CCP’s Persecution of Christians: Arresting Believers, Demolishing Churches, Rewriting the Bible

Chinese security guards together with police keep hundreds of Chinese Christian worshippers away from the Wangfujing Catholic Church during Christmas mass in Beijing, China, on 25 Dec. 2003. (GOH CHAI HIN/AFP via Getty Images)

While the world is rejoicing in the spirit of Christmas, the churches and Christians in China were recently asked to commemorate the late Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin for his “good job in religious work” and for his efforts to begin the “sinicization of Christianity.”

On Dec. 6, the leaders of the CCP-controlled Three-Self Church—also known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement—gathered in Shanghai to watch the Memorial Conference for Jiang, applauding him as “a great Marxist we all love and miss.” Churches across China were ordered to do the same, according to Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China.

Jiang, who died on Nov. 30 due to leukemia and multiple organ failure at the age of 96, ascended to power following his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre; he presided over the CCP from 1993 to 2003. Contrary to the glorified image painted by the communist regime, Jiang’s “good job in religious work” has, in reality, led to the persecution of all faiths: Christian, Buddhist, Falun Gong, and Muslim. He’s widely known for initiating the brutal campaign of persecution of Falun Gong, which continues to this day.

According to Open Doors UK & Ireland, there are currently around 96.7 million Christians in China. The officially atheist communist regime has been cracking down on the faith by demolishing and raiding house churches for refusing to join the government-sanctioned Three-Self Church, arresting worshippers, and re-writing the Bible.

Catholics pray at Our Lady of Sheshan Basilica Catholic church in Shanghai, China, on May 24, 2013. (Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images)

A Three-Self Church in Shuyang County was converted into a place to commemorate the Red Army, and Mao Zedong's statue was placed near the entrance. (Courtesy of Bitter Winter)

Chinese security guards patrol the streets before the start of a religious parade at the Catholic cathedral in Donglu, Hebei Province on May 26, 2013. Police surrounded a Chinese village to prevent pilgrims from joining a Catholic parade to honor the Virgin Mary. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)

A Christian church being demolished in the town of Oubei, outside the city of Wenzhou on April 28, 2014. (Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images)

The pillar of a demolished Catholic church is seen in Puyang, in China's central Henan Province, on Aug. 13, 2018. The church was demolished to make way for a commercial development. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)

Gina Goh, International Christian Concern’s (ICC) Regional Manager for Southeast Asia, said in a report:  “Xi Jinping’s regime is fearful of many things; one thing being people with religious beliefs. They want to ensure Chinese citizens are loyal to the CCP’s ideology and nothing else. This fear translates into church crackdown, ‘re-education camps’ for Uyghurs, and demolition of Buddhist statues. House churches are bracing themselves for potentially the worst clampdown since the Cultural Revolution.”

Here is a round-up of incidents of the persecution of Chinese Christians in the recent past.

Imprisoned American Pastor

American pastor David Lin, 67, has been incarcerated in China since 2006. His family has been campaigning for his release due to his declining health for years. Recently, just prior to the Nov. 14 meeting of U.S. President Joe Biden and the CCP leader Xi Jinping in Bali, Lin had his life sentence reduced to 24 years. However, Lin’s family worries he won’t survive eight more years in jail, according to a report by Bitter Winter.

A non-believer at first, Lin turned to Christianity after moving to the United States where he served as an economic advisor for Iowa and California state officials. A naturalized U.S. citizen and a devout Christian, he also supported local churches in China during his visits in the 1990s. During one of his trips to China in 2006, Lin was placed under house arrest for “illegal religious propaganda” and subsequently sentenced to life imprisonment in 2009, according to the report.

In 2018, reports emerged that his health was failing due to a lack of proper medical care.

Pastor and His Co-Worker Arrested

A pastor and his co-worker from City of God—a reformed house church in Taiyuan City—were arrested in December 2021 after returning from a Christian conference in Malaysia, reported Bitter Winter. Police raided the house church a year earlier, and some members were held in police custody for being involved in illegal gatherings.

The pastor, An Yankui, and his co-worker Zhang Chenghao were charged with illegally crossing the border and smuggling Christian books and materials. Eleven months after their arrest, they were sentenced to one year of detention.

Gothic-Style Church Demolished

ChinaAid, a Christian human rights nonprofit, reported that a Gothic-style cathedral of the Beihan Catholic Church of the Catholic Diocese, located in Taiyuan City, was torn down by the local authorities in August this year to make way for markets, a theater, and tourism facilities.

According to the same report, China Overseas and Investment Ltd.—the company in charge of the development of the site—said a new church would be built at another location but the exact details were not announced.

Churches Raided, Believers Beaten

In Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, the Church of Abundance, which has a 30-year history, was raided on Aug. 10, according to Bitter Winter. The police confiscated the church’s money and interrogated and accused some members of fraud. Several days later, the church was labeled an “illegal social organization,” and members face possible arrest and detention if they continue holding activities.

In Linfen City, Shanxi Province, approximately 100 armed police detained parents who were attending a parent-child camp organized by the Covenant Home Church and confiscated Christian books from the homes of three members, according to the same report.

On Aug. 21, several members of Sunshine Reformed Church in Changchun City, Jilin Province, were arrested while attending their Sunday service, according to reports. Though members of the church were asked by the pastor to go home, police outside the church beat and arrested some, resulting in two women suffering heart attacks and being hospitalized. Bitter Winter reported that the police accused the pastor and some members of operating a religious organization illegally. According to ChinaAid, the pastor had refused to join the CCP-controlled Three-Self Church and was summoned by authorities several times.

In another report by Bitter Winter, Geng Zejun, a pastor from The Church of the Rock, a house church in Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, was sentenced to one year and three months in prison in July for refusing to join the state-run Three-Self Church. Geng, his wife, and some other church members were first arrested in December 2021 but continued to hold meetings after their release. The pastor did not return home after he was called by the police for questioning on Jan. 4 this year. The police detained him for “organizing illegal religious gatherings.” He was later accused of organizing illegal Christian gatherings in different parts of the region.

In the first half of 2020, crosses were removed from many Three-Self churches across Anhui Province. (Courtesy of Bitter Winter)

The Hancheng Church in Hanshan county had its cross removed on April 28, 2020. (Courtesy of Bitter Winter)

Targeted for Years

In 2018 the Chinese regime launched a five-year “sinicization campaign.”

Chinese-American Pastor Bob Fu, the founder and president of the U.S.-based Christian nonprofit ChinaAid, told The Christian Post that part of the plan was to “re-translate the Bible or re-write biblical commentaries” with the aim that “the new Bible should not look westernized and [should look] Chinese and reflect Chinese ethics of Confucianism and socialism.”

In 2020, the University of Electronic Science and Technology Press, a state-owned university in China, distorted a biblical story from John 8 about how Jesus forgave a woman who had committed adultery, Bitter Winter reported. The altered version states that Jesus stoned the woman, saying “I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead.”

In the same year, the CCP also ordered crosses to be removed from state-run churches and threatened to shut the church if anyone disobeyed.

Children are also not spared from persecution.

School kids as young as elementary school-age were told not to believe in God or risk being expelled from school. They were instructed to report their religious parents and neighbors. Some children were also bribed with monetary rewards and travel coupons if they reveal the religious status of their parents and relatives to the police.

Arshdeep Sarao contributed to this report.