As the Wealth Gap Widens, the Spiritual Void Deepens

- by Keith Carey

The Han Chinese peoples are noted for their business savvy, and their love of gambling. Perhaps the two dovetail when considering China's urbanization efforts.

According to a November 7th, 2006 article in the "BBC News," about 13 million rural Chinese move to the cities each year. That is the same number as the entire population of Beijing! In the same article, it was also noted that at the current rate, China's population will be 50 percent urban by 2010. Has there ever before been such a rapid rate of urbanization in the history of mankind?

Ironically, the Communist Revolution of 1949 glorified the rural peasant. Millions of urbanites were sent to the countryside during the disastrous Cultural Revolution to learn proper communist values from the peasants. Millions of lives were ruined, and starvation was rampant during that time.

Fortunately, after Mao's death in 1976, China's new leaders understood that they had to make drastic changes. They immediately began to soften the hard-line communist economic policies that were destroying China. The Chinese were once again free to do what they have always done very well: run businesses. As time went on, the Chinese government learned that the country could greatly benefit were they to switch to an export-driven economy. Some, ironically the communist elite, were allowed to own their own businesses.

Brent Fulton is president of China Source of Fullerton, California, an organization that provides consulting and research on China's societal trends mainly for humanitarian, business and educational organizations.

In a 2000 interview with "World Pulse," a frontier mission publication that deals with the state of world evangelization, Fulton commented, "China is moving more toward a service, information-oriented economy. And you need a critical mass of people and in one place to make that happen. The agricultural economy is declining."

The Wealth Gap Widens
But there is a down side to China's rapid urbanization. One obvious problem is the increasing gap between urban and rural China. According to a December 17th, 2006 article in the "Los Angeles Times," the average amount of disposable income for rural dwellers is less than a third of that for the urban population. It is clear that the gap between the rich and poor is also widening, especially since a capitalist economy doesn't offer the same guarantees as a socialist economy. To make matters worse, corrupt local officials are grabbing up land from farmers who have no recourse. It is no wonder that the rural population is fleeing to the cities. In 2005, the Chinese government reported 87,000 public disturbances, up 50 percent in two years.

According to an August 26, 2003 article in the "New York Times," "There is also a dark underside of China's economic success, which has been marked by annual growth of eight percent for more than a decade and exports to the United States growing so fast that they have surpassed Japan's. In general these people [rural migrants] are vulnerable, pliable, cheap to employ, and easy to suppress. The migrant workers number well over 100 million, staffing the factories of Asia's export powerhouse. They work long hours in dangerous jobs for low salaries and no benefits. They are barred from forming unions. The Communist Party allows just one union, its own." Some are forced into sex slavery and others have been physically abused by the police. But all in all, they would not come to the cities if the opportunities did not outweigh the dangers.

The government of China is facing its own dangers coming from the urban culture. They are finding out the hard way that loosening up the economy also brings pressure to loosen up in other ways. Even seven years ago there were an estimated 10 million "netizens" or computer users in urban China. "I love the Internet because you have complete freedom to talk with people all over the world, hear music from any point on the planet, and you never know where you're going to end up next," said one of these netizens to a "Christian Science Monitor" reporter in 2000. Such a situation may not work very well for tomorrow's leaders of a totalitarian country.

China's government is trying to keep some control over information, but it is a losing battle. According to a February 5th article in the "New York Times," they are probably the ones responsible for blocking access to Chinese-language texts from the Marxist Internet Archive. Perhaps they see the past, and realize that it didn't work.

The Spiritual Void Deepens
Not only is the wealth gap widening, but the spiritual void is deepening. "BBC News" has printed two articles, one last Halloween, and another this last February, both of which show that there is a growing spiritual hunger in the Middle Kingdom. A poll of 4,500 people by East China Normal University professors found that 31.4 percent of the Chinese people over the age of 16 consider themselves to be religious. That is triple the number that a government survey revealed. Though the survey demonstrated that the peoples of China are turning to spiritual answers from traditional sources like Buddhism and Taoism, Christianity is a big winner of spiritual adherents among the younger generation. Gone are the days when church is associated with those in their 60s and 70s.

The reasons are not surprising. Many people are disillusioned with the direction life is taking them. Unbridled materialism is leaving many people out in the cold. Even some who are part of China's privileged middle and upper classes are aware of the emptiness in their lives. "People are so busy making money that they've lost sight of the most important things in life," explained one churchgoer to a "BBC News" reporter. In general terms, the church is growing because people need support-to the poor its monetary support, and to the wealthy it's emotional support.

"It used to be said by Chinese politicians of this Western faith, 'one more Christian-one fewer Chinese.' Now, they are more likely to say, 'one more Christian-one fewer criminal."' Though the government may appreciate the internal changes that faith in Christ brings, they want to keep Christianity under their control. China still has a communist government, meaning that they want allegiance to themselves, not to God. They do not want anyone to rival their role in setting the moral standards. Realizing that they can't stamp out religious activity, there are government-sanctioned "Three Self" churches, filled with registered believers. The churches that they fear are the unregistered house churches.

What Future Church Growth In China's Cities Might Mean
Paul Hattaway, author of several excellent books on the people groups of China, suggested that the vast majority of China's urban population is from the reached Han Chinese groups. However, his book, "China's Unreached Cities, Vol. 1" indicates that there are small communities of unreached people groups residing in many of China's cities.

Jim Nichols, who was the director of the U.S. Center For World Mission's Institute of Chinese Studies think tank in 1999, wrote the forward to "China's Unreached Cities, Vol. 1." In it he made a significant statement. "The cities of China are gateways to the unreached of the country. Most efforts to reach the unreached peoples of China, especially among the minorities, have focused on taking the gospel to the villages that comprise their traditional homes. However, sizable populations of most if not all of these peoples may be found in the cities of China. Urban migration has resulted in ethnic ghettos springing up in many cities-'Chinatowns within China' one pundit has dubbed them. There is a high probability that discipling unreached peoples in the cities will result in the rural peoples they represent being reached as well." Later in the article he pointed out that rural migrants to the cities frequently return once or twice a year for festivals. This can potentially be an excellent time for them to share Christ.

He went on to say, "One of the advantages of this approach is that in the cities the differences between various subgroups of a given unreached people group become less important than their shared identity as part of the larger group. Our research has found that the migrants in urban centers from various Hani tribal villages, though they spoke as many as 14 mutually unintelligible dialects at home, identified with one another as Hani, using Mandarin to communicate. This dynamic considerably simplifies the task of reaching the many people groups among the Hani with the gospel! The same may be true for many of the other unreached people groups of China."

Let Us Pray!