Global Chinese Ministries Newsletter - November 2008

Paralympics Puts China's Disabled in the Spotlight

The Paralympics was held in Beijing September 6-17. China sent 332 disabled athletes to take part. The event has highlighted the plight of China’s estimated 83 million disabled people as never before and has given them hope for real improvements in both their quality of life and in the Chinese public’s perception of them.

Never mind seeing a swimmer competing who has only one leg, or a long-jumper who is blind. To Miss Zhou it was miracle enough when she saw a TV report showing a disabled person in Beijing being allowed to navigate a wheelchair onto a public bus.

“I was so happy,” said Zhou, aged 29, who works in the southern city of Changsha for the Hunan province Disabled Persons’ Federation and uses a wheelchair. “I’d never seen anything like this in my life.”

China has an estimated 83 million disabled people. Until recently, the prevailing attitude has been that they don’t need accessible buses or ramps because they weren’t expected to go anywhere.

Miss Zhou had polio as a young child. Her parents supported her education and pushed hard for her to have the same opportunities as other children. But she quickly discovered the barriers when she tried to become a doctor. Although she easily passed the examination, she was denied a place at medical school. “They said it was because I was disabled!”

Even today she knows few other disabled people who have regular jobs. In fact, few go out in public as she does¾a relative pushing her to work in her wheelchair. “People always stare at me. But the stares are getting friendlier.”

The Chinese government has made a concerted effort since the 1980s to expand the rights of the disabled. One catalyst for change was the son of the late leader Deng Xiaoping, Deng Pufang. He was thrown out of a window in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution and paralyzed. He founded and still heads the Chinese Federation for the Disabled. Last March, at a Politburo meeting presided over by President Hu Jintao, it was decided to increase funding for the disabled, only half of whom receive health care in the cities, and a miserable 2% in the countryside. In the lead up to the Paralympics, the government also has launched a massive publicity campaign to promote the rights of the disabled.

China recently ratified a UN agreement that guarantees equal treatment for the disabled. But millions of disabled people in China still live in abject poverty, often forced into begging to survive. Many companies deliberately violate the law, preferring to pay fines rather than hire handicapped workers. Even a law demanding that 1.5% of all government jobs be allocated to the disabled is widely ignored. Guide dogs are banned in many places, and many blind people do not use canes out of concern this will make them look different. Career choices for the blind are strictly limited¾mainly to being a masseur or a piano tuner.

The Director of the Beijing Disabled People’s Federation confirmed that many disabled still suffer discrimination. “People are ignorant of the condition of the disabled. Chinese society is not inhumane, but our society is not fully informed about disabled people’s suffering.”

A professor of special education at Beijing Normal University said that the Paralympics were a platform for ordinary people to accept the disabled, and for the disabled to accept themselves. Then he stated, significantly, that the disabled in China have suffered because of the widespread belief, particularly among rural people, that they must have done something wrong in a previous life. Buddhist belief about ‘karma’ leads to fatalism in the face of suffering. He added: “There is a difference in Western and Eastern culture in attitudes towards the disabled. Many of these ideas about human rights for the disabled were introduced from the outside and are only slowly being accepted.”

Perhaps the professor was unable to go further in making the obvious point that it is the gospel which has transformed attitudes towards the disabled in every culture it has touched. In Greek and Roman culture, handicapped children were usually discarded and left exposed to die, as sometimes happens in backward areas of rural China even today. The Christian view that every person, however handicapped, has special value in the eyes of God has quietly transformed a harsh world.

About one fifth of the entire world’s disabled population live in China. There are more than 20 million Chinese suffering from varying degrees of deafness. Every year about 30,000 children are born deaf (Ming Pao, January 12, 2008). There are also millions of blind people and those with other serious mental and physical handicaps.

