1983 - He Enjie & Lin Zerong

September 5, 1983

Guangzhou, Guangdong

Probably the most controversial inclusion in this book is the pair of Hong Kong men, He Enjie and Lin Zerong, who were executed in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in 1983. The men’s families and friends insist the duo were missionaries who had died for their faith in Christ. The Chinese government to this day claims they were executed because they were spying for Taiwan. Getting to the truth in this matter has proven extremely difficult ever since. As one publication pointed out at the time, the deaths of He and Lin have “launched a printed trail of emotionalism, rumour and speculation. Fuel was added to the fire by the many conflicting reports filed in the Hong Kong papers and quickly picked up by press agencies abroad.”[1]

News of the two Christians’ arrest first broke in Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. They reported He Enjie and Lin Zerong had been arrested on March 29, 1983, and charged with “stealing important Communist documents and attempting to subvert the Chinese government by trying to establish urban guerrilla troops, underground storage rooms and a radio station.”[2]

At least seven different Hong Kong newspapers reported the incident, but enquiries soon discovered the two men had long been known as zealous Christians who desired to expand the kingdom of God throughout China. Relatives countered the Chinese government’s charges by saying the “urban guerrilla troops” were in fact house church Christians that He and Lin had given Bible training to for years; the “underground storage rooms” were for Bible deliveries the two were organizing from Hong Kong; and the “radio station” was a gospel radio program they hoped to broadcast into China from across the border. On September 14, 1983, the Hong Kong Times ran the headline, “The Chinese Communist Party Slaughtered Missionaries as ‘Spies’.” The article stated He and Lin were “devout Christians, fervently concerned with their suffering brothers and sisters on the Mainland.”[3] The article depicted the men as

“martyrs for the sake of Christ… He Enjie had been particularly active in the ‘underground church’ on the Mainland and was once imprisoned in China because he was completely at odds with the ‘Three-Self Church,’ which he viewed as a tool of the Beijing government. Lin and He were reported to have gone to Guangzhou last Christmas with only Chinese Bibles and Christian literature.”[4]

Jean Jenner penned an article in the British Weekly, entitled “Christian Workers Executed in China.” Jenner explained the pair were

“freelance missionaries and not under the sponsorship of any one organization although both attended a Baptist church in Hong Kong. Their purpose in China was to establish a printing facility for Christian literature and storage for the printed material. They were also setting up an information network which would relay news of the home churches.”[5]

Later in the same week, however, a Reuters story filed in Taipei quoted a Taiwan government source saying the two men were indeed spies working for them behind enemy lines. Strong suspicions arose from this Reuters story, however, in that the source “admitted” He and Lin “had entered Guangzhou to organize urban guerrillas, to set up an underground radio station and underground storage places.”[6] The fact that the exact same accusations against the men were quickly and easily admitted to, in the same order that they had been made, caused many to believe the source in Taiwan was a Communist sympathizer hoping to sweep the whole issue under the carpet. It is also highly unlikely that any government official would give such a forthright admission of guilt even if the men had been their employees. To this day, none of He or Lin’s family members have ever confirmed that the two were anything other than followers of Christ.

It should be remembered that China in 1983 was a far different place than it is today, or even how it was in the late 1980s. China had only recently started opening up to the outside world, and in many ways the society was hung-over with the stigma of repression from the Mao years and the Cultural Revolution. In 1983 there were very few Christians working in China, few Bibles had been seen in China for decades, and any attempts to have house church meetings and coordinate secret Bible deliveries could easily have been interpreted as politically-motivated in the atmosphere of the time.

Perhaps a clue as to whether these men died an unjust death for the cause of Christ, or were espionage agents can be found in the tenor of a pro-Beijing newspaper, Wenhui Bao, which stated,

“If people like to argue that these agents were Christians who ‘went to the mainland to spread the gospel and die for the Lord’ then we must ask about the motivation of such persons. It may be that they are making use of some Taiwan government agents who justly deserve the death sentence in order to deceive the religious people inside and outside China, to stir up ill feelings towards the Mainland, and to falsely accuse the Mainland of persecuting religious people. They must be desperate. Such actions are blasphemous and slander against Christianity. Those who create such rumours are indeed sinful.”[7]

These words echo the tactic used by the Communist authorities since they were first established. Their word is to be believed without hesitation, and anyone brave enough to question their version of events is slandered and shamed as an enemy of the Mainland.

There are many questions left unanswered from the 1983 deaths of He Enjie and Lin Zerong, and only eternity will reveal their true motivations and activities. Even when contacting China and Hong Kong church workers to research for this book, it became apparent that nobody is sure even now whether these men were killed for their witness for Christ, or as spies.[8]

Two things are known for sure: He and Lin were zealous Christians who loved the Lord Jesus Christ; and they were the forerunners of numerous missionaries and organizations who work in China today, printing Bibles, holding underground Bible training, and looking for ways to reach the Chinese people through the media. If ministering today, there is little chance the men would ever face the harsh and draconian punishment they received in 1983. It could well be that He Enjie and Lin Zerong were truly martyrs for Christ, and their main crime was that their vision for Christian ministry was years ahead of their time.

1. “Spies or Missionaries?” Bridge (no.2, November 1983).
2. Xinhua (March 29, 1983), citied in “Spies or Missionaries?”
3. Hong Kong Times (September 14, 1983).
4. “Spies or Missionaries?”
5. Jean Jenner, “Christian Workers Executed in China,” British Weekly (September 1983), cited in “Spies or Missionaries?”
6. Reuters News Agency, Taipei (September 16, 1983).
7. Wenhui Bao (September 18, 1983).
8. Dennis Balcombe, the well-known leader of Revival Christian Church in Hong Kong and involved in China ministry for more than 30 years, met He Enjie and Lin Zerong on many occasions in the early 1980s. He wrote,“Probably none of us have the total facts. They used to talk very boldly how they were determined to preach the gospel in China and hoped the Communist system would collapse. They wanted to work with me (and others) to distribute Bibles and had a whole bunch of projects. They were executed at the height of spiritual pollution campaign. At that time the news stated they had put up an anti-communist banner on the outside of a Guangzhou hotel. It would be interesting to find if there were any independent accounts of seeing this large banner. Even so, it is possible it was engineered by the Communists, for it would seem to be suicide to do such a thing…. The whole thing is quite bizarre, and possibly the whole story was cooked up by the Communists. At the time most everyone in this type of ministry thought this was a set-up by the Communists, and they were true martyrs for the faith. It was only later when a lot of these details began to surface that we started to have our doubts.” Dennis Balcombe, personal communication (July 2005).