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The government has been equally forceful in its crackdown on the Falun Gong. The mass meditation of 10,000 members it organized in Beijing in April petrified the communist brass, who had never heard of the sect. The idea of a religious group capable of mobilizing thousands of followers right at the doorstep of Zhongnanhai, the residential compound of China's leaders, is a nightmare. Inside China, some bureaucrats are worried that the Falun Gong protests signify a state system too weak and too dazzled by change to defend itself from threats. If thousands of quiet meditators can wreak this kind of havoc, they fret, just imagine what millions of angry rebels could do. Is China's ideological shield really that fragile? Says a young Shanghai painter who works with religious themes: "China is a bit like a moon colony, a place where life seems to exist sheltered only by a thin glass dome. Everyone knows it is supposed to be strong enough to resist meteorites, but it has never been tested." And no one in Zhongnanhai is eager to see it tested soon. Explains the Rev. Johan Candelin, a Finnish evangelical leader who has worked in China: "There are two words that define China's attitude toward religious freedom: control and stability."
In chaos-fearing China, those sound like wonderful values. But the nation is so large and its religious faith so broad and fiery that control and stability are nearly impossible to achieve. The government tries. It has lately stamped its approval on a special, God-free program of jingshen wenming--spiritual civilization--designed to ennoble people's lives with such values as hard work and family. But in a nation newly exposed to and passionately in love with the idea of choice, that kind of McReligion is falling flat. "Why can't I choose my own God?" Chinese ask themselves. When police in China's small towns plaster walls with slogans like CATHOLICS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO ENGAGE IN ILLEGAL PROPAGATION ACTIVITIES, Chinese no longer nod their heads and agree. They want to decide for themselves.
The conflict can sometimes be amusing. The nation's schools, for instance, are stocked with American-missionary English teachers--cheap labor. They're not allowed to preach, and principals always warn students that they are being taught by Christians. But now the policy backfires. "It made it easier for us," laughs a missionary who converted students as he taught, "because anyone interested in religion made a beeline for us."
It's hard to get an exact count of believers in China. The government's sharply edited numbers say there are 100 million, but outsiders suggest it could be more than double that. Beijing does say that since the 1980s, more than 600 Protestant churches have opened each year in China. More than 18 million Bibles have been printed, some on the presses of the People's Liberation Army. And the official Chinese Catholic Church is opening youth summer camps in parts of China. The world's religious leaders see this liberation of China's 1.3 billion souls as epochal. Says Candelin: "The revival of the Christian church in China is by far the biggest and most significant in the history of Christianity."