A Christian leader in south China shares: “Although Christianity arrived in China 200 years ago, many people still know nothing about the Christian faith. I believe that the church should be a true light in society bearing witness to the Lord. Many churches are now taking part in social services such as caring for Aids patients, running drug rehabilitation programs, helping disaster victims, as well as the deaf, blind and dumb. Through such sacrificial service many people have changed their perception of Christianity, and some have accepted the Lord as a result. Through social service, the church should act as Christ’s ambassadors to bring people to God through love.”

Proclamation of the gospel and loving care for the needy go hand-in-hand, without any contradiction. Men such as Martin Luther, John Knox, John Wesley, William Wilberforce, William Booth (founder of the Salvation Army), George Muller of the famous orphan house in Bristol, Charles Spurgeon and countless others down the ages have engaged in vigorous social service in response to the love of Christ, and by the grace of God have transformed broken lives. Now the church in China, strong in faith, is taking up the challenge in the 21st century.

Christians in China are in the forefront of changing backward attitudes towards the disabled and getting involved hands-on in practical ways to help them. Examples are the China Christian Council-supported project to help autistic people in Qingdao and the house-church-run school for severely disabled children in a city in west China. Christians from overseas, too, now have many opportunities to serve and love those who are still too often the outcasts of society. Chinese and foreign believers alike are united in their motivation: “The love of Christ compels us” (2 Corinthians 5:14).

(Based on information published by the Los Angeles Times and Asia News, September 4 and 5, 2008)

