Understanding Christian Faith and Freedom in CHINA
A major persecution is looming over China. Though it will be different – less bloody, more hi-tech – it will be just as insidious as that of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) Chairman Mao Zedong identified “five black categories”: landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, evil influences (bad elements) and Rightists.
Deemed “enemies” of the communist revolution, members of these “five black categories” had to be neutralised – i.e., persecuted, re-educated and, if necessary, eliminated – for the revolution to succeed.
After the Tiananmen Square massacre (June 1989), the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 1989), the collapse of Communism across Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union (1990-1991), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knew it needed a new narrative to legitimise its rule and unite the people.
Since the early 1990s – courtesy of the CCP’s Patriotic Education Campaign – a new narrative has been taught in schools and universities across the nation. In what is essentially a radical reinterpretation of China’s history, the Marxist narrative of class struggle has been replaced with an ultra-nationalist narrative of national struggle.
The new narrative is two-fold, covering:
(1) National Humiliation. Beginning with the Opium Wars (from 1839), China suffered 100 years of humiliation at the hands of hostile, imperialistic, foreign [i.e. Western] forces;
(2) National Rejuvenation. Since the founding of the People's Republic (1949) the Communist Party has been leading China on a 100-year marathon to restore the nation to global supremacy. Hostile foreign forces – i.e., the West – are the problem/enemy, for which the CCP is the solution/saviour. To be patriotic, to love China, is to love the CCP.
On 31 July 2012 an overseas edition of the People’s Daily (the official mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the CCP) identified “five new black categories”: human rights lawyers, underground religious practitioners, dissidents, commentators who influence opinions via the internet and disadvantaged social groups.
According to the CCP, members of these “five new black categories” are in “collusion” with “hostile, foreign [i.e. Western] forces” with the aim of ending Communist Party rule.
Consequently, members of these “five new black categories” will need to be neutralised – i.e., persecuted, re-educated and, if necessary, eliminated – if the China Dream is to be realised.
To that end, the CCP has established a “labyrinthine, all-weather, 24-hour quasi-police-state apparatus to keep even ordinary citizens under control” [Lam, page 7].
Recommended:
The Fight for China’s Future
by Willy Wo-Lap Lam, (Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon UK; New York, NY, USA. 2020).
THE “NEW ERA” OF XI JINPING
July 2012: heir-apparent Xi Jinping is a leading figure in the CCP’s nine-man Politburo Standing Committee and vice-president of the People's Republic of China (PRC).
15 Nov 2012: Xi is elected to the post of General Secretary of the CCP.
14 March 2013: Xi is elected as President of the PRC. Persecution of the “five new black categories” starts almost immediately.
As president, Xi Jinping has departed from the more pragmatic religious policies of Jang Zemin (1989-2002) and Hu Jintao (2002-2012). Acutely aware of Christianity’s contribution to economic development and modernisation, Jang and Hu insisted that “materialists and non-materialists can co-operate and co-exist politically”, provided the churches cut ties with “imperialists” (i.e. Westerners), flush out “Judases” (anyone who might betray the CCP), and stay out of politics [Lam, p135].
President Xi has also departed from the collective leadership practices of his post-Mao predecessors and centralised power in himself. In March 2018, the Party-controlled National People’s Congress passed constitutional amendments which included the removal of presidential term limits, enabling Xi – the “Chairman of Everything” – to be “Emperor for Life”.
Under Xi, the days of co-operating and co-existing with “non-materialist” – i.e. people of faith – are over; the choice is submission or elimination.
The “problem” Xi and the CCP face today is that Church growth is essentially out of control. Senior Chinese officials admit (privately) that there are at least 70 million Christian converts in China, 80 percent of whom live in rural areas. One academic believes that number could reach 160 million by 2025.
Research undertaken over 2013-2014 revealed that in rural provinces north of the Yangtze River, 10 to 15 percent of the population is Christian and that in some villages 95 percent are Christian. Furthermore, at least 70 percent of China’s Christians worship in unregistered (and therefore illegal), “underground” house-churches [Lam, p140].
