Chinese Communist Party Suffocates Christians; The West Should Take Heed.

'Chinese persecution of Christians is systemic, widespread, multi-vectored—and increasing. Western Christians must take note.' #CrushTheCCP #BoycottChineseGoods #DefendTaiwan #粉碎中共 #抵制中国货 #保卫台湾 

From The European Conservative

By Uzay Bulut

Chinese persecution of Christians is systemic, widespread, multi-vectored—and increasing. Western Christians must take note.

Wang Yi, a Christian pastor in China, regularly asked during his sermons that Chinese President Xi Jinping and his regime repent of their sins. He also publicly stated the Church should be separate from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In response, he and his wife, Jiang Rong, were arrested by Chinese authorities along with over 100 members of his church. Pastor Wang led the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu. At the time of his arrest, the church had hundreds of worshippers.

A closed trial was held in December 2019 and Pastor Wang was given no access to a lawyer. He was sentenced to nine years in prison for engaging in the “subversion of state power” and “illegal business activity,” also known as “crime of fraud.” The pastor was stripped of his political rights for three years and fined 50,000 yuan ($6.9k USD).

According to ChinaAid, an international Christian human rights organization,

At the height of the Sinicization of Christianity, Wang Yi released ‘A Declaration for the Sake of the Christian Faith,’ which over 400 house church pastors and leaders signed with their real names. This document resulted in his arrest.

The U.S. State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom issued a statement regarding Pastor Wang on October 20, 2023:

Pastor Wang has not been given permission to speak to his family by phone or receive visits from them in the past two years. He has only been allowed to see his wife once since his initial arrest. It is unacceptable that the Chinese government is denying him regular in-person visits and communication with his family, including phone calls, and that he has not been allowed a Bible, notebook or pen.

Pastor Wang remains imprisoned. Meanwhile, the CCP’s crackdown on Christians continues. 

On 12 January 2024, another pastor in China, Kan Xiaoyong, was sentenced to fourteen years in prison for “using superstition to undermine the law,” and engaging in business “fraud.” His wife, Wang Fengying, was sentenced to four years. A co-worker, Chu Xinyu, was sentenced to ten years. Another three defendants received three-year verdicts. According to the Bitter Winter, which covers religious liberty and human rights related issues in China, those heavy prison sentences aim at “destroying the successful Discipleship Home Network.”

Bob Fu, a Chinese-American pastor and founder of ChinaAid, explains that, in China, this accusation called “crime of fraud” is common. A Christian who tithes by putting an offering in a church’s donation box might be arrested for engaging in “the crime of fraud.” Pastors who preach online, or those Christians who donate online to churches, also face these accusations.

“Hundreds or perhaps thousands of house church leaders have been arrested and charged with the so-called crime of ‘business fraud.’ Simply, the Communist Party has criminalized tithing and offering,” Fu said. “Their logic is that [these churches] are an illegal, unregistered organization. They do not use the word ‘church.’ They do not refer to the church as a ‘religious institution’ so that they will not be criticized by the foreigners; so they use this so-called business crime or fraud.”

On 26 January 2024, ChinaAid published a report entitled “Crime of Fraud: A New Era of Persecution against Christians by the Chinese Communist Party”:

For decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to dismantle Christian churches who refuse to register with the government-run Three Self Patriotic Movement. In the name of Sinicization, that is recreating religion to better align with Party ideals, Christians have been targeted with repeated arrests, raids, and harassment at the hands of authorities. The CCP ushered in a new era of persecution beginning in 2018 by charging pastors, church leaders, and other Christians with crimes of fraud.

Since 2018, explains ChinaAid, the charges would often follow these steps:

Authorities prohibit house churches from being registered as legal entities. They accuse house churches of being illegal groups. They accuse house church leaders of being illegal clergy and label house churches’ collection of offerings as fraud. Many churches and pastors, as well as Christian individuals, are victims of false fraud charges. Evangelist Chen Lijun, for instance, was arrested on August 13, 2022 in Luanchuan county. This was simply because he purchased some Christian books online. He was quickly charged on suspicion of fraud.

In its 2023 report, ChinaAid shed light on the CCP’s open oppression of Christians in the ongoing campaign referred to as the “Sinicization of Christianity.” According to the report, Sinicization aims to undermine and disband churches, replacing Christian faith with Communist Party loyalty. The Sinicization of Christianity is codified into Chinese law.

