The Back to Jerusalem movement

For the Centenary of the World Mission Conference, to be held next year in Edinburgh, Kim-kwong Chan has written a paper on the Back to Jerusalem movement, a movement among China’s house churches to evangelise the area between China and Jerusalem (essentially the Middle East), with the original aim to send 200,000 Chinese missionaries there within ten years. This project is consistent with the notion, popular in Chinese evangelicalism, that the Chinese are called upon to’”fulfil the Great Commission” of world evangelism by completing the last leg of the global evangelical relay. It also dovetails with secular sense of China´s mission as the new global modernizer that has picked up the torch the U.S. and Great Britain had carried before it.

Chan locates the origins of the BTJ movement in the 1940s, when a number of Chinese missionary groups were dislocated to the relatively peaceful Xinjiang. The Reverend Mark Ma, at a Bible school in Shaanxi, received a series of visions that “the Chinese church should assume responsibility to take the Gospel”to Xinjiang and, in order to complete the Great Commission, to the rest of the world.” An American missionary began to promote Ma’s group in the U.S. and the UK. The group was soon disbanded and its members imprisoned, but in the 1990s, veterans of this and other groups were joined by new evangelists. A veteran named Simon Zhao, who had spent twenty years in prison in Xinjiang, declared upon his release that he had received a vision similar to Mark Ma’s. Liu Zhenying, who escaped from prison and fled to Germany in 1997, has been popularised in a book by the New Zealand missionary Paul Hattaway. As a result, a number Western mission agencies have become interested in supporting the BTJ movement in what Chan calls an “outsourcing model:” they provide money and training, and China provides the missionaries. “Currently there are at least a couple dozen mission agencies who are actively involved … with more than a dozen [clandestine] training centers in China and at least another ten abroad, training potential BTJ missionaries.” They also hold clandestine international conferences. BTJ missionaries are found in at least 12, mostly Muslim countries, as students, entrepreneurs, and contract workers. Most are between 20 and 25, come from rural areas and poor backgrounds, and have a high school education. There is an abundant supply of recruits and selection is competitive.

Chan notes that much of the interest is practical: keen to evangelise the Middle East, Western churches have limited funding, and presumably there aren’t many missionaries willing to take the risk. The money that is spent on supporting one Western missionary is enough to finance ten Chinese, who live in much poorer conditions and are used to hardship and illegality from China (where they belong to the illegal house churches and most are rural). Some Chinese house churches have an explicit ideology of martyrdom (shared perhaps with traditional millenarian movements and the Falungong).

Meanwhile, the Chinese government is ‘turning a blind eye’ to the training facilities. One can see why: technically, they are illegal. In the case of a crackdown on these missionaries no blame can be laid at Peking´s door, and it will not protest against their punishment. On the other hand, they can be a useful instrument of rapprochement between China and the usually anti-Chinese but powerful American Christian Right.

Chan does not discuss how successful the movement has been in gaining converts, but presumably not highly so. Yet this may be a new development in worldwide Chinese evangelical proselytising, which has so far been overwhelmingly directed at other Chinese. I wonder how easy this transition might be, as in my view the success of Chinese proselytising lies partly in ethnically homogeneous congregations for which shared experiences of migration and entrepreneurship or studying, as well as transnational links to mainland China, are central. If an army of outsourced Chinese missionaries arises, it is likely to merge in this network of Chinese evangelism rather than stay under Western command.

Conference panel on “The Rising Powers and the ‘new’ geographies of international development”

Giles Mohan and Marcus Power are organising a panel with this title at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting in Washington, DC, on 14-18 April 2010. The call for papers lists the following possible themes:

• To what extent is there a new aid architecture and what does the emergence of the Rising Powers mean for established donors and questions of aid effectiveness?
• Given that much of the interest of the Rising Powers in the developing world is resource access of various kinds how far are developing countries being ‘fixed’ into specific roles with the potential for a resource curse to deepen?
• As the Rising Powers gain in economic power what impacts are they having, or likely to have, on institutions of global governance and the balance of world power?
• Given the need to industrialise and urbanise what impacts are the Rising Powers having on the environment & climate change, as well as on the governance mechanisms to mitigate such change?
• To what extent are we seeing genuine forms of ‘South-South’ cooperation and what policy space does the existence of the Rising Powers afford the poorest developing countries?
• What does the existence of these the Rising Powers mean for normative debates about the very nature of ‘development’? 

