Speaking on Zoom to a lecture series organized by The Salt and Light Council, he described persecution by the Chinese Communist Party and its dictatorial leader Xi Jinping as the worst oppression since the horrors of Mao tse Tsung in the mid-1960s.
Fu grew up in China as an atheist under the Communist and was educated at the best of the Chinese universities. After graduating, he taught English to the Communist Party at a university in Beijing. Then came Tiananmen Square and the student protests. He was drawn to it and its vision for a United States-style democracy. He was horrified when the party ordered the People’s Liberation Army to massacre their fellow citizens with machine guns and tanks. The striking image of a student kneeling in front of a tank was taken at Tiananmen Square.
It changed Fu’s life forever as he recognized that there was a God and God was using the massacre to touch lives, his included. Through Western missionaries, who had been working there for several years with little to show for it, he came to know Jesus. His first convert, Heidi, was his girl friend and later became his wife. That set off a time of explosive church growth—he described 500 different Bible studies at a large university in the late 1990s.
He and Heidi fled to the United States and a few years ago they were visited at their headquarters in Midland, Tx. by a graduate of that university. That person reported that one church had baptized more than 10,000 people.
Fu talked of Xiping’s and the Communists’ three-front war as he has solidified his hold as ruler for life—the first Chinese leader to do that since Mao. They’ve targeted the church, literally ripping down crosses from buildings even of officially allowed churches. They’ve outlawed meetings and imprisoned pastors. One was sentenced to 12 years for simply having an offering box, while others were imprisoned for similar invented charges.
The Communists also launched against the children, demanding they renounce their faith and banning them from hearing the Bible. Renouncing their faith is the first time that had been demanded in 40 years, Fu said.
Another man, married to an American and thus eligible for dual citizenship, spent half the year in the U.S. and half in China so he could reach out personally to people. Traveling to the border near Burma , he saw impoverished children and launched schools, teaching about 2,000 children in 16 schools. He was imprisoned for seven years.
Fu explained that the Communists see children as the future of the party and thus have to control their education.
The third front is an attack on the rule of law as you can see in the prison sentences handed out. The party organized a huge round-up of hundreds of Chinese lawyers.
Fu minced no words when talking about Covid-19. He said he had no first-hand knowledge, but based upon documents and news reports he had read, believes it originated in a Wuhan lab under auspices of the military.
His clear-eyed talk laid out the challenges of dealing with the Chinese Communist Party that has been ruthless dealing with people who oppose it.