Lam writes: “Among Chinese officials who are nervously watching the proliferation of Christians – and actively preparing to quell the influence of Western religion – are senior cadres in charge of state security and propaganda.” According to Lam, the CCP is paranoid about Christianity’s “three excesses”: (1) the excessive speed of its growth, (2) its excessive numbers and (3) the excessive enthusiasm of its members [Lam, p153].
Recommended:
Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power,
by TIME magazine senior correspondent and Beijing bureau chief, Dr David Aikman (first published 2003).
Lecture by David Aikman to USC School of Policy Planning and Development, Nov 2010, on the history and growth of Christianity in China.
Also: God Is Red, by Liao Yiwu (HarperCollins Publishers Inc. Nov 2012).
President Xi insists that Chinese Christianity be “sinicizised”. As analyst Willy Lam writes: “According to Christian scholar Guo Baoshen, ‘the purpose of “Sinicization of Christianity” is to render Christianity into a Communist and socialist [vehicle] so that it will become an obedient tool of the Communist Party’.” [Lam, p146.]
Lam concludes his chapter “Awakening for China’s Oppressed Christians” with these words: “The brutal clampdown on religion is part of President Xi Jinping’s Cultural Revolution-era control over the ideology and thought of every citizen. The ‘leadership core’…will not tolerate any ideas or activities that will challenge the supremacy of the party – or of himself… For a good number of Christians, however, Xi’s scorched-earth policy toward the Church marks a point of no return. The battle of the century has begun” [Lam, p166].
“The possibility that faith can eventually prevail over a political party that seems to have lost all moral and spiritual bearings cannot be discounted” [p169].
THE BATTLE BEGINS
In October 2012, South China Morning Post ran a series of articles on China’s looming leadership transition. One line has proved prophetic, although not in the way it was intended: “For clues about how China’s leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping might manage the world’s second-largest economy, Zhejiang province is a good place to start looking.”
After explaining that the years that Xi Jinping spent in Zhejiang (2002 to 2007) – as party secretary and as governor – “are regarded as a transformative period, during which Zhejiang expanded its private sector and moved toward cleaner, more innovative industries,” the author posits that as President of the People’s Republic, Xi Jinping would doubtless work the same magic on a national level.
Similarly, for clues about how President Xi Jinping would manage religion in what is possibly the world’s second-largest evangelical Christian population (after the USA), Zhejiang province is definitely a good place to start looking.
China analyst Willy Lam opines that it is no accident that President Xi’s campaign to “Sinicize Christianity”, so as to put Christianity into the service of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was launched in Zhejiang. For Zhejiang – and particularly Wenzhou city – is more than its Western connections; Zhejiang is nothing other than China’s Christian heartland.
See: Xi’s Obsession with “Cultural Renaissance” Raises Fears of Another Cultural Revolution
By Willy Lam, China Brief, 8 Feb 2016
Not only is Zhejiang Province China’s Christian heartland, but its business hub, Wenzhou – a city of some 10 million – is believed to have the largest Christian population of any city in China. The proliferation of churches, Christian-run businesses and sizable, influential Christian minority had earned Wenzhou the title, “China’s Jerusalem”. If Xi’s experiment to Sinicize Christianity could succeeded in Zhejiang, it would likely succeed anywhere in China.
Since February 2014: CCP officials in Zhejiang have forcibly removed more than 1800 crosses from their churches, much to the distress of faithful believers for whom the cross is the ultimate symbol of grace, salvation, transformation and hope.
See: The Chinese Communist Party and the Cross over Zhejiang
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin, 9 April 2014
1 July 2015: the CCP enacts a National Security Law which paves the way for increased nation-wide repression and persecution, purportedly in defence of “national security”.
Then, on the weekend of 11-12 July 2015, the CCP arrested some 300 prominent human rights activists and lawyers, including several who were defending religious cases, in particular cases from Zhejiang.
