I will compare it to ten years ago. I first started working directly with the underground churches in 1996. After five years, basically I worked with both the government church and the underground church. Even today, we do hold conferences and leadership training sessions among both. We see they are more open and that there's more awareness on both sides.
There are also more underground churches becoming open churches that are registered with the government. They have found a benefit to working with the government on the social level. If they remain underground, they cannot participate at the social level, so there are more and more open churches.
Yet I think the government is probably still watching and looking after some underground churches. If they do see some so-called illegal activities, they will intervene, but mostly what we see is more and more open even to the underground churches. If the underground churches really just worship, obey the law, and basically keep their numbers at a level that is not threatening, it is still legal to do that. In some areas—probably in the larger areas—the government still respects those activities.
Of course, one part of my work is also to try to encourage the underground churches to learn to register with the government and to understand that they need to be light and soft in public, and then they do so. I work from the north to the south, the west to the east, in the underground church network. They respect our contribution because they see the benefits.
This earthquake is really one of the examples. A large number of so-called underground churches are participating in these activities. What they do is register with the government to do that, so I see that the persecution we're used to now occurs less often than it did before.