It seems to me that Nigel has some explaining to do.
He quotes, and makes much noise about, a passage in Zimmerman-Liu/Wright’s draft article that was actually changed (and significantly so) in the final version, published in the online Journal of Church and State. Because the initial version, prepared for a meeting of the Western Political Science Association, was a work in progress, it clearly stated on the cover page, “Please do not cite or quote without the author’s permission.” Nonetheless, Nigel quoted it as follows:
“In the account of LSM leaders, around that time, overseas Local Church leaders sent two representatives to Dongyang in order to set up a local congregation there. However, Dongyang’s Christians did not welcome their arrival. Shortly thereafter, local TSPM and CCP leaders broke up the newly established Local Church congregation. Concurrently, a similar chain of events occurred in Dongwu county.” (emphasis added)
However, the final version reads:
“Around that time, TSPM leaders sent two representatives to Dongyang to set up a local chapter. However, Dongyang’s Christians did not welcome their arrival. Shortly thereafter, the TSPM representatives incited local cadres to violently break up various Christian meetings in the county. A similar chain of events occurred in Yiwu County, also in Zhejiang Province.” (emphasis added)
According to the final version of Zimmerman-Liu/Wright’s article, two TSPM representatives went to Dongyang County to set up a local TSPM chapter. When they were not welcomed by the Christians there, they incited violent breakups of Christian meetings.
Evidently, the draft article was in error when it said that two overseas Local Church representatives set up an unwelcome congregation in Dongyang, so the authors made the correction. Note that the Wikipedia entry addressing these incidents, which Nigel attempts to discredit in footnote 41 of his article, supports the corrected version of Zimmerman-Liu/Wright’s article. Nigel writes:
“We note that Zimmerman-Liu & Wright’s (peer-reviewed) account attributes the source of precipitating events to the actions of “overseas Local Church leaders [who] sent two representatives to Dongyang in order to set up a local congregation” This contradicts the account in the Wikipedia entry “The Shouters” which states that “On February 14–16 [1982], two representatives of the TSPM [Three-Self Patriotic Movement—government approved agency] had visited Dongyang to set up a TSPM chapter there.” In this Wikipedia account “the TSPM” was seeking to establish “a TSPM chapter,” rather than “Local Church leaders” trying to establishing a “Local Church congregation” (as Zimmerman-Liu & Wright assert). This Wikipedia entry appears to suffer the problem of multiple, conflicting entries on a controversial issue and the lack of “quality control.” I find Zimmerman-Liu & Wright’s account more credible.”
The “peer-reviewed” version of Zimmerman-Liu/Wright’s article is the corrected, Journal of Church and State version posted online, not the one that Nigel quoted from. He was aware that the final version was available, but he chose instead to quote from the draft version, claiming “fair use” privileges despite the authors’ request that the draft version not be quoted without permission. Footnote 8 of his article reads:
“The quotes in the present piece are from the version “Prepared for delivery at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association Seattle, WA, April 17-19, 2014.” This paper is available on line at:
http://wpsa.research.pdx.edu/papers/...14%20paper.pdf The final, published version appears in the Journal of Church & State, Advance Access May 5, 2015 Our quotations from T. Zimmerman-Liu & T. Wright’s papers fall within the parameters of “fair use” for review purposes.”
So, I again suggest that Nigel has some explaining to do.