27 January 2016: the CCP moves against China’s largest CCP-approved/registered Three Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) church – the 10,000-strong Chongyi Church in the Zhejiang capital, Hangzhou. For resisting CCP pressure to tear down the church’s cross and fly the Chinese flag, and for criticising the CPP’s campaign of persecution (which involved church “rectifications” and demolitions), Pastor Joseph Gu was arrested, disappeared and eventually criminally charged with fraud and embezzlement. Another seven influential TSPM and China Christian Council (CCC) leaders were arrested in the following days. Though released in December 2017, Pastor Gu was removed from his posts as a TSPM pastor and as the head of the Zhejiang Christian Council.
[Note: The “three self” principle mandates that churches be self-governing, self-supporting, self-propagating. Ironically, there are no churches more completely “three self” and thoroughly indigenous than those in China’s banned house church movement.]
1 November 2016: the Ministry of Justice’s amended “Administrative Measures for Law Firms” come into effect. China’s lawyers are now officially banned from speaking out about human rights abuses. Even silent protests, such as walking out of a courtroom, are prohibited.
See: Persecution of Church to escalate as Zhejiang experiment goes national.
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Monitoring, October 2016
25 October 2017: Also known as the “Core leader” and “Supreme Commander”, President Xi Jinping emerged from the 19th five-yearly Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress (18-25 October 2017) as the most powerful Chinese ruler since Mao Zedong. Though China’s Constitution limits the presidency to two terms, Xi – who was supposed to step down at the next Congress (i.e. at the end of his second term) – broke with tradition and did not designate a potential successor.
The CCP Congress agreed to enshrine “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era”, into the CCP’s Constitution.
In a 21 September 2017 analysis for The Jamestown Foundation entitled “What is Xi Jinping Thought?” China expert Willy Wo-Lap Lam explains that, unlike Mao Zedong Thought or Deng Xiaoping Theory, Xi Jinping Thought does not offer China anything new. The core idea is said to be Xi’s “Chinese dream”, which, as Lam explains, “is a super-nationalistic narrative about China becoming a superpower”. This is to be achieved through “comprehensively deepening reform and upholding the mass line”. As Lam notes, there is nothing new here; Xi is simply reviving Maoist ideology.
According to Lam, “the biggest difference between Mao Zedong Thought and Xi Jinping Thought is that the former is oriented toward the future [i.e. the pursuit of a Marxist utopia in which China dominates the world], and the latter is consumed with self-preservation”.
STABILITY MAINTENANCE;
-- Upholding the Mass Line / United Front
Integral to all this is wei-wen, “stability maintenance”; for “upholding the mass line” – i.e. maintaining a united front – necessitates the rooting out of “destabilising elements”.
In a 21 July 2017 analysis for The Jamestown Foundation entitled Beijing Harnesses Big Data & AI to Perfect the Police State, Willy Lam exposes this most disturbing aspect of China’s emerging “New Era” reality. “Specialized weiwen cadres have the full cooperation of the country’s social-media and e-commerce platforms, as well as cloud-computing and related high-tech firms in establishing a seamless and all-encompassing intelligence network that would do George Orwell’s Big Brother proud.”
In the name of “stability maintenance”, the CCP is cracking down on the Church’s influence, networks and international connections. Not only has the CCP enlisted well over a million vigilante and volunteer informants – spies who penetrate deep into “black category” groups – it has installed more than 200 million surveillance cameras across the country. These cameras, which are fitted with the world’s most advanced facial recognition software, collect data on every individual for a “social credit” system to be used by the regime to reward loyalty and punish dissent.
See: China: The Return of “Mao-style Terror and Control”
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Monitoring, 25 January 2018
1 February 2018: new Religious Affairs Regulations (Order 686) come into effect.
While Article 2 asserts, “Citizens have freedom of religious belief”, it quickly becomes clear that religion – or at least that which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deems “normal religious activity” – may only be exercised in accordance with strict CCP parameters and under the oversight of the CCP’s religious affairs departments.
Article 3 clarifies that, “The management of religious affairs upholds the principles of protecting what is lawful, prohibiting what is unlawful, suppressing extremism, resisting infiltration, and fighting crime.”
