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The Chinese government is caught between its rhetoric proclaiming the rule of law and its practice of ignoring or abusing the law when it suits its purposes.

Arthur Waldron, a University of Pennsylvania China specialist, says that this dilemma is the same type of contradiction that Martin Luther King Jr. and the American civil rights movement exploited. "How can the Chinese leaders explain their inconsistency?"

Chinese leaders also face an old cultural dilemma: Respect the law, or favor relationships. One of China's most famous legal scholars put it this way, "Respect the law and lose your family; respect your family and lose the law."

According to opinion polls, many Chinese believe that misconduct by public officials is the top social problem nationally. In March, one example unfolded in a village in Anhui province. CT interviewed several participants in a confrontation between a pastor, HRPM personnel, and police. This is an area north of Shanghai that is rich in grapes (for wine) and red sorghum, and it has a growing cottage industry of piece-rate sewing for fashion houses.

Concerned about the poverty, pastor Shu Huai-ting set up a sewing school in the home of a local Christian. Each day, the school opened with Bible study, singing, and prayer. Not all students were Christians.

One day, local police burst into the school, saying that they were going to search for and confiscate evidence that the school was an illegal church. Article 36 of the Chinese constitution of 1982 guarantees freedom of religious belief and "normal religious activities," but the government heavily regulates religious practice, approving leaders, doctrine, and organizations.

Human rights lawyers say that key religious regulations are ambiguous on the size of a meeting that requires government approval. A hostile or overzealous official could ban even small Bible studies. HRPM believes such enforcement is unconstitutional.

To pastor Shu, the government seemed to be systematically dismembering their new house church alliance. Every leader of the alliance had been or would shortly be arrested or detained by police. So Shu, who is vice president of the house church network, hired HRPM lawyers who prepped him on what to do if the police interfered with Christian activities.

Shu told the police to stop. "What you are doing is illegal. I am calling my legal counsel in Beijing!"

The police officer in charge watched warily as pastor Shu used two cell phones to alert legal counsel. One call was to Fan Yafeng, the Chinese legal scholar in Beijing. The other call was to a former Communist Party intellectual who has become a Christian.

After brief phone conversations, the pastor told the police officer, "My legal counsel says you need a search warrant with an official red seal. Where is it?"

Unwilling to provoke Beijing-level attention, the policeman gruffly shouted, "We don't have a search warrant, but we will get one. You stay here until I get back!"

Professor Fan explains later that he didn't expect this would stop the police. It would only slow them down. "Our goal," he tells CT, "is to get the police to think and act in terms of legality. It is a grassroots way of building a rule-of-law culture in China."

Sure enough, the police returned. Their leader triumphantly presented a warrant. "See!" he said. "This is a warrant signed by my captain, and it has a big red stamp!" He ordered his men to continue their search and to confiscate Bibles, songbooks, furniture, sewing machines, and everything else of value.

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September 2006, Vol. 50, No. 9