Over 1,000 faithful turned up for the Sunday service at the Chongwenmen Protestant church in central Beijing yesterday morning and as always those who couldn't find a place in the octagonal building sat in rows outside singing along with the 20-voice choir via television monitors.
Inside, the only people out of place among the pews were some large Americans in short haircuts, one of them chewing gum as he glared suspiciously at the wooden pillars, the grand piano, the ceiling trap doors and other likely sources of hidden danger. They were from the Air Force One advance team, giving the church a final once-over before President Clinton, his wife, Hillary, and daughter, Chelsea, turn up next Sunday for morning service.
Since the 104-year-old church reopened in 1982 as Beijing's biggest Protestant house of worship it has become the religious venue for all important American visitors. Former President George Bush used it, the Rev Billy Graham preached there twice, and in February last the president of the US National Association of Evangelicals, the Rev Don Argue, conducted a service, taking as his text Matthew 6: 19-24: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth . . . You cannot serve both God and mammon."
The "model" church, which provides dual-language head-sets, is one of 12,000 officially registered Protestant churches in China (excluding house churches, run by clergy who reject being tied with the atheistic state, such as one nearby which was "voluntarily" closed last year by 82-yearold Pastor Allen Yuan Xiangchen after police gave him the choice of registering officially or merging with Chongwenmen Church).
For President Clinton, attending the service will be one of the least controversial photo-opportunities in an eight-day trip fraught with political minefields. A much more contentious issue has been whether or not President Clinton would meet dissidents.
Chinese security officials will be at the church on Sunday - and at other places where crowds gather to see the Clintons, like Tiananmen Square and Beijing University - in case some lone protester raises a banner. Up to last week, US officials were not ruling out a meeting with opposition figures in China, but on Friday, the US Assistant Secretary of State, Mr Stanley Roth, said: "I don't think we are going to have dissidents on the schedule."
The White House, which has already bowed to Chinese insistence that the welcoming ceremony be held in Tiananmen Square, scene of the 1989 anti-democracy crackdown, said that dissidents might be penalised by the Chinese government afterwards. The Americans recall the fate of Mr Fang Lizhi during Mr Bush's state visit to China in February 1989. The pro-democracy activist was invited to a farewell banquet in a Beijing hotel but was harassed by police and later fled to the US.
In the early days of the Clinton administration, a leading dissident, Mr Wei Jingsheng, was arrested and jailed shortly after meeting a US human rights official in Beijing. But this pretext has been rejected by Mr Xu Wenli, a veteran of the Democracy Wall campaign of 1989 and now China's most prominent dissident voice, who was put forward by 55 dissidents last week as their choice for a meeting.
Mr Xu said yesterday that the persecution fears were irrelevant and Mr Clinton's stand-down "effectively means he has abandoned his responsibilities" to promote democracy and human rights. In an open letter, 77 dissidents (no one knew there were so many) calling themselves the Voice of China's Opposition asked Mr Clinton to at least meet Mrs Ding Zilin, the outspoken mother of a student shot in the 1989 crackdown on the pro-democracy movement.
Five dissidents in Shanghai are threatening a hunger strike if prevented from meeting the president. The dissidents are calculating that now is the time to press their case.
The former Chinese leader, Mr Deng Xiaoping, who hated dissent, has gone from the scene, the new leadership desperately wants a successful summit to promote its "strategic partnership" with the US, the UN Human Rights Commissioner, Mrs Mary Robinson, is coming in September, and China has promised to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in the autumn. All this could act as a restraint on the authorities in dealing harshly with opposition voices.
But the atmosphere is anything but relaxed and open. Dissidents have been told to stay away from cities Mr Clinton is visiting. Censorship has been tightened, as the CNN Beijing bureau found out when it sent two videotapes to its Atlanta bureau last week via Federal Express: one got through, the other, which contained scenes of Chinese police beating up demonstrators, did not, and it now turns out that for three weeks Chinese security agents have been ripping open "high-profile" Fedex packages for inspection.
The Chinese authorities have also refused American television networks permission to televise live events like the ceremony in Tiananmen Square and the church service: they can only take video film for later use (which can be blocked if fed back into the country), otherwise they must use what Chinese Central Television dishes up to them, and to millions of Chinese television viewers.
The White House may be the masters of spin but before this trip begins they appear to have let the Chinese set the agenda and take control of much of the visual output. History may see this summit as the "diplomatic event of the century" (President Jiang Zemin's words) but the devil is in the details for the White House and there are reports in Beijing of frantic last-minute changes to the presidential schedule - in particular the cancelling of a Shanghai press conference and the dropping of some CEOs from the 3,000strong presidential entourage because of the danger of associating the president with the missile-technology-for-campaign-contributions allegations.
With the demons of sleaze (in the form of new Monica Lewinsky allegations) threatening to dog him as he tours Xi'an, Beijing, Shanghai and Guelin, the President could be facing a PR disaster in China on both the international and domestic fronts.
The pastor told the congregation at yesterday's service in Chongwenmen church: "No matter what the devil does, please give us strength." Mr Clinton might say "Amen" to that.