Those interested in submitting a paper should contact Dr Giles Mohan (g.mohan [at] open.ac.uk, tel. +44 (0)1908 653654)  or Dr Marcus Power (marcus.power [at] durham.ac.uk, tel. +44 (0)191 334 1828).

Conference on the global politics of China

The British Inter-University China Centre is organising a conference on the global politics of China in London and Manchester on 27-29 November. The call for papers is here.

The latest on the Baoding Villages

Today at the International Convention of Asia Scholars in Daejeon there was a panel on “Exporting China’s Development.” Yan Hairong and Barry Sautman presented a paper on their fieldwork at the Chambishi copper mine in Zambia, which I had much anticipated. In response to a question, they told me that they thought the Baoding Villages were a total hoax. Yan Hairong has visited Baoding and interviewed Liu Jianjun (the self-styled founder), and he repeated his story, but refused to share any contacts in Africa. In the ten African countries Yan and Sautman visited, no one has heard about Baoding villages.

Li Guangyi, a PhD student at UCLA, came to the same conclusion in his presentation. But he affirmed that the East Africa Trade Development Zone does exist, and Ugandan officials gave a press conference in Peking about it. The 518 square kilometers and the 99-year lease seem to be right, although it is less clear whether the legislative rights, the Chinese policing and judiciary structures will exist, or indeed if the zone has any investors. Liu Jianjun and the other main investors were, apparently, adamant that residents and workers of the zone will have to obey its rules, giving the specific example that three (sic) prayers a day for Muslims will not be allowed as they disrupt production. A flag of the zone has been circulating on the Internet, very similar to Hong Kong, with five red stars at the centre.

Li also discussed the reactions to this on Tianya. According to him, some expressed suspicions that this too was a hoax. Others wrote that China should be more equitable and fair in its dealings with Africa and not repeat Western colonialism and brutality. But most expressed satisfaction about the Chinese “concession,” saying it demonstrated that Chinese civilization has stood up again.

Exporting China’s Development: panel at ICAS

Several of this blog’s contributors are involved in the panel “Exporting China’s Development to Africa and Southeast Asia: Aid, Investment, Migration” at the upcoming International Convention of Asia Scholars in Daejeon, Korea, on 6 August. The aim of the panel is to bring together people who have done grounded research on the subject in these two regions.

The preliminary programme of the conference is now available here. Scroll down to find the panel.

Call for papers: Chinese in Africa/Africans in China, Johannesburg, 26-29 August 2009

Shortly after the International Convention of Asia Scholars in Taejon in early August, at which some of us will host a panel on ethnographic approaches to China’s development export, the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China International Research Working Group will organise its second mini-conference. Here is an excerpt from the call for papers:

Chinese people have become targets of increasing anti-Chinese sentiment, especially led by opposition political parties and civil society groups for different ends. In South Africa, perceptions that those who look Chinese carry on them large sums of cash appear to have resulted in a sort of racial profiling by South Africa’s criminal element as well as state patrols, exposing these individuals to robbery, blackmail, and personal violence. In spite of events and statistics being disclosed by researchers in the field, newspapers in Namibia, Zambia, and South Africa continue to under-report such political and social tensions while they remain critical of China’s seemingly unequal engagement with African nations and over-report the numbers of Chinese in these countries.

