In China the buffer of expatriate privilege is disappearing for foreign Christian workers

I think almost all foreigners who have worked in China at any time since 2017 onward have experienced in at least some way, the steady erosion of the foreigner-in-China “buffer”—the explicit and implicit privileges that foreigners have received and (if we’re honest) have come to expect since the beginning of China’s period of "Opening and Reform".

People on the streets today are not as excited to meet a foreigner as they were 10 or more years ago.

The most obvious sign of this erosion is that people on the streets today are not as excited to meet a foreigner as they were 10 or more years ago.

2023 indeed saw a little uptick in the wake of the mass disillusionment following the abrupt end of COVID measures in China, but those who had the chance to live in or even just visit China a couple of decades ago will surely remember the special treatment expatriates used to receive.

There was a dedicated currency just for non-citizens (Foreign Exchange Currency or FEC, 外汇钱), there were generous tax cuts for foreign businesses, and special access to land and transportation. Cars were provided to drive us around, special meals, invitations to exhibitions and festivals, and personal “handlers” to cater to our every need.

We could jump to the front of any line, and we always got the best, even if we still had to pay higher prices or pose for a few photos.

Then and now: from open doors to closed offices

I remember fondly how I handled government relations back in the late 1990s: Every January I would just stroll over to the government offices of the bureaus that I worked closely with—just walk in, in most cases not even talking to the guards or the registration desk, and then roam the halls peeking into offices looking for anyone I knew, just to wish them a Happy New Year. 

Today, I can’t get past the door of any government office without an express invitation.

If I bumped into anyone important, we would chat for a while and, if it was close to noon or the end of the day, head out for a shared meal, where we would reflect on what went well the previous year and pledge our trust and affection for the coming year.

Today, I can’t get past the door of any government office without an express invitation.

Even then, I have to call the person I am visiting when I arrive, and ask them to come down and usher me past security. Of course, the real issue is that officials simply don’t answer their phones when I (or any local person with whom they do not have a personal relationship) calls. Government has slowed dramatically, for almost everyone, including foreigners.

Sharing the struggles: when foreigners faced lockdown too

As that aura of privilege fades, I find I am more and more confronted with just how removed from actual Chinese life and society so much of expatriate ministry in China has been. 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 is changing now is that we expatriates are increasingly experiencing those same frustrations ourselves.

For those expatriates who endured lockdown within China, it was hard, and some aspects of negotiating pandemic life in China were especially difficult for foreigners. It took my province a long time to get health codes and tracking codes working for foreign passport-holders. But the reality of the last few years was that everyone was in lockdown together, and foreigners struggled right alongside our Chinese neighbors. The buffer had shrunk.

The ministry buffer we built

But there is another buffer that is also shrinking, one created by our own ministries.

By the late 90s, most expatriate China workers talked about our ministry in terms of “coming alongside” local believers in “partnership.” In later years, our language shifted to focus on “supporting” local sisters and brothers as they ministered.

If I’m really honest, I’m not sure that I ever really trusted Chinese people to do what I was doing.

But, as I look back on nearly thirty years in China, if I’m really honest, I’m not sure that I ever really trusted Chinese people to do what I was doing—to really take over, let alone start things on their own.

My idea of ministry—what is good, what is bad, how to best accomplish it—was always central, even to my goals of facilitating fully localized ministry. In so many cases, what expatriate workers (myself included) really wanted was for local people to continue or expand upon the work we set up, for local people to do our kind of ministry, and to do it our way.

If you are shaking your head, or feel that is not at all what you were about, I invite you to consider the last foundation grant application, short-term team, or even support letter you helped a local leader prepare.

The COVID years forced me to recognize just how strong is my desire to do my thing, how much of my own pride lingers in even the most locally focused and engaged ministries, and just how confident I have been that I know the right way to do the right kind of ministry in my local Chinese context.

Letting go of control

In what way is this a buffer?

Cross-cultural workers have been forced to put more and more trust in our Chinese sisters and brothers.

Well, for decades, expatriate workers have cultivated spaces within Chinese society where we can operate the kinds of ministries we value in ways that we see as effective and faithful. As regulations and enforcement have driven expatriates out of many of the areas of ministry that have traditionally been central to the work of foreigners in China (such as charitable work, relief and development projects, social services, and increasingly educational work), cross-cultural workers have been forced to put more and more trust in our Chinese sisters and brothers.

