Country:

CHINA

What does Christian persecution in China look like?

China contains the world’s largest persecuted church, and under the reign of the current President, Xi Jinping, who took power in 2012, freedoms have rapidly deteriorated. China has two officially tolerated churches, the Catholic Patriotic Association (circa 10m) and the Protestant Three Self Patriotic Movement (circa 25m), but the majority worship in Protestant “house churches” and live in a legal limbo – they are illegal though the state tolerates them, but pressures them to register and submit to more control. Control is the number one factor influencing Christian persecution in China.

But all churches are now under great pressure to praise the thought of President Xi, and express an ideologically biased version of the Gospel that lauds the legitimacy and achievements of the Communist party. New directives from 2018 require churches to sever links with overseas, and the ban on educating children in the faith was strengthened. In addition, China is not called the state where “big brother meets big data” for nothing. Christians are under surveillance like never before though their phones and their attitudes and actions fed into a social credit system that ranks loyalty to the ruling regime.

Christian leaders who refuse to parrot the government line can expect lengthy terms of imprisonment; bibles can be bought at TSPM churches but are not on general sale, and Christian literature is harder to find, even online. Still, in the words of a Beijing pastor, “It’s because we have to pay a cost that the Gospel grows – people are curious as to who this Jesus is we are prepared to risk all to follow.”