Mark Carney's Values in China

 

                                         Yayang Church being demolished 

Tomorrow Prime Minister Mark Carney heads to China, the first trip to the country by a Canadian prime minister in more than eight years. The PM is trying to figure out hows to rekindle relations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. This is a "make nice" meeting after years of diplomatic silence between the two countries. The United States has declared economic war on Canada so Carney is travelling the world seeking new or revived markets for Canadian exports. I admire his stamina and purpose on behalf of Canadians.

The day I heard about this junket last week I saw that the Chinese crackdown on Christians is escalating. The church show above has been partly demolished and more Christian leaders have been arrested. According to the BBC: 

An influential Protestant church in China says prominent leaders have been arrested in what appears to be a growing crackdown on the underground church movement. Nine people were detained on Tuesday after police raided their homes and the church office in Chengdu, in central China, the Early Rain Covenant Church said. Five had been released by Wednesday. 

More than 1,000 miles away in Wenzhou, authorities began demolishing the Yayang Church building, video obtained by non-profit ChinaAid, which monitors religious persecution, shows.This latest wave of arrests, after others last year, shows the Communist Party's resolve to snuff out churches that do not align with its ideology, Christian groups say. 

The government wants to control every aspect of religious expression even to the point of telling the Vatican who can be appointed as bishops and cardinals in the country. 

This is all part of the overall reality of suppression and oppression in China, Canada's frosty relationship with China developed in part because of human rights concerns, including the treatment of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority group. There may be more than a million Uyghurs who have been detained in camps, forced to engage in virtual slave labour, and even undergone sterilization. 

Not only can we pray and express concern for those who are marginalized and persecuted in China, we can pray that in his economic pragmatism  Prime Minister Carney remains true to  the values he has written about, informed by his own Christian faith.