We have adapted to them seeking out new pathways of ministry, to serve in ways that are no longer possible for us as foreigners in China—in many cases serving in ways that even if we were allowed, we would not choose to do. Of course, this is exciting—perhaps especially for those expatriates who are forced to watch our Chinese sisters and brothers from far away. How thrilling it is to watch them create new ways to witness and serve in Jesus’ name!

Discomfort and disruption in local ministry models

But I have to tell you: there is a dark edge to this excitement.

Many of us are weighed down by the feeling of things moving ahead without us, that our contributions have been marginalized, of being left behind, and reduced from “leaders” to a footnote in the China ministry. And then there is our discomfort with the new kinds of ministries being explored—or even more so with the ways these new ministries are operating.

Leadership habits and organizational cultures within Christian circles in China are in some cases shifting away from what I think of as “best practices” back towards more “Chinese” models—and here I mean specifically mainland Chinese models (models shaped for good and bad by 75 years of CCP rule).

They often solve problems in the same ways everyone else in Chinese society does.

As our Chinese sisters and brothers scramble to keep their ministries afloat financially while staying ahead of Chinese regulators and security officials, they often solve problems in the same ways everyone else in Chinese society does. Family money is mingled with organizational money, more than expatriates from the West might be comfortable with.

Services, money, and material goods are passed around more freely than you would see in most Western organizations. I know one ministry leader who needed a new car for her work. Her family had recently lent one of her husband’s friends from work a bunch of cash which the friend could not pay back before Chinese New Year.

The friend did, however, have a new SUV which they have offered in lieu of some of the debt—a deal which the family accepted, thus giving the ministry leader the new car she needed. Where does that go on an organizational financial plan?

The increasingly contentious game of whack-a-mole between the state and Chinese Christian ministries continues, and the effort to stay ahead of Chinese regulators often means mission statements and ministry focus—even registrations, physical locations, partners, and staff—all change more often and at a faster rate than any western MBA graduate would recommend. 

Our Golden Age is over.

The very constraints that have pushed so many expatriates out of China are forcing local ministries to get really creative in order to survive, taking our sisters and brothers in directions that expatriates might never choose. And yet the heavy surveillance and increasingly restrictive regulations we expatriates face leave us on the margins, struggling to support our local sisters and brothers in whatever God enables them to do—our Golden Age is over, and their options are limited.

The end of an ea, and the invitation to deeper trust

If our pre-field training was even the least effective, we expatriates left our passport countries with a strong awareness of the need for humility in ministry. Shaped by ideas, habits, and preferences that we learned in our passport countries, many of the resources and programs that we brought with us expanded over the years to form a buffer that insulated us from some of the real challenges of living and working in China.

I am realizing just how much confidence I have placed in my notions and habits of ministry.

And now, as that buffer is crumbling under pressure from the Chinese state, I am realizing just how much confidence I have placed in my notions and habits of ministry, in the systems, principles, and even theological assumptions I’ve picked up from my Western education and church experience.

To work effectively in today’s China necessitates letting go of the buffer of foreign privilege that official China is so determined to dismantle. But it also requires humbly embracing a still deeper engagement with Chinese society, a further dying to myself, where more and more I submit myself to plans prayerfully developed by Chinese believers in China, to plans and solutions that do not grant me or my opinions any special privilege or unique status.

Dying to self in the new era

I have been living and working in China for a long time, and if you had asked me five years ago how we were doing, I would have said my team was pretty integrated and reasonably localized—always room for more improvement, but doing well.

Now, after these last few years, I am realizing that there are still so many places where I hold China at arm’s length, where I draw a line, choosing to isolate myself from the stress and uncertainty of living in the shadow of the increasingly unreachable China dream rather than stepping out in faith into that chaos alongside my Chinese sisters and brothers.

I need the Holy Spirit to help me develop a deeper willingness to trust and even submit to Chinese people.

If I hope to continue serving faithfully inside Xi Jinping’s China, I need the Holy Spirit to help me develop a deeper willingness to trust and even submit to Chinese people, to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, to allow myself to grow beyond my cultural inheritance—which includes Western patterns and ideals of ministry—and to allow God to use me in whatever way he deems best, as part of his work to sustain his Church in China’s New Era.

Originally published by ChinaSource. Republished with permission.

"Swells in the Middle Kingdom" (a pseudonym) began his life in China as a student back in 1990 and still, to this day, is fascinated by the challenges and blessings of living and working in China. Read his blogs on ChinaSource.