Beijing, China - China has kicked out more than 100 suspected foreign missionaries in a campaign to prevent proselytizing ahead of next year's Beijing Summer Olympics, a U.S. monitoring group said Tuesday.
The government launched "a massive expulsion campaign of foreign Christians" in February dubbed Typhoon No. 5, said the China Aid Association, based in Midland, Texas.
The foreigners, mostly from the United States, South Korea, Singapore, Canada, Australia, and Israel, were expelled or deported between April and June, the group said.
It said the campaign was believed to be part of "efforts to prevent foreign Christians from engaging in mission activities before the Beijing Olympics next year."
China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment late Tuesday.
Christian mission groups from around the world say they plan to quietly defy the Chinese ban on foreign missionaries and send thousands of volunteer evangelists to Beijing next year. Evangelicals worked the crowds at the Olympics in Athens, Sydney and Atlanta but the groups say the Beijing Games offer an opening like no other, in a communist country that conservative Christians have long reviled.
Susan Stevenson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy, said the embassy had "heard some reports of deportations," but could give no details, citing privacy rules.
China bans open proselytizing and harasses, fines and jails Christians worshipping outside the Communist Party-controlled official church. Despite that, millions more Chinese Christians continue to meet independently and carry out missionary work such as distributing leaflets at markets, train stations and other public places.
Foreign faithful who live in China are often able to evangelize privately while working as English teachers, humanitarian workers or in business.
The Aid Association said foreigners expelled had been either working in or visiting Beijing, the far western region of Xinjiang, Tibet or the eastern coastal province of Shandong.
It cited an American who has lived in Xinjiang for 10 years as saying that 60 foreign religious workers were expelled from the heavily Muslim region alone.
Jean-Paul Wiest, a Beijing-based expert on Chinese Catholicism, said he had not heard of mass deportations of missionaries but would not be surprised if it was happening.
"I've not heard of that ... but it's not too surprising if they are preaching," Wiest said. "It's supposedly not allowed here."