How a Despairing, Hate-Filled Chinese Freedom Fighter Found Christ

He helped organize pro-democracy demonstrations that captured the world’s attention when Chinese authorities massacred hundreds of unarmed students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Bob Fu

When he faced retribution from the government for his role in the protests, suicidal despair and hatred began to consume him – until a powerful encounter with the living God.


Even as a child, he experienced friction with government officials. “We were always bullied by the Chinese authorities,” recalls Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, a non-profit organization based in Texas that advocates on behalf of the underground church and political dissidents in China.

The bullying stemmed from his home life, having a disabled father and a mother who resorted to begging for the family’s survival. “It was a humiliating situation,” he confesses. Even friends and neighbors belittled his family. 

The mistreatment ignited a fire in his heart for equality and justice. “I thought the best way to change my family and to change the system was to become a political leader,” he says, and he began to nurture aspirations to become a communist party official some day.
As a college junior in 1989, he watched the student democracy movement take off. “I became deeply involved and felt it might be the moment for change,” he recalls. 

Fu organized protests at Liaocheng University in his province, then led fellow students to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the epicenter of the unprecedented confrontation.
By an unexpected twist, Fu’s girlfriend Heidi (later to become his wife) became ill and he left the protests to attend her. So he was not in the square June 4th when the military launched a heavy-handed onslaught to enforce the government’s curfew. Chinese troops with assault rifles and tanks inflicted heavy casualties on student demonstrators.

Although Fu was absent – possibly a narrow escape from death -- he paid a price for his involvement. When school resumed, Fu was singled out in the classroom for interrogation. “I was forced to cancel all my classes,” he recalls. “It was a very hard moment.”
Emotionally, he went into a tailspin. “I was in despair and I wanted to commit suicide,” he says. He found himself ostracized by teachers and even fellow students. The police forced him to write confessions and treated him like a criminal.

Finding Jesus in China

At this low point in his life, an American English teacher at the college gave him a biography of Xi Shengmo, a 19th-century Chinese Christian convert. Xi had once been a Confucian scholar and opium addict, but turned to Christ under the influence of Hudson Taylor’s missionaries. 

The book came as a revelation to Fu. “I didn’t know about the Christian faith at all,” he recounts. As Fu read about Xi’s conversion, the Holy Spirit grabbed his heart.

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