March 16, 2000

(Note: These are unedited and uncorrected transcripts

COMMISSIONER ABRAMS: Thank you. We will proceed now to the second panel, which will focus on Christian communities in China; and we have three witnesses. The first is Fu Xiqui, Bob Fu. Mr. Fu was from 1993 to 1996, a teacher of English at the Communist Party School in Beijing. He became pastor of the campus church and a leader of the house-church movement in Beijing and established an underground Chinese Bible Study school for which he was ultimately imprisoned, arrested and imprisoned, for evangelical activities. He fled in 1996, first for Hong Kong and ultimately was able to get to the United States where he is enrolled now at Westminster Theological Seminary.

Mr. Harry Wu was sentenced to prison first in 1960 for being a, quote, "counterrevolutionary" writing. He will be speaking out against the Soviet invasion of Hungary and for criticizing the Community Party. That was 1960, and he spent the next 19 years in 12 different forced-labor camps in the Laogai in a prison-camp system. He came to the U.S. in 1985 and has been Visiting Professor of Geology at the University of California at Berkeley, and has since been a very strong voice for human rights in China. He is the author of the book, "Laogai: The Chinese Gulag," which is an explanation of the Laogai system; and of an autobiography, "Bitter Winds"; and of the book, "Troublemaker."

Dr. Kim-Kwong Chan is an ordained minister of the Anglican church and senior fellow of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He is also executive secretary of the Hong Kong Christian Council. He holds a Ph.D. in China studies from the University of Honwa and a doctorate in the Theology of Church History from St. Paul University in Ottowa. He has extensive experience in working with both the official and the underground or unregistered churches in China, and has written extensively about Christians and Christianity, including a book called "Protestantism in Contemporary China," published by the Cambridge University Press.

And I believe we'll begin with Mr. Fu.