Simultaneously, African traders and other entrepreneurial business people have been making their way to China in increasing numbers over the last few years.  They are bypassing Chinese traders acting as middlemen in Africa and going directly to wholesalers as well as producers/manufacturers in China.  Over the years, some of these Africans have settled in Guangdong and other coastal provinces, and their numbers continue to grow. However, very little is also known about these transient and settler communities that are bridging the continents through exchange of goods and money, but also through dispersal of cultural knowledge.  

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1 June 2009. Full papers must be received by 31 July 2009. Abstracts and queries should be directed to Yoon Jung Park at yoon@tiscali.co.za or +27 83 348 9241.

New China in Africa book launch

Less than three months after the  last China-in-Africa book launch, Washington, D.C., is hosting another, this one at the Jamestown Foundation. This China in Africa, released  last December, is edited by the respected China historian Arthur Waldron,  and the launch event features other well-known participants who are new to this debate, including the veteran Hong Kong journalist Willy Lam, the political scientists Edward Friedman and Yitzhak Shichor, two U.S. military analysts, and the keynote speaker, Victor Gao, Director of the China National Association of International Studies and former vice president at the China National Oil Corporation (interesting combination!)

China’s assistance to Indonesia in Defense Technology

China’s assistance to Indonesia apparently will go beyond the construction of public infrastructure projects. As reported by the Jakarta Post today, Indonesia is now expecting China to give its help in developing Indonesian military technology (see: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/04/01/china-help-indonesia-develop-defense-technology.html). This assistance is part of the strategic partnership between the two countries which was signed in 2005. Together with China’s assistance in Surabaya Madura bridge construction and China’s investments in several power plant projects in Indonesia, this assistance in military technology clearly shows the warm relationship between the two countries, that has taken place since the beginning of this century. More interestingly, from the data that I am now gathering in Indonesia, it can be seen that this government to government relationship is complemented with a positive attitude toward China, particularly among the elite groups, but also among the “common people” with whom I had opportunities to talk. Besides, this positive attitude toward China can also be found in various blogs in Indonesian language.
~Johanes~

AFP story on global land grabs

The LaoFAB mailing list has posted a new AFP story (dated 4 January) called “Global trends driving ‘land grab’ in poor nations: activists.” The story asserts that large-scale land lease contracts (i.e. the creation of more and larger “zones of exception,” in Agamben/Aihwa Ong’s term) is an increasingly salient feature of today’s global capitalism, where rich states attempt to secure access to resources (energy, food, minerals) in a free market beset by uncertainty over rising prices.

What is interesting is that, for once, China is not featured in the story (though it is still mentioned in first place). Instead, Korea and the oil emirates of the Middle East are.  

In one of the biggest deals, South Korea’s Daewoo Logistics said in
November it would invest about 6.0 billion dollars to develop 3.2
million acres (1.3 million hectares) in Madagascar — almost half the
size of Belgium. (…)

(Korea is also, as I have mentioned in my posts from Laos, engaged in land lease projects there that are as large as the Chinese ones.)

“We will build everything from ports and railways to markets on a
barren and untouched area,” said Shin Dong-Hyun, general manager (…)

In Cambodia, where the WFP also supplies aid, oil-rich Kuwait in
August granted a 546-million-dollar loan in return for crop
production. (…)

… (D)uring (Philippine) President Gloria Arroyo’s visit to Qatar in December, officials opened talks over the lease of at least 100,000 hectares of agricultural land to the emirate.

The article points out that the World Food Programme aids both Cambodia and Madagascar, so there is a sense of a “clash of developments”.  The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (along with NGOs) has expressed concern over the livelihoods threatened by land loss.

Nick Young is back

Nick Young,  the remarkable editor of China Development Brief that was shut down by the Chinese authorities in 2006, is back online, now writing from Kampala. So far he does not appear to have written about the China-Africa connection, but he has other interesting writings on the site both about China and about Africa. The former include an interesting introduction to an issue of Human Rights in China’s China Rights er Forum, guest-edited by Young, which had been declined by the journal. Young  is a very “anthropological” observer, and I look forward to reading his posts.