Posted on 08/17/2008 8:52:11 AM PDT by indcons
Chinese customs officials confiscated more than 300 Bibles on Sunday from four American Christians who arrived in a southwestern city with plans to distribute them, the group's leader said.
--snip--
"I heard that there's freedom of religion in China, so why is there a problem for us to bring Bibles?" Klein said. "We had over 300 copies and customs took all of them from us."
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
You were the one that brought it up. Thought you might have the list.
All those other people posing as Olympic tourists posting reports from their hotel rooms, internet cafes and Starbucks are really government plants also.
The Chinese have been planning this for year, infiltrating the U.S. to send a large contingent of U.S. citizen spies to China to post back to the U.S. to fool the public into thinking you can access FR from China.
But we figured it out.
I did not say there was total freedom of religion as it is enjoyed in the U.S.
I continually point out that freedom of religion does not include underground secret churches because it is unlawful assembly. But if you want to attend church on Sunday, there are plenty of churches where you can go worship.
Buy you and I have had this converstation too many times.
To say it again, China does not enjoy the freedom that makes America great. U.S. citizens would do well to take some steps to protect that freedom in the U.S. as by many accounts that freedom is slipping.
Why did they have to “declare” them? Why was it wrong to have them?
Well, it is the topic of the thread. I simply pointed out the controls that I see.
I did not say they were some sort of terrible thing, frankly the U.S. has censored a great deal in it's short history. Back in the 60s when I was a teen, Hollywook was censored for what they saw at the time as too much sexual exposure, so they required separate beds for married people, no outright sexual activities and so forth. By 1969, the rules were being broken so often that the entire process was given up in place of a more legally based framework. The last remnant of this was beaten just recently when Janice Jackson's law suit was thrown out of court for her costume malfunction.
We still have social based censorship in a way, but it's fading. But one could find problems taking a Catholic Bible into a Baptist church, for example....LOL
Anyhoo........I tend to view China's society from the progress it has made and not so much as to where it is now, and I try not to make hypocritical comparisons with the U.S. because we ain't perfect either.
Frikin laptop keyboard.....
.......I tend to view China’s society from the progress it has made and not so much as to where it is now.....
That is a great sentence. It is lost on many however because it involves not looking at the world, China in particular, in a mirror.
It didn't start with Bush. The folks in Congress are supposed to think independently to represent their constituents. If they are still in office, they satisfy their constituents. The American Sheeple are ultimately responsible for whatever happens to them.
Ping to read & respond later
China should be kicked out of UN, and India should replace its position becoming a permanent member with veto power.
ping
“Why do four people need 300 hundred Bibles?”
What is the proper number that they should be allowed, Comrade?
And why do the Chinese hire PR firms who then have people post on sites like Free Republic?
Ignore China at your peril.
One per person is legal. Maybe they could take two each.
They should not be able to take 300 per four people without proper customs declarations. The question is, if they made the proper declarations, would they be allowed.
The question for you is this: Should they have made commercial declaration on the large number they were trying to bring?
Simple enough question. What do you think?
I don’t think we would have confiscated 300 bibles from a Chinese national bringing them into the United States of America, even if they hadn’t been declared and were discovered by customs agents. Or books on the sayings of Confucius, for that matter.
The bibles were obviously not rare books on the world market, nor were they intended for commercial profit in China.
The obvious point is that the Communist government of the People’s Republic of China appears unwilling to allow the free distribution of bibles.
Even if those people /had/ made the “proper declarations”, would they have been allowed to take them in? I think not.
I agree with you that Bibles likely would not have been confiscated coming into the U.S. I think the U.S. would figure that some many are given away that they would not even have charged an import duty.
But I’m not sure they would have just looked the other way either. At least they would have said that many should have been declared.
I am not so sure as you about books on Confucius. Here I think they would have considered them a comodity subject to import duty.
The classifications for import of products are many. It is a quite complicated book. I’m not sure you have ever seen one or worked with one but I assure you there is a classification and assigned duty amount for books, even Bibles.
You are correct on Chinese authorities allowing the distribution of Bibles only if you mean the authorities do not allow it from customs scofflaws or those doing it outside the normal distribution channels.
I think not also on the part about them trying to bring them in. They do not have import export authority and did not run the books through an authorized import export company.
China’s suppression of Christianity is constant and undeniable.
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