At least things are getting better than worse, heres an exerpt from
antiwar.com/justin/justinchina1.html
"CHINA AND CHRISTIANITY
3) The Religious Angle – Pat Robertson has descried the anti-China lobby gathering force among religious conservatives as “morally irresponsible and politically ignorant. Few things bring people together like a common enemy,” he writes. “To some, China has done a masterful job of playing the villain. The China bashers prosper in direct mail and media campaigns, but they do not have the weight of righteousness on their side.”
Wall Street Journal, June 30, 1998]
This nails the Sinophobes’ lobby for what it is: a cynical attempt to cash in on the gullibility of all too many conservatives, who are sincere in their anti-Communism but know next to nothing about China. Wiliiam McGurn, editor of the
Far Eastern Economic Review, and for many years associated with the conservative
National Review, said it best. While not arguing that Beijing has established freedom of religion, he writes: “When American critics declare that things are getting worse, it prompts the great unasked question: Compared with what?” The “criticism now leveled by American Christian activists seems less a snapshot of China in the late 1990s than a caricature drawn from the high days of Maoism a generation ago.”
Christian churches were closed during the Cultural Revolution: Bibles were forbidden, all religious proselytizing was banned, and believers were often imprisoned, tortured, and killed. Today, government-sanctioned “patriotic” churches, including Catholics and the various Protestant denominations, function openly: Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network has aired its programs over state-run television. While there has been some resistance on the part of local Party officials to the cultural implications of China’s opening up to the West, these are isolated incidents that go against the national trend."
