Religious freedom in China is facing the most severe crackdown since the Cultural Revolution — and most people don’t even realise. Yes, in the past year, the plight of the predominantly Muslim Uighurs has drawn increasing attention. At least a million, perhaps as many as three million, have been incarcerated in prison camps, where they face systematic torture, rape, slave labour and forced sterilisation. Likewise, the continued persecution of Falun Gong, a Chinese spiritual discipline in the Buddhist tradition, has inspired worldwide condemnation.
But far less known is the brutal, and intensifying, repression of China’s Christians. For while the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has always repressed religion in general, Christianity has always been its biggest target. This is partly a result of the Party’s promotion of atheism, as well its nervousness towards any gathering of people that it does not control. But it is also rooted in its fear that Christianity represents a “foreign” threat to its way of life, albeit one that the CCP hasn’t quite worked out how to deal with.
Under Mao Zedong, the Party attempted to eliminate Christianity altogether, though it succeeded only in driving the church underground. Indeed, as Deng Xiaoping started to open up the economy in the 1980s, the regime realised that the Church could not be eradicated so sought to control it instead; re-establishing state-approved church institutions for Catholics and Protestants that had been shut during the Cultural Revolution, while continuing to persecute underground congregations.
There then followed a period of varied relaxation in which, while there was never religious freedom, the situation for some Christians did improve, depending on the attitudes of provincial authorities. Some local leaders turned a blind-eye to gatherings of unregistered churches, as long as they did not directly challenge the CCP. In other places, even large unregistered “mega churches” were permitted; Beijing’s Zion Church operated for years with hundreds of worshippers, while the Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi province attracted a staggering 50,000 members.
But now China is in a fourth era — one of severe repression, propaganda and central control. Since he became President in 2013, Xi Jinping has taken an active interest in policy on religion, and initiated several national-level conferences dedicated to its “Sinicisation”. They culminated in the introduction of new regulations in 2018; today, even churches within the state-controlled institutions face new restrictions. Officially, the regime estimates that there are 50 million Christians in China today, though the real figure is believed to be at least double that number.
Every church is now forced to demonstrate its loyalty to the CCP by displaying portraits of Xi Jinping and party propaganda banners alongside, or even instead of, religious images. Surveillance cameras are installed at the altar, recording all who attend, while under-18s are prohibited from going into places of worship at all. Meanwhile, Christians on low incomes have been pressured by officials to give up their faith, with threats that their state support could be withheld.
Most dramatically, thousands of crosses have been torn down and some churches have not only been closed, but demolished. In 2018 alone, the Golden Lampstand Church was dynamited, Zion Church was forced to close and the Home of Christ Church in Shantou, Guangdong province, was shut after the authorities called it an “illegal religious organisation”.
Christmas and the Bible are now in the regime’s sights, too. In 2019, the CCP announced its intention to produce a new translation of the Bible, which would bring it into line with the party’s “thought” by reinterpreting key passages. Last Christmas, they banned all festive activities, with the exception of attending government-sanctioned churches and family gatherings at home. Even so, groups of so-called “Pro-Mao” citizens reportedly marched through the streets in subsequent days, proclaiming anti-Christian messages. Some universities prohibited students from celebrating the holiday and banned them from attending off-campus events.
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