Book Review: Bob Fu Is Alive and Thriving

The exiled Chinese Christian’s autobiography gives hope for all who suffer persecution for their faith.

Bob Fu is probably the world's best-known Chinese Christian. He lives in exile in Midland, Texas, where he runs the nonprofit organization ChinaAid, which supports human rights in his homeland. ChinaAid has been successful in extracting persecuted Christian leaders and political dissidents from China to safety in the West. In his autobiography, God's Double Agent: The True Story of a Chinese Christian's Fight for Freedom, Mr. Fu recounts the inspiring story of his personal spiritual journey, his persecution in China, and his escape to the U.S.

One of the epigraphs to God's Double Agent comes from the late Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong's last wife and one of the radical Chinese Communist leaders known as the Gang of Four, whose brutal policies created enormous suffering during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. In Jiang's words, "Christianity in China has been confined to the history section of the museum. It is dead and buried."

Jiang, who committed suicide in 1991, did not live to see how wrong her pronouncement turned out to be. A remarkable fact of life in China in recent years is the explosive growth of Christianity. The number of Christians in China is estimated at between 100 million and 130 million. Which brings us to another astonishing fact: There are more Christians in China today than there are members of the Communist Party, whose rolls number about 82 million. Keep reading