China News

edited by Tony Lambert, OMF Chinese Ministries

MINISTERING TO MAINLAND CHINESE MIGRANTS IN HONG KONG
(The following report was written by Jessie, who works full time with OMF in Hong Kong)
Mr. Chan is from Hong Kong. Mrs. Chan, a Mainlander, and their child Peter lived in China. A few years later both mother and child were allowed to migrate to Hong Kong.

Every day 150 migrants like Mrs. Chan and her son arrive in Hong Kong from China. Since 1997, after the handover of Hong Kong, the influx of Mainland Chinese has swelled. Many find it difficult to adapt to life in Hong Kong. The difficulties faced by the children include overcoming their poorer standard of English and switching from the simplified to traditional Chinese script. Most mothers find it difficult to relate to the locals. Apart from their social needs, they are also spiritually needy. Many have never heard the gospel.
How do we reach out to them? As an OMFer, I have been burdened about this since 2002 when I started my third term of ministry in Hong Kong. My co-worker and I have been working among them through our secondment to a local Hong Kong church since May 2002.

We started English lessons for the primary school children. The first day, three children came. About a week later, another five children came. God in His grace grew the numbers. And then we started thinking about how to touch them with the gospel. We used the first 15 minutes to teach them simple English hymns and share some Bible stories.

We have a Daniel Fellowship. Most of the students are in seventh grade. They are now all in different secondary schools. We do face a lot of challenges. Because they are still in close contact with one another they attend only as a group. So if one of the students can’t make it, the whole group of four or five won’t turn up! Last month when we invited four girls to breakfast at MacDonald’s, the mother of one of the girls came along. She did not join us. Instead, she had come to tell us she doesn’t want her daughter to see us. Now her daughter is not allowed to answer the phone if we call her.

Our Naomi Fellowship caters to students aged 15-18 years. It began when two students approached us to help them with their conversational English. A few months later we had another group of six. We invited the students to a camp. One girl, Joyce, shared how she had been falsely accused at school of stealing some money. Her teacher and even her own mother did not believe her. She had been carrying the hurt and resentment for five years. We held her hands and prayed, and she felt great relief in pouring out her pain.

We also have a ladies’ fellowship. At one of the meetings Ling shared how God has touched her. Ling is a seeker and had been attending the fellowship for six months. She has very high expectations of her children and is always anxious during exam time. We told her to bring her anxiety to the Lord. She prayed with her children and later with her husband. She stopped putting pressure on her daughter and wasn’t as anxious as before. God answered her prayers, and ultimately her daughter did very well.

During the summer holidays most young people are cooped up at home watching TV, playing computer games and sleeping past 1 pm! Sometimes they can be seen wandering the streets aimlessly. Their parents, who are busy at work, have no time for them.

Many local churches organize different activities for young people. OMF works with the Swatow and the Lutheran churches in Hong Kong and the Evangelical Free Church in Macau for this purpose. We run a three-week English program. We need English teachers to help us, so we recruit them from our home countries. Over the last few years more than 70 university and college students, early retirees and workers on vacation have responded to our appeal. Besides teaching English, they use the opportunity to share their testimonies and the gospel. Every year about 25 percent of the students come to know the Lord personally.

You can be involved by praying for Hong Kong and for the many young people who are wasting away their time. Then pray for yourself or for your friends who might like to take up the challenge of spending two to three weeks in July and August reaching out to students through the teaching of English. If you would like to know more about this ministry opportunity in 2005, please contact our OMF office or visit the OMF website.

CHINESE YOUTH AT A LOSS
On November 11, 2004 two Chinese boys aged 13 and 14 went through the checkpoints at Kunming airport and climbed into the cargo-hold of a plane before takeoff. One of them fell to his death. Another survived the hour-long flight despite low pressure, thin oxygen, chilling temperatures and deafening engine noise. The boy, Liang, told the press that he was not afraid of falling from the aircraft and neither was he sad to see his friend gone. He felt it made no difference whether he lived or died as he had no desires. He also said that if he had to die he would rather die away from home. He admitted he had no idea of what he wanted to do when he grew up. He would rather be a bad guy than a good one, since good men end up as losers and are unable to enjoy life. (Ming Pao, 22 Nov 2004)

This shocking report in a Hong Kong newspaper highlights how many youth in China are increasingly rootless and despairing. Their shallow and empty lifestyle mirrors that of so many young people in the West. Drugs, easy sex and violence become a way of life. At the heart is a frightening void which only the gospel can fill. Pray for them!

A HEART FOR THE CITY
A Christian Chinese doctor stood with a small group of Chinese believers on the 20th floor of a hotel overlooking their city. He asked them to take a good look at the city below. “There are 400,000 people out there who have never heard the gospel. Unless they believe in Christ, they are going to die and go to hell.” Deeply moved, the believers responded with commitment. Six months later the group of eight Christians had grown to 96 and is still growing. One man boldly shared his burden, and now others are boldly sharing the gospel. (China Source, Fall 04) In most of China’s hundreds of cities, less than one percent of the people are estimated to be Christians. The cutting edge of evangelism in China is to reach the rapidly growing urban population with the gospel.

PROTESTS BY THE POOR
The encounter at first seemed insignificant. A man carrying a bag passed a husband and wife on a sidewalk. His bag brushed against the woman leaving a trace of mud. Words were exchanged. A scuffle ensued. The man was a lowly porter. The other man boasted he was a government official and then beat the porter with his own carrying pole and threatened to kill him. Onlookers spread reports that a senior official had beaten up a helpless porter. By nightfall tens of thousands of people had swarmed into Wanzhou’s central square where they overturned government vehicles, pummeled policemen and set fire to the town hall.

The Wanzhou uprising which occurred on October 18, 2004 was one of nearly a dozen such incidents in the final three months of 2004, many prompted by government corruption, police abuse and the inequality of riches accruing to the powerful and well-connected. “People can see how corrupt the government is while they barely have enough to eat,” said the porter, who had become an instant proletarian hero. “Our society has a short fuse, just waiting to spark.”

Though it is experiencing one of the most spectacular economic expansions in history, China is having more trouble maintaining social order than at any time since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989.

Chinese police statistics show that the number of public protests reached nearly 60,000 in 2003—an increase of nearly 15 percent from 2002 and eight times the number a decade ago. Martial law and paramilitary troops are commonly needed to restore order.
In November 2004, 100,000 farmers in Sichuan province, frustrated by months of fruitless appeals against a dam project that claimed their land, seized Hanyuan County government offices and barred work on the site for days. It took 10,000 troops to quell the unrest. Also in December, in Wanrong County in Shanxi, two policemen were killed when enraged construction workers attacked a police station after a traffic dispute.

Days later, in Guangdong, riots erupted after a woman claimed she had been overcharged to use a bridge. In mid-December a village filled with migrant workers in Guangdong erupted into a frenzy of violence after police caught a 15-year-old migrant stealing a bike and beat him to death. Up to 50,000 migrants rioted there, Hong Kong newspapers reported. (New York Times, 13 Jan 05)

Copyright 2005 by OMF International