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The passage of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for China is nearly complete, due in part to five last-minute faxes from house-church leaders in China. But many Christian activists wonder if improved trade relations in reality will help or hinder freedom of religion in China.The House of Representatives passed PNTR May 24 on a 237–197 vote. Until a few days before the vote, however, many legislators were undecided. Business, labor, political, and religious lobbyists put on the most extensive legislative battle in years.Traditional political alliances were turned topsy-turvy. But the odd couple of top Republicans siding with the president they tried to impeach proved decisive, staving off an ad-hoc assortment of trade unionists, small businesses, human-rights activists, and conservative religious groups.On both sides, the alliances were marriages of convenience that participants think will have little long-term durability. There were also some surprising realignments that may have more long-term consequences for Christian politics and China ministry."The labor groups and people concerned about jobs were on a parallel fight [with religious conservatives]," says Focus on the Family vice president Tom Minnery, who dismisses the possibility of closer collaboration. "I doubt that they will help us in the future. But we didn't lose any allies."Anti-PNTR evangelicals were startled, however, when prolife stalwart Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) announced his support of PNTR. One evangelical leader was on his way to Hyde's office when he was stunned to hear of the congressman's defection. "I knew that the tide had turned," he says.

Pro-PNTR evangelicals pulled the proverbial rabbit out of a hat with a packet of faxed statements from leaders of China's unofficial, persecuted house churches, including Zhang Rong-liang of the Spiritual Gifts Movement in Henan Province. Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-Penn.) distributed the faxes widely among wavering House members.Anti-PNTR forces scrambled to counter with appearances by well-known dissidents in exile, and belatedly attempted to fly Chinese house-church leaders to Washington.The entry of Chinese house-church leaders into the congressional debate was unprecedented in its effect. Although ruthlessly persecuted, house-church leaders have managed to organize a nationwide ecumenical Unity Movement. The leaders' deliberations about the effect of trade policy on the religious situation in China were sophisticated, according to an observer.The entry of the faxed statements forced American evangelicals on both sides of the debate to forge deeper relations with their Chinese counterparts. "We made new allies in the dissident community," observes Bill Saunders, Family Re search Council's human-rights counsel. Brent Fulton of the information clearinghouse ChinaSource says that if the debate brings American and Chinese evangelicals into closer dialogue, that accomplishment "would be wonderful."

Several anti-PNTR leaders expressed skepticism that Chinese house-church leaders actually wrote the faxes or knew what they were signing. Indeed, the five fax documents were in only three different handwritings. None of the five faxes actually called for passing PNTR. Instead, the faxes called for China's admittance to the World Trade Organization, an international regulatory agency independent of the United States. "The letters from house-church leaders in China have a hard time passing the smell test to me," says a doubtful Minnery. "That the people being persecuted would help their persecutors to do more doesn't seem likely."But Daniel Su of China Outreach Ministries, a pastor who examined the faxes, says the whole point of the PNTR debate among evangelicals is whether free trade will increase freedom of religion. Many house-church leaders, he says, have concluded that free trade will eventually mean more freedom to preach.

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July 10 2000, Vol. 44, No. 8