The recent passage of China's anti-secession law has raised fears in Washington and Taipei that Beijing may use the legislation to declare war on Taiwan. For some fundamentalist Christians, this is just a further sign of the End Times. According to a Time/CNN poll, 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies in the Book of Revelation will come true, a number that is on the rise following 9/11. Among those that seek to interpret the prophecies, China is seen as a major player in the events that will usher in the apocalypse. As interpreted by Irvin Baxter--pastor, novelist and editor of Endtime magazine, which has a readership exceeding 150,000--the Book of Revelation foretells a coming nuclear war between the United States and China. As recounted in his The China War and the Third Temple (2001), China will initiate a nuclear attack against Los Angeles in response to America's interference in China's "rightful claims to the Island of Taiwan." While a work of fiction, this novel reveals how Baxter "envisions world events to play out based on his understanding of endtime Bible prophecy" and "is his view of how events will play out in the near future." And it is clearly understood that way by his many readers who take the Book of Revelation as a prophecy of the end of the world.

When discussing the many factors that comprise the U.S. decision calculus in its policy toward China, one area that must not be overlooked is the role of religion. Whether it be the role of religious interest groups, President Bush's own Christian faith or the promotion of religious freedom as a U.S. foreign policy objective--and these are clearly not unrelated issues--the role of religion in U.S. foreign policy toward China complicates relations, especially over Taiwan.

Ideals and Interests

The United States cannot afford a major conflict with China while still working to establish democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, nor as long as it must cope with other pressing issues on the horizon, such as a nuclear-armed Iran or North Korea. The best policy for the moment is therefore to continue what David Lampton called the "stealth normalization" of U.S.-Chinese relations.¹ While stealth normalization is very much a realist approach to managing the U.S.-Chinese relationship, it faces a real challenge in the idealistic commitment of the United States to promoting democracy, human rights and religious freedom around the world. Democracy promotion is viewed with great suspicion in China and is seen as a cover for a policy of regime change. Chinese leaders see it as part of an overall American strategy that they refer to as "peaceful evolution" (heping yanbian), where the United States seeks to promote Western-style political and economic systems across the globe, based upon what are labeled "Western" conceptions of individualism and personal freedom. The constant monitoring of religious freedom in China and the pressure exerted to respect religious liberty thus appear to leaders in Beijing not simply as unwelcome meddling in their domestic affairs but as part of a larger plot to eventually overthrow their system of governance.

China and the Evangelicals

While premillennialist Christians such as Baxter and his readership are not President's Bush's largest support base, he does rely quite heavily on the Christian Right in general, many of whom share similar views of China's "godless communists." Included here are public figures such as Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, a one-time and perhaps future presidential candidate, who publicly stated that "China should be a disfavored nation in every aspect of American foreign policy." Bush and other U.S. policymakers, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), have brought religion to the forefront of U.S.-Chinese relations, partly due to the influence of these and other American religious groups. Indeed, in the weeks leading up to Bush's February 2002 visit to China, which marked the thirtieth anniversary of Nixon's historic visit, many groups, including the Committee for Investigation on Persecution of Religion in China, lobbied to have religious freedom issues pushed high on Bush's agenda.

Many of these groups also fear China's growing military potential, tending to agree with the writings of Bill Gertz and Constantine Menges, whose book details how China "targets America" and "is steadily pursuing a stealthy, systematic strategy to attain geopolitical and economic dominance" of the globe. Military-strategic concerns also play a central role in Baxter's novel, which glorifies the Strategic Defense Initiative ("if only we had built the Star Wars missile defense system when President Reagan had wanted to") and praises Bush's missile defense program (which protects many American cities from nuclear annihilation in the book), while condemning the Clinton Administration for not having done more to restrain China back in 1996, when Beijing hissed at President Lee's characterization of cross-strait relations as state-to-state relations.

In the run-up to his presidency, Bush and his foreign policy team appeared prepared to pursue a strategy toward China in line with these views, intending a sharp break with the China apologists of the Clinton Administration. Condoleezza Rice noted that China was a "strategic competitor, not the 'strategic partner' the Clinton administration once called it."² The future deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, wrote in these pages in 2000 that "China's growing strength will pose challenges to the United States, its allies and its friends."³ Bush's first foreign policy challenge seemed to affirm his advisors' stance. The collision of a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft with a Chinese fighter jet off the coast of Hainan on April 1, 2001, and the resulting difficult negotiations he faced in order to secure the return of the aircraft and its crew, confirmed in his mind the tough stance he would need to take with China.

The events of 9/11, however, forced a major reassessment. Rather than looking for potential enemies, America's true enemies had made themselves readily apparent, and what was needed was nothing less than a crusade--a term the president used only once, but a very telling choice of words it was. As David Lampton pointed out, the president had slid all the way from his campaign formulations of China as a strategic competitor to dropping the competitor formulation altogether, adding that "America wants a constructive relationship with China."⁴

A Man of Faith

Throughout the history of U.S.-Chinese relations, religion has played a central role--from the early days when America saw China as part of its great civilizing mission and sent scores of missionaries to spread the Gospel, to the renewed attempts to evangelize that became possible with China's policy of "reform and opening" begun in 1978. At no point in the recent past has religion figured more prominently in U.S.-Chinese relations, however, than under President George W. Bush, a leader who holds the promotion of religious freedom as an issue dear to his heart and who is quite public about his own personal faith.

