Martyn Hassall, the Blackburn Diocesan communications officer, writes about the controversy China provokes in political and religious circles.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was missing. One question must have ricocheted round a hundred media news rooms.

"Where the (expletive probably not deleted) is Rowan?"

The answer, little reported when it was revealed, was that the Archbishop's ambitiously elastic mind had reached China.

The day after his speech about faith and law had been catapulted into headlines, the Archbishop was hosting a study day with 11 Chinese and British academics.

Its theme of "Religion in the Public Square" was engagingly close to what much of the media were eager to discuss with him.

But while The Sun despatched its battle bus and a brace of Page Three Stunners to blockade Lambeth Palace with 'Bash the Bishop' (sic) banners, the Archbishop was celebrating "a most unusual and worthwhile encounter" with the probably non-Sun reading Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University and the Professor of Modern Chinese History at Shanghai Normal University.

Timing is essence in journalism, and Rowan and China are newsworthy.

Perceptions of Dr Williams' verbal spaghetti on sharia law are continuing to make headlines, and China has yet to occur.

'China study day at Lambeth' flags up learned discussions on different social contexts' and heavyweight professorial papers on the place of religion in Chinese society.

China, in most minds, shouts billion pound Olympics. Later this year they will come together.

China baffles most of us in the West. It appears the ultimate contradiction; a turbo-charged capitalist-Communist mutual appreciation society.

Political sensitivities have already produced stories of Olympic athletes being advised: "Don't mention Tibet".

Only last week a religious news service reported that the president of the Chinese House Church Alliance was alleging "relentless persecution" by the Chinese authorities.

Was this an indication of "the serious attention now paid by Chinese scholars to religious issues and to the potential of faith for deepening the moral vision of society", included in the Lambeth Palace discussions?

China has for decades been controversial among Western Christians, divided in their support for the 'official' church in China and the unofficial 'house church' movement, and divided also by allegations of compromise and martyrdom.

China is equally capable of provoking controversy in a far wider public if it tries to mask social and political injustice and environmental abuse behind the five gold rings of the Olympic logo.

So perhaps our sometimes baffling Archbishop was on to something, within the apparently detached academic agenda?

Jesus, the radical teacher who would have had the Sun's battle bus in permanent attendance, talked of going 'the extra mile' in efforts to effect understanding and reconciliation with those who might be considered enemies.

He told a barbed story about a 'good Samaritan'- the equivalent of an anti-apartheid campaigner crediting a racist with a passion for human rights.

The Lambeth scholars were discussing something equally difficult and generous; the ability to attempt understanding between radically different cultures and beliefs.

It calls for the considered silence any person of faith can call prayer, and for some gold medal thinking in Olympics year.