I think almost every foreigner who has worked in China any time since 2017 has at least experienced it in some way. The steady erosion of China’s “buffer” – the explicit and implicit privileges received by foreigners have come to expect from the beginning of China’s “start and reform.”
People on the streets today are not excited to meet foreigners like they did over a decade ago.
The most obvious sign of this erosion is that people on the streets today are not excited to meet foreigners like they did over a decade ago.
Although 2023 has increased slightly due to mass disillusionment following the sharp end of coexistence measures in China, those who lived in China or just had the opportunity to visit China decades ago certainly remember the special treatment expatriates they received.
There were currencies exclusively for non-citizens (forex currency or FEC, foreign companies) and foreign companies had generous tax cuts, special access to land and transportation. The car was provided to drive us down. Special meals, invitations to exhibitions and festivals, and personal “handlers” to meet all our needs.
We can jump in front of any line. We always got the best, even if we still had to pay a higher price or poss for a few photos.
And now: from open doors to closed offices
I miss how they handled government relations in the late 1990s. Every January, I take a walk to the bureau’s government agency where I work closely with. Most of the time I peer into an office looking for someone who doesn’t even talk to security guards or registering desks, and who is looking for someone I know.
Today, I cannot pass through the doors of government offices without an explicit invitation.
If I bump into someone important, we chat for a while and if it’s near noon or the end of the day, we’ll go out for a shared meal.
Today, I cannot pass through the doors of government offices without an explicit invitation.
Still, when I arrive I have to call the person who is visiting and come down and ask me to show up past security. The real problem, of course, is that when I (or locals who don’t have personal relationships) call, officials simply don’t answer their phone. The government is dramatically slowing down for almost everyone, including foreigners.
Share the struggle: When foreigners face lockdown too
As that aura of privilege fades, I see that many of China’s expatriate ministries are increasingly facing how they have been removed from actual Chinese life and society. Certainly, the best of our work in China has recognized and even sympathized with the many difficulties our Chinese neighbors face on a daily basis. But what’s changing now is that we expatriates are experiencing more and more frustration as ourselves.
It was difficult for expatriates who endured lockdowns within China, and some aspects of negotiating a pandemic life in China have been particularly difficult for foreigners. My state took a long time to get the health codes and tracking codes that work for foreign passport holders. But the reality of the last few years has been that everyone has been shut down together and foreigners struggled with our Chinese neighbors. The buffer has been reduced.
The Ministry Buffer we built
But there is another buffer that is shrinking, some that have been created by our own ministries.
By the late 90s, most expatriate Chinese workers had spoken about our province in terms of “come together” with local followers in “partnerships.” In later years, our language shifted focused on “supporting” as local sisters and brothers served.
I’m not sure if I really trust the Chinese to do what I’m doing, if I’m really honest.
But looking back at nearly 30 years in China, I don’t know if I really trust the Chinese to do what I’m doing, even if I’m really honest.
My thoughts on ministry – what’s good, what’s bad, what’s best to achieve it – have always been central and even my goal of promoting a fully localized ministry. So many times, what expatriates (myself) really wanted was for locals to continue and expand the work we set up, and locals to do our kind of missions and do that in our way.
If you are shaking your head or you have no sense of what you were, I would encourage you to consider the last Foundation grant application, a short-term team, or a support letter that you have helped your local leader prepare.
Community Years forced me to realize my desire to do my thing, how much my pride remains in locally focused ministries, and how confident I am to know the right way to do the right kind of ministry in the local Chinese context.
Let go of control
How is this a buffer?
Workers from different cultures are increasingly forced to trust their Chinese sisters and siblings.
Well, for decades, expatriate workers have been cultivating spaces within Chinese society. There, we can run the kind of ministries we cherish in the way we think is effective and loyal. Regulation and enforcement have forced expatriates from many areas of ministry that have been central to Chinese foreign work (such as philanthropy, relief and development projects, social services, and increasingly educational work), forcing intercultural workers to be more trusted by Chinese sisters and brothers.
