Daviid Wang (left) with Director General Wang Zhengyao
(Photo: © Asian Outreach)
The Chinese government’s top earthquake relief official is thrilled with the response of CMS partners Asian Outreach and their social arm ActionLove. David Wang, former president of Asian Outreach, visited him at his Beijing HQ.
For the first month after the earthquake, Director General Wang Zhengyao averaged four hours of sleep every day. Mostly it was on a couch, or a folding chair, or “just in any tent I happened to be visiting.”
Wang was the Chief Coordinator of the unprecedented, massive rescue and relief efforts after the Sichuan earthquake. His most bold “Three Open” policy – Open to the World, Open to the Media, Open to the People – has won praise from around the world.
Three days ago, I visited him in his Beijing office. He greeted me with a hug: “I saw your ActionLove friends at the frontline. There were many of them. Their convoys of different cars, all painted with a cross, went everywhere delivering food and water.”
The Director was obviously pleased that China’s Christians had come forward at this time.
“Without the volunteers, in their hundreds of thousands, if not in millions, there would never have been the groundswell of charity spirit and activities in the country.”
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Thus far, more than 50 billion yuan [£3.7bn] has been donated in China. “Still more is coming. Our Ministry is now facing a major challenge of properly and effectively managing the people’s trust,” Wang confessed.
My immediate offer was to process his staff and volunteers through the renowned Peter Drucker course on “Managing Non Profit Organisations and Charity Funds.” Besides managing donations, Wang’s Disaster Relief Department is also shouldering a 100 billion yuan [£7.4bn] effort for the first three years’ Sichuan reconstruction.
“We need help! We need all kinds of help!” Wang was China’s first high-level official ever to appeal to the world openly and clearly for help. And now in person, he is again appealing to my friends.
To Senior Elder Jon Davis of Beijing International Christian Fellowship, he asked, “You can mobilise and send us your foreigners? In your church, you must have all sorts of experts.”
Of course, Pastor Jon has many experts. More than 20 rebuilding specialists are now ready to go.
“You Christians are ahead of everybody!”
To Elder Miao of Wenzhou house church, Wang first expressed his astonishment as he was checking through their donation records: “The receipts of your people’s gifts show that within days you church people gave more than 2.3 million yuan! [£170,000]”
ActionLove teams distribute water in the earthquake zone
(Photo: © Asian Outreach)
Elder Miao then reported to the Director General that his son had just called from the epicentre of the earthquake to say that he has obtained official permission, and the land, to immediately start building a “Charity Supermarket” right in the worst affected village of Bei Chuan County – Lei Gu Zhen village. When Wang heard this, he happily shouted, “Tai Hao Le! Wonderful! You Wenzhou Christians are so much ahead of everybody!”
In the next office, Wang showed us aerial photos taken by his surveillance planes. “For more than eight years of handling disasters and catastrophes in China, I’ve never seen anything like Sichuan. This devastation is by far the worst. It’s apocalyptic. The end of the world!”
Then the Director General admitted, “It has awakened the goodness and generosity of the whole country. The response from our top leaders and the people has been laudable.”
I shared with Director General Wang the two projects we are putting into action: “We want to immediately broadcast a children’s programme, based on CS Lewis’s Narnia series. I want the children in their tents and prefab homes to again enjoy adventures, fun and laughter.”
Director General Wang was literally in tears. He told us during his daily survey of the Rescue and Relief operation, his greatest joy was to see two children, amidst the rubble, playing badminton: “We need to get our children playing and laughing again!”
Dealing with the “mini-earthquakes”
“Secondly, we are training thousands of Christian counsellors, not only to serve in Sichuan, but over time, in every city throughout China.” I shared with the Director our plan to establish Community & Family Harmony Centres.
They are to deal with the day to day “mini-earthquakes” that are tearing up China. Amidst their rapid urbanisation and development, marriages are shattering. Inter-generational relations are broken. Parenting is becoming most difficult with the one child policy. The poor are ever more marginalised.
“There are earthquakes ravaging our nation everyday. We want to train counsellors to become neighbourhood ‘Blessed are the Peace Makers’,” I made a pledge to the Director General.
The response from the Chief Coordinator of Rescue and Relief of the largest national catastrophe in modern China was clear and straightforward: “Rebuilding buildings and livelihoods is challenging. But we can do it. Your efforts to rebuild people’s hearts and souls are even more important!
“Go! You get the Church involved and do as much as possible to rebuild people’s hearts and souls!”
But do it wisely and sensitively – that was his final advice.
Well, for Asian Outreach and ActionLove China, that is the only way we know how to do God’s work in China.
David Wang is president emeritus of
Asian Outreach International
China Christians ActionLove is the local coalition of Christians working through the social action arm of CMS's strategic partner Asian Outreach. You can donate to support their work through CMS by clicking on the link below or send a cheque made payable to Church Mission Society, with a covering note, to CMS, Watlington Road, Oxford OX4 6BZ.