Bishop Zen Ze-kiun, leader of Hong Kong’s more than 200,000 Catholics, has long been a thorn in the side of the Beijing and Hong Kong governments on a broad range of issues. True to form, he was again outspoken at an FCC lunch, but also held out grounds for hope, as Jonathan Sharp reports

Bishop Zen may not normally be regarded as a betting man, but he is willing to offer a tip to anyone contemplating a punt that China would achieve major progress on social freedoms and human rights in the next three years or so.

“I would not bet on that,” Zen said in a characteristically down-to-earth comment during a lunch-time speech and question and answer session that scored headlines in both the local English and Chinese-language press.

Nevertheless, the man who has repeatedly spoken out against the Beijing government saw evidence for optimism following last year’s elevation of Hu Jintao to head the Communist Party. Zen said Hu was showing “good intentions”, for example by saying that everybody should respect the constitution and the Party should listen to people’s voices. “That’s a very good attitude.”

He said the present situation, including the repression of the underground Catholic Church on the mainland over its allegiance to the Vatican, was difficult to understand since it ran counter to a general climate that has included China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation and winning the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. As a result of these and other forward-moving developments, he added, the current situation cannot last too long.

That being said, Zen, who has not been allowed to make an official visit to the mainland since 1998, painted a bleak picture of ever more repressive measures facing the Catholic Church, despite obvious progress compared with 20 years ago. He said that whereas previously the Communist government might have taken two steps forward and then one step back, it also sometimes took one forward and one back. “And now we are obviously going back.”

Zen said the Chinese government had become increasingly nervous in view of the open secret that two thirds of bishops in the officially recognized Catholic Church on the Mainland were already reconciled with the Holy See, which does not recognize Beijing diplomatically. He cited an attempted “brainwashing session” for Chinese bishops at official church ceremonies in Beijing and instances of persecution, including a case of seminarians being forced to sign documents confessing to a lack of “sufficient patriotism.”

The Bishop said he personally had tried to avoid having increased relations with the Catholic community in China “because just to mention my name is dangerous now.”

Zen took the Hong Kong government to task over the well-worn topic of the proposedArticle 23 anti-subversion legislation, singling out the mechanism that would link proscribed groups on the Mainland to parallel organisations in Hong Kong. He held out the possibility that if the underground church on the Mainland was deemed to be a danger to state security, and Beijing found a list of names of a bishops’ conference that gave Hong Kong church leaders such as him a leading role, then the local church could face being banned as well.

Aside from the Article 23 controversy, Zen was also critical of the Hong Kong government for a variety of other issues – including its handling of football betting. The Church’s own conclusion on such gambling was neither a simple yes or no. But he said the government just seemed to collect opinions in favour or against football betting. “I think the unfortunate thing is that there was not much good discussion.”

He also came out against the tax levy on domestic helpers. “Surely our religious instinct is to be on the side of the weak, and really it seems that the government is always targeting the weak…We think that the domestic helpers deserve to be treated better.”

Apart from aiming brickbats at the government, Zen may have surprised some FCC members by offering plaudits for the Hong Kong and international media.

Asked if the media had done a good enough job in their coverage of issues of social and human rights, the Bishop said: “Some good people in the Church tell me ‘Bishop, be careful, you are being used (by the media)’. I think we are using each other, but in a good sense: I mean we are helping each other.”

The Bishop added: “We really have to be grateful to the media for doing their job so well because without this free press I think Hong Kong will be finished.”