We adapted to them in search of new pathways in ministry to serve in ways that would no longer be possible as Chinese foreigners. Of course, this is exciting. Perhaps, especially for expatriates who are forced to see Chinese sisters and siblings from afar. How thrilling it is to see them in the name of Jesus and see them create new ways to serve!
Discomfort and confusion in local ministries models
But I have to tell you: There is a dark edge to this excitement.
Many of us are overwhelmed by the sense that we are moving forward without us, that our contributions have been marginalized, left behind and reduced to footnotes from the “leaders” in China. And there is the discomfort at the exploration of a new kind of ministries. And there is even more discomfort in the way these new ministries are run.
Leadership habits and organizational culture within China’s Christian world are shifting away from what we consider to be “best practices” back to more “Chinese” models. Here we refer to the Chinese model, especially the mainland (the 1975 CCP rules performance and poor model).
They often solve problems in the same way that everyone else in Chinese society does.
Our Chinese sisters and brothers are screaming for ministries to stay economically floating ahead of Chinese regulators and security authorities, so they often solve the problem in the same way that anyone else in Chinese society does. Family money is mixed with organizational money, which may make expatriates from the west more comfortable.
Services, money, and material goods are passed freely than most Western organizations found. I know one ministry leader who needed a new car for her job. Her family recently had borrowed a lot of cash from work to one of her husband’s friends who hadn’t been able to pay back before the Chinese New Year.
However, my friend had a new SUV that he offered in place of some debt. A deal accepted by the family, he gave the ministry leader the new car he needed. Where does that go in the organization’s financial plan?
The increasingly contested game of carriages between the state and the Chinese Christian ministries continues, and efforts to stay ahead of Chinese regulators often mean that registrations, physical locations, partners and staff will change at a faster rate, more often than not recommended by Western MBA alumni.
Our golden age is over.
The very constraints that have driven so many expatriates out of China force local ministries to be truly creative in order to survive, taking expatriates and brothers in a direction that expatriates never choose. Still, the intense surveillance and increasingly restrictive regulations we face have struggled to leave us in the margins and support our local sisters and brothers in being able to do whatever God can. Our golden age is over, and their options are limited.
The end of EA and an invitation to deeper trust
If our pre-field training was not the most effective, we left the passport country with expatriates strongly aware of the need for missionary humility. Shaped by the ideas, habits and preferences we learned in our passport country, many of the resources and programs we brought have expanded over the years to form a buffer that separates us from the real challenges of living and working in China.
I understand how much confidence I put in my concepts and my ministry habits.
And now, as that buffer is falling under pressure from the Chinese state, I understand how much confidence I have put in my concepts and habits in the systems, principles, and even theological assumptions I have taken from Western education and church experience.
To work effectively in China today, we need to let go of the buffer of foreign privileges that official China is determined to dismantle. But it also requires humbly accepting deeper engagement with Chinese society. It prays to prayerful plans by Chinese followers, and embraces more and more myself that I am dying to myself, with plans and solutions that do not give me special privileges or unique status.
Die to yourself in a new era
I’ve lived and worked in China for a long time, and if I had asked how we were doing five years ago, I would have said that my team was pretty integrated and reasonably localized.
Well, after the last few years I have noticed that there are still many places to hold China by arm length. There, rather than stepping into that confusion with Chinese sisters and brothers, they choose to isolate themselves from the stress and uncertainty of living in the shadows of an increasingly unreachable Chinese dream.
I need the Holy Spirit to help me develop a deeper will to trust and even subjugate the Chinese.
If you want to continue to serve faithfully in China at Xi Jinping, you need the Holy Spirit to be more deeply motivated to trust and submit to the Chinese, to be transformed by new attire in my heart.
Originally published by Chinasource. It was reissued with permission.
“The Swell of Middle Kingdom” (pseudonym) began living in China as a student in 1990, and to this day he is fascinated by the challenges and blessings of living and working in China. Read his blog on Chinasource.
Chinasource is a trusted partner in educating global churches on the key issues facing Chinese churches and ministries, and a platform to bring Christians together both within and outside China to advance the Kingdom of God worldwide. Chinasource’s vision is for Chinese and global churches to learn together, grow and engage in a powerful ministry that advances in God’s kingdom.