Article 4 states that, “The State, in accordance with the law, protects normal religious activities [and] actively guides religion to fit in with socialist society . . .” so as to “preserve the unification of the country, ethnic unity, religious harmony and social stability”.
Article 5 mandates that religious groups must be independent and not controlled by “foreign forces”.
Article 8 lists “assisting the people’s government in the implementation of laws, regulations, rules and policies . . .” as a function of religious groups.
Article 63 proscribes, “Advocating, supporting, or funding religious extremism, or using religion to harm national security or public safety, undermine ethnic unity, divide the nation . . .” and allows for extra-judicial “administrative punishments” (for which no charge or trial is necessary) to be delivered where no crime has been committed. Terms such as “extremism” and “harm” remain undefined and thus open to abuse and exploitation.
In summary: religious activities may only take place in approved, registered Religious Activity Sites and only with the approval of the relevant CCP authorities. Approval must be obtained for any “large outdoor religious statue”, and this, evidently, includes a cross. In fact, approval must be sought for just about everything. The requirement for churches to “submit an application” would probably be the most repeated phrase in the text, along with the assurance that the authorities will “make a decision”.
The clear intent is that all non-registered religious activity will be eliminated. Registered religious groups meanwhile, will find half their time will be taken up with administration, much of which is little more than a means of occupying the Church’s time and keeping it from “causing trouble”. Apart from being squeezed to the point of suffocation, churches find they now have dozens of ways to fall foul of the law.
Article 65 notes that at various times the authorities may order religious groups, religious schools or religious activity sites to undergo “rectification”. If rectification is refused, then registration certificates or establishment permits will be revoked, rendering the group or school illegal. Illegal buildings and structures will be “disposed of” (article 71), and large outdoor statues (e.g. crosses) will be “demolished” (article 72).
Finally, Article 75 reads: “Where anyone is dissatisfied with administrative acts taken by the religious affairs departments, they may lawfully apply for an administrative reconsideration; where dissatisfied with the decision of the administrative reconsideration, they may lawfully raise an administrative lawsuit.” However, this article needs to be understood in the light of the amended “Administrative Measures for Law Firms” which came into effect on 1 November 2016 and ban lawyers from speaking against human rights abuses.
TEXT: Religious Affairs Regulations
30 August 2018: A group of Chinese Christian Pastors and leaders published A Joint Statement: A Declaration for The Sake of Christian Faith. The petition was published on-line with 198 signatures; top of the list was Pastor Wang Yi (45, a former legal scholar) of Early Rain Covenant Church (ERCC) in Chengdu, the capital city of China’s south-western Sichuan Province. By 5 September 2018, the list had grown to 439 signatures, leading observers to question if this might mark “a significant moment in the country’s Church and State relations”.
Sunday 9 December 2018: police fan out across Chengdu, arresting more than 100 members of ERCC, including Pastor Wang Yi.
On 30 December 2019, a court sentenced 46-year-old Pastor Wang Yi to nine years in prison on charges of “inciting to subvert state power” and “illegal business operations”. It is the longest prison sentence given to a house church pastor in a decade.
1 February 2019: new Administrative Measures for Religious Groups come into force.
TEXT: Measures for the Administration of Religious Groups
The new Administrative Measures provide in-depth instructions on how the revised Religious Affairs Regulations (enacted 1 Feb 2018) will be implemented. The Administrative Measures mandate that all religious activities must be registered with, as well as guided, supervised and managed by, the Religious Affairs Department, which is now under the control of the CCP’s United Front Work Department.
The Administrative Measures for Religious Groups are designed to eliminate all unregistered house churches, which will be forced to choose between becoming part of the CCP system, in service to the CCP, or going underground, risking legal prosecution and severe penalties.
1 May 2021: new Administrative Measures for Clergy come into effect.
TEXT: Measures for the Administration of Religious Staff, State Administration of Religious Affairs Order No. 15
To operate legally, religious clergy – i.e., those who “engage in religious teaching activities” (Article 2) – now require a “clergy card” showing they are registered in the national database of authorised, CCP-approved clergy.
