The U.S. Church must boycott China
Christians have hard questions to ask about Chinese Communist Party
Photo credits: Uyghur image was a free download from imgbin.com.
At some point, people who name the name of Jesus Christ must be Sermon on the Mount and James 1 Christians, people who don’t just hear the truth and say what they believe, but they back it up with actions.
How could you not rally behind persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ in China?
How could you not be driven to action as a Christian knowing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has targeted a specific people group, the Uyghur Muslims, for extermination?
Yet, American Christians remain either ignorant of the CCP’s shocking human-rights record or they know and are indifferent to it.
It’s time for followers of Jesus Christ to ask some hard questions of themselves about the CCP:
If you can’t view China and all that it does against human rights with clear eyes, and the necessary outrage, when will you?
Why and how does religious persecution, slave labor, organ harvesting, and a genocide not bother you?
If you can’t acknowledge China’s depth of depravity to make it adjust what you do, including how you spend money, is there any set of circumstances that would cause that change?
China’s human rights record has grown more nightmarish under President Xi Jinping. Religious persecution is common practice against the Falun Gong, Uyghur Muslims, Christians, and others. The CCP’s surveillance of its citizens, meaning one wrong move and they’re locked up, is nonstop. Political prisoners are routine, slave labor occurs in Xinjiang province, they torture prisoners, they have an ongoing organ-harvesting program, and they murder people. These are the human rights violations the world knows about. Throw in the genocide against the 1 million to 1.2 million Uyghur Muslims in the northwestern Xinjiang province and you get the hideous picture of the CCP.
Countless U.S. companies are entrenched in China for two primary reasons: cheap labor, and profiting off the 1.4 billion Chinese citizens. Under Xi’s leadership, the situation in China is not improving for Americans or American companies.
The Select House Committee on the CCP has examined multiple aspects of the Chinese Communist Party: The Uyghur Muslim genocide, the Chinese economy, and how it impacts the countless U.S. businesses there and here.
Peter Humphrey is a British specialist on China and has been working there for 48 years. His business has performed due diligence for companies attempting to navigate the CCP.
“Every American business today must understand nobody and no company is safe in China, Humphrey told the panel by taped message July 13.
Shehad Qazi, chief operating officer and managing director of China Beige Book International, testified at the meeting. Qazi’s firm does analytical research to help businesses make decisions. He calls China “information black-holed” and an “information desert.”
Corporate America tripped over themselves to boycott the MLB All Star Game in Atlanta in 2021 because Georgia passed a bill on voting. However, they can’t stand up to China over a genocide and other human-rights abuses.
If it looks, walks, and talks like hypocrisy it is.
Two Christian colleges ended their Nike sponsorships when Colin Kaepernick started taking a knee during the national anthem in 2016. I don’t condone the disrespect of the American flag or national anthem, but certainly the genocide against Uyghurs where Nike and Adidas are believed to be connected to slave labor supply chains for their sneakers and apparel is a significant issue of conscience. And that’s just two companies.
Whenever talk of a boycott occurs, there is immediate opposition. People argue boycotts never work. They claim it’s nearly impossible for people to change their spending habits in a way that could possibly send the desired message. When a country is involved, a boycott harms the citizens, we are told.
Folks can justify the status quo in various ways. This call to action for followers of Jesus Christ isn’t about the trendy move of a boycott because China has “gone woke.” This call is not some act of Christian legalism. It’s a call for being deliberate in doing what one can do–or what an organization, school, or college can do.
The CCP has a shocking human-rights record, and they deserve a massive statement from individual American Christians, families, churches, Christian colleges, Christian high schools, and others. The Church in America must stand up to China on the persecution of China’s underground home church alone.
In July 2022, the U.S. implemented the Uyghur Force Labor Prevention Act, which aims to cut off products from slave labor. More than a year in, companies are adjusting and it remains a process.
It will require many more nations to make the needed statement to the CCP, which is one of the reasons individuals must do what they can, and especially Christians.
Dear Christian, if you will not do something now when will you?