinjiang are fabricated or collected based on one-sided arguments of some extremists, separatists, and terrorists who oppose the central government.
Therefore, ChinaAid deviates from its theological commitment based on the love among brothers and sisters for one another in Matthew 25:40-45. In this commitment, the love between them within Christianity has helped each other in distress and rescued each other from hardships, not the forces of Muslim extremism and genocide that have massacred Christians countless times throughout history.
Ⅳ. Evangelical Efforts of Orthodox Churches are Needed to Balance ChinaAid
The organization is deceptive in the following ways: firstly, house churches that have not gained legal status in China provide excuses and opportunities for the ChinaAid to manipulate issues concerning freedom of religious belief; secondly, under the framework of “three trends” and “cultural missions” along with the support of overseas priests who claim themselves as reformed like Tang Chongrong (for example, Fu Xiqiu was appointed as a priest by Tang Chongrong), the boundary between the ChinaAid and orthodox church is blurred and even canceled. In this way, the mainstream churches could only stay away from the ChinaAid, privately name or criticize the ChinaAid, but could not openly reject ChinaAid as they are wary of heresies like “Xintiandi Church”.
As long as there is no change in the structure of the global confrontation between Chinese and Western values and institutions, the ChinaAid will be a deformed organization coexisting with the current structure and adapting to each other in the long run. The ChinaAid will exist for a long time as a parasite on the Christian society in mainland China and the China-US relations.
The most effective way to check and balance the ChinaAid is to carry forward the fine traditions of the Christian Church, which refer to keeping away from politics and giving play to the healthy strength of the Chinese churches to check and balance the secularized theological heresy of the ChinaAid.
