The host rose to his feet, waited for silence, and then in a toast heard round the world declared: “The Chinese people and the American people have always been friendly to each other. We express our good wishes for the American sportsmen and people.”
A few weeks, even days, before, this statement of people-to-people good will would have been considered highly unlikely. But something had happened in Peking’s inner chambers to alter the twenty-year-old policy of keeping the Americans at a well marked distance. As incredible as it seemed, American athletes and newsmen were now standing on the ancient Chinese earth—and a leading member of the All-China Sports Federation was offering a toast to their health.
That week all other news stories took a back page. And for once, the leading news dispatch from Asia was not laced with body counts, success or failure of the latest bombing mission, and pathetic tales of refugees in flight, though the war continued and Asian suffering was no less intense.
The historic ping pong tournament quickly set new diplomatic wheels turning, and within a matter of weeks President Nixon was electrifying the world with an announcement that he planned to visit Red China.
China’s smile was both predictable and baffling. Analysts began analyzing. Commentators commented. Practitioners of that esoteric science called “China watching” watched and listened more carefully than ever before.
What does it all mean? Is this a sincere gesture of friendship to the United States, or is it a defiant move calculated to agitate the leaders in the Kremlin? Is it the start of a long and painful process of cementing cracks in international relations? Or is it simply a knee-jerk reaction to the American government’s relaxation of certain travel and trade restrictions?
There are lots of questions, and few solid answers. But one thing is certain: China continues to ease out of her two-decade-old, largely self-imposed isolation.
To argue that China is removing all barriers to the West would be the height of naïveté. But it does appear that there might now be greater opportunity for an open forum between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Although even our age of instant everything has not made Peking and Washington allies overnight, obstacles now seem somewhat less formidable.
Chou En-lai is certainly not forsaking his half-century-old dedication to Communism, which he espoused during his student days in France. As host at-large for the Americans he simply exercised his strong other side—that of Chou En-lai the statesman, the capable go-between who played the key role of moderate so well during China’s recent Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
Peking’s instant thaw chilled some, but most Americans seemed to warm quickly to China’s diplo-athletic move. Congressmen, athletes, tourists who had been everywhere else, and professional and arm-chair China-watchers began seeking visas to visit China. Promoters of the feminine form made efforts to invite Chinese models (in padded blue jackets and trousers?) to participate in an American beauty contest. Chinese table-tennis players were invited to play in the United States. American tennis professionals began searching for mainland Chinese who could be asked to take part in a U. S. tennis tournament.
Evangelical Christians throughout the United States joined in the excitement. “Could this be the open door for which we’ve prayed so long?” many asked. For some weeks one group had rhapsodized that a campaign for the evangelization of China “would begin exactly sixty days after the U. S. State Department approves travel into China.”
This concern for China should be recognized as well-meaning, but much of the thinking is woefully misguided.
Even before the table-tennis team went into China, one Christian group with an apparent flair for the dramatic suggested that 1,000 three-man teams be immediately mobilized to evangelize the China mainland—a feat to be carried out by a “two-week crusade.” These traveling triumvirates—composed of preacher, musician, and layman—would be the vanguard for the new thrust into China. The literature this group sent out challenged the reader: “Let us be ready to be first” into China with the Gospel.
And you can bet your fortune cookies that in the days ahead this kind of thing will be proliferated by malinformed Christians who, though they mean well, are so immersed in the concept of “send the foreign missionary to China” that they show shocking insensitivity to the China scene as it actually is.
Another Christian mission has stated in its official China policy that when its missionaries go back to China, they should return to districts where they formerly worked and “dig up” any treasure they might have buried there at the time of their hasty 1949–50 retreat.
Is there really a chance we will return to a place of former ministry and act like the mob of capitalist lackeys that Peking has so effectively convinced its people we are? Are our actions going to support the time-worn accusations that all foreigners are suspect and that missionaries from the “bad old days” were nothing more than poachers on Chinese terrain, guilty of an opportunistic Christian capitalism?
During this time of a newly heightened awareness of China, Christian missions need to scrutinize their motivation for involvement. Is this the historical time for the foreign missionary even to consider a move back into China? If it is true, as some reports indicate, that the Body of Christ in China is very much alive and functioning, is it not possible that by rushing in we might quench the work of the Holy Spirit already begun in the lives of Chinese believers?
Christian missions must determine before God that they are more concerned for China and its people than for a possible “big story” to adorn the front page of a newsletter. Just how sensitive are we to the needs of Christ’s disciples on the mainland? Have we seriously considered our potential future relationship to that body of believers? Do we really empathize with these witnesses who have shared Jesus Christ with fellow Chinese during years of suffering and persecution? Or would we, given the chance, ride rough-shod over that body with a foreign import that does it “the way it has always been done”?
Another piece of Christian literature on China recently predicted that when Mao Tse-tung dies, the government will come crashing down and China will immediately fling its doors open wide, readily accepting the Gospel.
Such thinking is painfully wishful. Groups that make such irresponsible statements seem to be unaware that the government is currently run by a committee, and that China has always been and always will be too big to crumble all at once. In fact, the future Chinese leaders who are waiting in the wings may well be more totalitarian and ruthless in their management of the country than those presently in control.
I suggest that we read the signals from Peking with considerably more care, especially at this time of heightened excitement. Chou En-lai has invited a few Americans in to China to have a peek. He did not say, “Welcome to open house!” Chou told the visitors that a new page had been opened in Chinese-American relations. He did not say that major policy problems between Peking and Washington had been solved, or that solutions were imminent. It does not appear very likely that Americans, Europeans, and any other camera-laden visitors will be rushing into China in the near future. China may some day play host to the ubiquitous Western tourist, but not just yet.
Evangelistic zeal must be maintained. But Christians, whose primary concern should be sharing the message of redemption in Christ, need to subordinate their desire to be the “first ones into China” to a prayerful waiting on God for his direction. All of us involved in Christian mission need to pray that God will deliver us from that kind of promotional activity that leads us to capitalize on the suffering of others for the untidy purpose of keeping our own operations solvent. Rather than contributing to an already foggy situation by high-strung rhetoric and high-handed appeals based on incomplete evidence, should we not as Christians humbly ask God to direct our thoughts toward China, so that we may know his purpose for that country of 800 million?
Good strategy always involves a process and seldom includes an immediate solution. Our concern for China needs to take a form a great deal more substantial than hastily-conceived plans hatched from a few weeks of unrealistic enthusiasm.
It is always tempting to draw a major conclusion from a minor premise, and we are close to doing just that regarding China. Perhaps Toynbee was right when he observed that Americans are like a large dog, wagging its tail in a small room. Americans are well known for their generosity, boldness, and periodic reckless advances. Sometimes we are so raring to go that we become blind to the possible negative repercussions of our actions.
In The New Man for Our Time, Elton Trueblood reminds the reader that “error is neither patent absurdity nor obvious falsehood; for the most part, it is truth out of context.” For a Christian to want to share his faith is right. For a follower of Christ to want to see Chinese on the mainland come to know God reflects obedience to the Great Commission. But the important questions remain: Who, how, when? We will be guilty of driving truth out of context if we do not supply the right answers to these questions. And at this point, the answers are written deep in the heart of God.
Robert Larson is executive secretary of the Asia Study Group, a Hong Kong-based service ministry of World Vision International that has primary study interests in Mainland China. He previously did three years of research in Hong Kong for Far East Broadcasting Company. He has a master’s in Chinese language and literature from Stanford.