An evangelical Christian who had a "born again" experience in 1986, Bush clearly sees the world through a religious lens, and this impacts everything from his domestic agenda to his conduct of American foreign policy. As Stephen Mansfield put it in The Faith of George W. Bush (2003), "If the presidency is a 'bully pulpit' as Teddy Roosevelt claimed, no one in recent memory has pounded that pulpit for religion's role in government quite like the forty-third president."

While President Bush's religious convictions are most clear when it comes to his domestic agenda, his personal faith also surely shapes the way he views the rest of the world. Aside from the Christian language President Bush often purposefully uses, his mistakes and unintentional statements are perhaps more telling. When the president mistakenly referred to Greeks as Grecians, he was ridiculed in the media for his error, with some speculating that he got the word from the popular hair-coloring product. But the truth is more revealing; as anyone familiar with the King James version of the Bible knows, Greeks are often referred to as Grecians in that translation.

His immediate response to the 9/11 attacks is also telling, as he relied upon a religious frame of reference, referring to our retaliation as a "crusade" against the "jihad" launched by the terrorists, a wording he quickly changed. Nevertheless, Bush's proclivity is to frame the War on Terror as a conflict between good and evil (which is naturally interpreted by religious believers as between the children of light and the children of darkness, to use Reinhold Niebuhr's terms). The president's Christianity, therefore, is not just rhetoric; it shapes his view of the world.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Randall Schriver maintains that President Bush "is deeply and personally concerned over the state of religious freedom in China, and he has raised his concerns in his meetings with Chinese leaders." Shortly after the April 2001 spy plane incident, President Bush used the occasion to attack China on its religion policies. Vowing to make religious liberty "a guiding doctrine of our foreign policy", Bush sternly warned China that its persecution of religious believers would thwart its great power aspirations, no matter how successful it was in developi and acquiring advanced military technologies.

Just before his historic February 2002 visit to China, President Bush told an inquisitive reporter,

"I can tell you that in my last visit with President Jiang I shared with him my faith. I talked to him on very personal terms about my Christian beliefs. I explained to him that faith had an incredibly important part in my life, and it has a very important part in the lives of all kinds of citizens, and that I would hope that he, as a President of a great nation, would understand the important role of religion in an individual's life."

Weeks later, at his speech at Tsinghua University, Bush made perhaps his most inspired call for China to expand its realm of religious freedom, giving an impassioned speech that placed great emphasis on religious freedom and human rights. Bush explicitly addressed the issues of religious freedom and democracy, saying, "Freedom of religion is not something to be feared, it's to be welcomed, because faith gives us a moral core and teaches us to hold ourselves to high standards, to love and to serve others, and to live responsible lives." He ended his speech with the prayer "that all persecution will end, so that all in China are free to gather and worship as they wish."

Even after his trip to China, President Bush kept religious freedom as a major part of his foreign policy agenda toward China. In 2002 he joined several U.S. congressmen in trying to pressure the Chinese government on the issue of Li Guangqiang, a Chinese Christian who was taken into custody in May of that year for smuggling more than 16,000 Bibles from Hong Kong into southeast China. Then, in 2003, during the arrival ceremony for visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, President Bush said that, based upon the maturity of the U.S.-Chinese relationship, it was possible to talk freely and openly about their differences, including religious freedom. "China has discovered that economic freedom leads to national wealth", the president observed. He continued by stating that the growth of economic freedom in China gives reason to hope for increased social, political and religious freedom and that "in the long run, these freedoms are indivisible and essential to national greatness and national dignity."

Institutionalizing Religion

In addition to the ways in which the faith of President Bush affects his foreign policy agenda toward China, religion impacts U.S.-Chinese relations in the official diplomatic policy arena as well. Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), the State Department and the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) monitor religious freedom across the globe and make recommendations to the president, who then can impose sanctions as deemed necessary. The establishment of the USCIRF and the Office of International Religious Freedom (OIRF) within the State Department, along with their obligations to monitor and report on issues of religious freedom worldwide, has given the issue of religious freedom an institutionally based position on the U.S. foreign policy agenda, and thus in U.S. China policy. China is today listed as one of only eight countries in the world designated as Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), a designation made because a government "is engaged in or tolerates particularly severe violations of religious freedom" in a manner that is "egregious, ongoing and systematic." (The others are North Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Burma, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.)

Over the years, both the USCIRF and the OIRF have recommended a variety of policy tools for the president's consideration. The true power of IRFA, however, lies in its requirement that the government automatically impose sanctions upon countries found to be in severe violation on matters of religious freedom. While some of these automatic provisions were eliminated during the drafting of the bill, IRFA does set out directives for the president to follow in response to findings of religious freedom violations. Although the directives referring to the president's role in protecting international religious freedom are set out clearly, according to specific domestic and international guidelines, the president still has a final, determinative voice on how and when to implement these recommendations. For example, while the act requires the president to oppose religious freedom violations and to "promote the right to freedom of religion" based upon the State Department's findings and recommendations in its annual report, the president is permitted to waive the application of severe sanctions if he finds that doing so would "further the purpose of [the act]", or if he is compelled by an "important national interest of the United States." The mandatory impact of IRFA is therefore less potent than some may fear, but if a president or secretary of state so desired, the act could be exploited more than it has been thus far.