The persecution of churches and Christians in China, according to the report, takes place through the oppression of churches and interruption of regular church activities. It further includes opposing Christianity, restricting evangelism, and suppressing social activities, persecution of justice-seeking Christians in public spheres, persecution in economic, social, cultural, and academic spheres, and fraud charges against house churches for receiving tithes and offerings. “Few Christians and churches, if any at all, were left untouched by the persecution efforts of the Chinese government,” says the report.

Another way China attempts to “Sinicize” Christianity is by changing or rewriting the Bible. CBN News reported in 2023:

China’s ruling regime announced in 2019 its plans to release a new translation of the Bible that will include Confucian and Buddhist principles.

“This new translation … would really support the Communist Party,” explained Todd Nettleton, the spokesman for The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM)—a persecution watchdog serving Christians.

One example of a Bible passage rewritten by the CCP is John 8. This Bible story centers on Jesus’ love and corrective compassion for a woman caught in adultery. In the real version from the Bible, Jesus says, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her,” after which the crowd begins to leave. Then Jesus tells her, “Go now and sin no more.” In a version reportedly found in a Chinese textbook published in September 2020, the crowd disperses, but the text falsely claims that “When everyone went out, Jesus stoned the woman himself.”

Tina Ramirez is the president of Hardwired, an organization vocally critical of the Chinese Communist Party. She said that the CCP’s rewriting of the Bible is an attempt to force Christians to leave their faith. A full list of ChinaAid’s past annual reports shows an increase in persecution cases over the years.

Pastor Fu further explains that, in China’s government-sanctioned churches, pastors are forced to pledge absolute allegiance to Xi Jinping’s thoughts. The pastor should install a Communist Party flag and place a picture of Xi Jinping behind the pulpit. Before service starts, the Communist national anthem should be sung. If none of these steps occur, then the regime says the church is not compatible with socialism and communism. As a result, church pastors are intimidated, and some are even arrested.

Fu says that the Chinese Communist Party prescribes that those under 18 years old, students, Communist Party members, communist Youth League members, and civil servants are not allowed to enter any church building. This prohibition includes state-controlled churches as well. China has entered the period of the worst persecution against Christians in the 40 years since the cultural revolution, Fu concludes.

This persecution targets Christian children as well. A 2020 report by the human rights NGO Jubilee Campaign, entitled “China Bans Faith for All Children,” describes the religious freedom violations that Christian, Tibetan Buddhist, Uyghur, and Falun Gong children face in China. According to the report,

Christian children are punished, threatened, excluded, and rebuked for their families’ and their own religious affiliation … Christian children under the age of 18 years are prohibited from attending religious worship services and events … They are prohibited from receiving religious education and face persecution for revealing their religious affiliation in school. 

Christian children and their teachers are forced into anti-religious and pro-atheist indoctrination excursions and programs … Christian families are wary of private worship as a result of the government’s multi-faceted crackdown on religion.

In May 2018, for instance, 13-year-old Wang Chenyang (pseudonym) of Zhucheng, Shandong Province, was restricted from attending his school’s Children’s Day festival performance because he was a Christian. Wang reported that, after finalizing the rehearsal on the day of their performance, the school’s principal informed the class that any student with a religious affiliation would be prohibited from participating in the performance.

China has managed to deploy artificial intelligence and facial recognition to track Christians. The Communist Party deploys facial recognition cameras in churches. If they refuse, they are shut down. Jin Mingri, also known as Ezra Jin, was the pastor of the Zion Church of Beijing, one of the city’s largest house churches with nearly 1,500 members. In 2018, it refused to install surveillance cameras in its sanctuary, so the authorities shut down the church and placed the pastor under house arrest. Reuters reports that the church is now banned and its materials have been confiscated.

According to Open Doors, an organization that monitors Christian persecution on a global scale, there are over 96 million Christians in China. Open Doors reports:

The Chinese Communist Party’s goal is to make sure churches don’t fall out of line with official viewpoints. In the case of official churches, this means they are encouraged to praise and pledge allegiance to the Communist Party and its ideology. … Most churches are monitored and can be shut down without warning.

The CCP is persecuting Christians through many methods, including but not limited to rewriting the Bible, refusing to recognize churches as places of worship, impoverishing church communities by accusing them of “illegal business activities,” prohibiting children under 18 from attending church, forcing Christian children and their teachers into pro-atheist indoctrination activities, placing surveillance cameras even on the pulpits of churches, allowing only one state-controlled church to operate within exceedingly strict limits, shutting down house churches, jailing pastors for refusing to worship the communist party ideology. Is this the type of persecution that is coming to Western nations? Given the hostility towards Christianity of many left-wing and woke political parties and organizations in the West, Western Christians should take heed.