PRAYER POINTS

1. Pray for all Christians in China involved with helping disabled people to overcome discrimination and take their rightful place in society. Pray that many disabled people will hear the gospel message and come to know Jesus, the friend of the poor and needy.
2. Pray that many more Christians in China will become nurses and doctors as a calling to heal the sick and share the gospel.
3. Pray that many more overseas Christians will take up the challenge of service in China in ministry to the physically and mentally disabled.
4. A further earthquake rocked a remote area of Sichuan in early September, killing more than a dozen people and destroying more than 100,000 homes. Pray for those bereaved and for speedy relief work before the winter sets in.
5. A senior Chinese government leader is reported as saying at a meeting discussing rebuilding after the Sichuan earthquake: “We know how to rebuild buildings, but we do not know how to rebuild shattered lives.” Pray for Christians seeking to do just that, by God’s grace, in the earthquake zone over the next few years.
6. As well as the government and the Three-self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) churches, many house-churches all over China have become involved in earthquake relief. Pray for spiritual fruit.
7. Tight restrictions before and during the Olympics brought pressures on house-churches and led to many foreign Christians working in China not having their visas renewed. Now with the Olympics successfully concluded, pray there will be a relaxation in policies.
8. Pray that more qualified Christians from overseas will be called to work with disabled people in China - especially in remote areas lacking facilities.
9. About 7,000 classrooms collapsed and nearly 10,000 children died in the May Sichuan earthquake. Some families have been offered ‘compensation’ as low as US$8,800 per child (International Herald Tribune, September 4, 08). Continue to pray for bereaved parents and that they may get justice.
10. Unlike his predecessors, the present Japanese Prime Minister recently refused to visit the controversial Yasakuni shrine in Tokyo where World War II Japanese war criminals are enshrined, and China and Japan have signed an agreement on joint development of natural gas in a disputed zone of the East China Sea (Economist, June 21, 08). Pray for continued improvement of relations, which is vital to stability and peace in Asia, between these great nations.
11. There are 60,000 ‘Grass Miao’ (Caomiao) living where Guangxi, Hunan and Guizhou provinces meet. Despite some Lutheran work in the 1930s, there are no known Christians today (Operation China). Pray that God’s word will reach this animistic people.
12. In 2007 1.4 million Chinese couples divorced, up 19% from 2006 (Christian Communications, Ltd., September 08). Pray for many marriage counseling courses and seminars offered by overseas Christians, that they may be effective in instilling biblical principles on marriage, especially in the hearts and minds of young Chinese Christians.
13. “My husband often hit me. I hate him and thought of taking my own life. May the Lord help me, heal my broken heart and change my husband.” Pray for this desperate wife who wrote recently to Christian Communications, Ltd. (CCL) in Hong Kong for counsel.
14. Praise God that Beijing house-church leader Zhang Mingxuan and his wife, who had been detained outside Beijing during the Olympics for three weeks, have been released (China Aid Association, August 29, 08).
15. Pray for Christian Communications, Ltd. (CCL) in Hong Kong’s practical campaign to support local Sichuan churches in the earthquake zone to deliver 40,000 copies of Christian literature and help set up small businesses among those who lost everything in the earthquake.
16. Just the inflow of migrants from the rural areas into the cities alone brings an annual increase of 5.5 million to the urban population. This statistic hides many hurting and desperate people. Pray for all Christians befriending migrants and proclaiming Christ to them.
17. Big churches in Wenzhou, Guangzhou and other coastal areas have been blessed with good preaching and sound teaching. But according to one Chinese leader, although the churches are full of gifted Christians, few have a vision for cross-cultural ministry (CCL, Pray for China, July 08). Pray this may change and many may, like Abraham, leave their comfort zones and step out in faith.
18. The Bunu people of Guangxi, with a population of more than 300,000, are one of the largest people groups in China without a single known church (Operation China). Pray for effective outreach to this animistic people.
19. A new DVD has been produced by WEC in Tibetan called ‘The Hope’ (Rewai Namthar). It uses traditional Tibetan art and story-telling to present the unchanging gospel. Pray for widespread distribution and spiritual fruit.
20. Pray for OMF International leadership in Germany as they seek to challenge German churches and mobilize German Christians to serve in China.
21. “I seriously doubt the existence of God. Is he really in control of the universe, and the creator? I need convincing evidence and proof to strengthen my faith. I need books on science and faith.” Pray for Mr. Guo in Anhui in his spiritual quest.
22. In 2007 Christian Communications, Ltd. (CCL) of Hong Kong provided multi-media resources for 13,000 churches and meeting points all over the country. Pray for CCL as it seeks this year to produce 90,000 CDs for distribution.
23. Due to inflation, the salaries for church workers have been devalued in China. House-church preachers living by faith are also facing pressures, as some churches find it more difficult to support both full-time and part-time workers (CCL, September 08). Pray for all church workers in China, many of whom are living sacrificially on very low incomes.
24. MSI has a scholarship program to help poor girls from remote mountain villages in Yunnan to receive an education. Pray for spiritual fruit as girls receive all-around training.
25. “I found most people in church were poor, elderly and women, and the building is decaying.” Pray for Mr. Cui, an intellectual in Jilin, who got baptized but is struggling to fit in. Many intellectuals are proud and cut themselves off from the ‘laobaixing’ (ordinary folks), seeking fellowship in ‘salon’ style discussion groups.
26. The new Bible factory outside Nanjing opened this May and has the capacity to print 1 million Bibles a month (12 million a year). Pray this extra capacity will be largely used for Chinese in China and not just for export.
27. Five new churches, with space for more than 1,000 worshipers in each, have been built in Beijing over the last two years. Pray for Beijing Christians who have a special responsibility to witness for Christ in China’s capital city.
28. A new Korean-language Christian training center was opened last year in Yanji City, Yanbian, Jilin Province, a strongly Korean area of northeast China. Pray for the 50 evangelists who attended the first term of the new training course.
29. The death of Hua Guofeng, Mao’s successor, aged 87 (once adulated now almost forgotten), on August 20 is a reminder of how far China has come over the last 30 years. Pray that in God’s providence there will be continued openness to the gospel, despite growing materialism.
30. Praise God that basic evangelical training manuals in Chinese have been widely distributed in dozens of local Three-self (TSPM) Bible schools. Pray that young, rural preachers will leave with minds grounded in God’s word and hearts on fire to spread the gospel.