Yu Jie

"The first time they took me away for questioning they told me that the secret police are more powerful than anything I could possibly imagine. They can create a car accident that makes me disappear, and no one would find out. I could be threatened by this if I did not have my belief. But I thought about one sentence from the Bible -- that they can destroy the body but the soul remains intact."

Over the weekend, I thought back several times to that quote from Yu Jie. It was toward the end of an interview for a story last Wednesday and I’d asked Yu -- a dissident whose book criticizing the Chinese prime minister was recently released --about being a Christian.

I was in part looking for a sense of his motivation. Yu's very public condemnations of the government here could well land him in prison, as happened to a friend of his who was sentenced to 11 years. Yu has consistently reminded the world that China is a place lacking in civil liberties. That in spite of the fact that Yu, an unassuming man with a quiet demeanor, does not appear to have much "guanxi" -- relationships or influence that could bail him out of trouble.

I am curious in general about China's approach to organized religions, especially popular ones associated with outsiders. The five officially approved religions in the country (Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and both Protestant and Catholic Christianity) are allowed to maintain centers of worship, but they must register with the government.

The Toronto Star ran a story earlier this month titled "Christians come under attack in China" that focused on the issue of unregistered churches (Yu is a senior member of one, and was quoted in the Star piece) and government efforts to crack down on them. The article cited the frequent comparison of an estimated 100 million or more Christians in China versus less than 80 million members of the Communist Party.

The Party is aware of those figures, which underline a trend that is almost certainly seen as a potential threat.

The subject has historical resonance in China, where foreign intervention was accompanied by a wave of Western missionaries.

The result was not always harmonious. A village teacher who'd failed the civil service examination several times in 19th century China decided there was a link between his hallucinatory visions and the Bible. Hong Xiuquan then decided that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ (literally) and led a large, bloody rebellion against the Qing dynasty.

Yu didn't bring up the topic of religion, though he did not hesitate to answer. Yu explained that his intellectual turn against the government began in 1989, when as a teenager he heard reports of Chinese troops shooting protestors on Tiananmen Square. His baptism as a Christian didn't happen until many years later, in 2003.

But since converting, Yu said, his faith has helped him face government pressure.

Yu’s remarks suggest the problems religion can create for authoritarian states. (Of course, the issue splits both ways -- many observers point to a parallel rise of nationalism in Vladimir Putin's Russia and an increasingly strong Russian Orthodox Church.)

The underlying assumption of authoritarian rule is that those in power are bigger than anything else in the world, and are capable of squashing a man’s life with the flick of a finger. The masses are meant to act accordingly. It's always the same -- Keep your head down, stay out of trouble and watch what you say.

A recent book* investigating the structure and doings of the Communist Party of China began with a quote from a Beijing professor: “The Party is like God. He is everywhere. You just can’t see him.”

When faced with that reality, most people would fall in line. For Yu, however, there was something bigger than the Party during his conversations with state security. We'll have to wait and see what that means for him.

*The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, by Richard McGregor.