In February 2004, the USCIRF recommended to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell that China remain on the list of CPCs, labeling the repression of religious freedom in China "a deliberate policy of the Chinese government." In support of their recommendation, the commission cited the "violent campaign against religious believers, including Evangelical Christians, Roman Catholics, Uighur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and other groups, such as the Falun Gong", in the forms of "imprisonment, torture, and other forms of ill treatment."

In September 2004, the State Department released its annual International Religious Freedom Report. While the USCIRF's report was obviously taken seriously by the State Department's Office of International Religious Freedom, the report was much more diplomatic in its criticism of China, concluding only that the Chinese government's "respect for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience remained poor." The report also acknowledged the variation in religious freedom in different parts of the country (for example, Xinjiang) and in specific circumstances (differences in the way "house churches" or the Falun Gong are treated). The report highlighted two areas in particular, Xinjiang and Tibet, where the religious practices of Muslims and Buddhists, respectively, have been restricted and violated, but the report seemed sympathetic to China's plight in these regions, where religion, ethnic identity and separatist activities often become intertwined.

As in previous years, the secretary of state determined that in the case of China the operative sanctions under IRFA would be the existing restrictions on exports of crime control and detection instruments and equipment and that no new sanctions were warranted. In a statement made by Felice D. Gaer, vice chair of USCIRF, to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, while "the reliance on pre-existing sanctions may be technically correct under the statute, it is not defensible as a matter of policy", as it "provides little incentive for governments like China to reduce or end severe violations of religious freedom."

Democracies and Double Standards

The release of such reports as the International Religious Freedom Report and the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are always welcomed by Beijing with an onslaught of criticism, labeling them as "extremely unfair", as "going against the facts", and as "interference" in China's internal affairs. This past March, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said that he hoped the United States would "put more focus on its own human rights problems and work harder to resume the China-U.S. human rights dialogue."

Perhaps to aid us in that regard, for the sixth year in a row, China has released its own Human Rights Record of the United States. As the report states in its opening lines, while the United States poses as the world's "human rights police", it keeps silent on its own "misdeeds in this field. Therefore, the world people have to probe the human rights record behind the Statue of Liberty in the United States." The report then "uncovers" America's record in "human rights" in such areas as the invasion of other countries, the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq, racial discrimination, and the conditions of women and children in America.

Behind all of this rhetoric, there may actually be a dialogue underway. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu stated just after the release of the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices that "only the Chinese people themselves have the right to comment on the human rights situation in their own country." China, of course, then turned around and issued its own report on U.S. human rights practices, an action which seems somewhat hypocritical. This sort of behavior may indicate that China recognizes the legitimacy of the practice of human rights monitoring, only seeking to deflect the unwelcome criticism. Whether or not this dialogue will have an impact on the policies of either country, however, remains unknown.

Evidence that China may be taking human rights more seriously as a result of U.S. monitoring and pressure may be found in the recently issued white paper on China's Progress in Human Rights in 2004. The eighth of its kind since 1991, the report only contains one section on religious freedom, and it shows little understanding of what we mean in the West by the concept of religious freedom. While the report states that Chinese citizens enjoy the freedom of religious belief, they do so "in accordance with law", and only "the legitimate rights and interests of religious adherents and their normal religious activities" are protected. Of course, it remains up to the state itself to determine just what the law is and how it is interpreted.

The report does make brief mention of the issue of China's house churches, declaring that "normal religious activities--carried out either in venues for religious activities or homes of religious adherents in accordance with religious tradition--are taken care of by believers themselves and protected by law." This should be taken as a clarification of Beijing's position on small group worship and the house churches. While many Western observers wonder why Beijing is afraid of a few people reading the Gospel in the living rooms of China's house churches, these are actually cells of religious networks with millions of members who stay connected through the Internet, receive funding from fellow Christians in the United States and do their best to operate below the radar screen of Beijing's Bureau of Religious Affairs.

In promoting religious freedom and human rights in China, it is incumbent upon us to realize that Beijing's true intention is not to thwart the salvation of its citizens but to prevent the kind of destabilization that millions of organized Chinese--no matter what the purpose of their gathering--can bring about. And if we wonder whether or not religious actors and institutions could actually play such a role in the toppling of a powerful communist regime like Beijing's, we need only look to eastern Europe and the collapse of communism for proof. After all, this is where Chinese leaders got the idea.

1 "The Stealth Normalization of U.S.-China Relations", The National Interest (Fall 2003).

2 "Campaign 2000--Promoting the National Interest", Foreign Affairs (January/February 2000).

3 "Remembering the Future", The National Interest (Spring 2000).

4 "Small Mercies: China and America after 9/11", The National Interest (Winter 2001â€"02).