Registration is difficult to achieve and easy to lose. To achieve registration, clergy must be identified by an authorised CCP approved/registered religious group [i.e. the Protestant TSPM, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA), or the CCP-controlled China Christian Council – all of which are overseen by the CCP’s United Front Work Department], and willing “to support the leadership of the Communist Party of China [and] the socialist system ...” (Article 3). In short: registration necessitates a pledge of allegiance to the CCP.
Registered clergy are obliged to operate under the “supervision and management” of the CCP’s Religious Affairs Department which will “guide”, monitor and “file records” on all registered clergy (Articles 32-45).
Furthermore, registered clergy and registered organisations are obliged to monitor and report on each other (Articles 44 and 45).
As occurs with “social credit”, a system of rewards and punishments will apply.
As Bitter Winter notes (11 Feb 2021): “Compliant clergy [are] thus transformed into apparatchiks of the CCP, lured by rewards and terrorised by punishments. They will be called to ‘Sinicize’ their religions and preach love for the CPP to their devotees. Not much will be left of genuine religion – which is precisely the aim of these and other previous measures.”
The new Administrative Measures for Clergy raise the stakes considerably. For clergy (religious workers), as with churches, the choice is now between: (1) compliance (serving the CCP); (2) open, overt resistance (resulting in prison); or (3) secret, covert resistance (moving ministry underground).
It is highly likely that, within a few years, all China’s resisting clergy will be either suffering in prison or opperating “underground”. Just as the cross is being eliminated from China’s skyline, so too is open Christian witness being eliminated from the land.
See: China: CCP moves to fully subjugate the Church
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin, 17 February 2021.
On 1 April 2021, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported: “Authorities in China are detaining Christians in secretive, mobile ‘transformation’ facilities to make them renounce their faith.”
The facilities are described as “mobile” because they can be set up anywhere – such as in basements and other “black”/secret sites – and relocated at any time.
RFA interviewed several believers who claimed to have been “disappeared” for months, even years. They testified of having been beaten, abused and threatened, while kept in isolation, often in darkness, until they “broke” and agreed to sign a confession and/or make a public apology. Many were so deeply traumatised by their treatment they resorted to self-harm and even attempted suicide.
What RFA is describing is undoubtedly, “Residential Surveillance at a Designation Location” (RSDL) – the CCP’s euphemism for enforced disappearance, complete with punishment, coercion and interrogation, outside the judicial system.
See: Intense Suffering Descends on Church
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin, 14 April 2021
Recommended:
The People’s Republic of the Disappeared: Stories from inside China’s system for enforced disappearance.
Edited by Michael Caster (Safeguard Defenders, 2017).
As Caster explains, RSDL has been the CCP’s preferred method of dealing with dissidents since the “Jasmine Revolution” of 2011. Revised in 2012, China’s Criminal Procedure Law grants China’s secret police the legal right to “disappear” whomever they wish and treat them however they wish, for as long as they wish, without oversight and with total impunity. According to RFA, this method is increasingly being used, not merely against anti-CCP political activists, but against peaceful, non-compliant Christian believers.
GAO ZHISHENG
Internationally acclaimed human rights lawyer and religious liberty advocate Gao Zhisheng has been “disappeared” repeatedly since his first abduction in November 2004. His human rights and religious liberty advocacy had brought him into contact with persecuted Christians, and it was during these early persecutions, that Gao converted to Protestant Christianity. A torture survivor, Gao is doubtless China’s most severely persecuted Christian. [Chronology by Human Rights Watch, to August 2014.]
In August 2014, when Gao Zhisheng emerged from three years secret detention, much of that in solitary confinement, he was a shadow of his former self; indeed many surmised he’d been “utterly destroyed”.
Subsequently placed under house arrest, isolated and denied access to medical care, Gao could have withered and died; but he did not. Instead, he rallied and threw his energy into secret writing. Defying serious health issues and intensive supervision, he was able to write both a memoir and a 40-page human rights report while working on a new constitution. Smuggled out of the country at great risk, Gao’s secret writings have since been published.
Recommended:
Unwavering Convictions
Gao Zhisheng’s memoir, published in Taiwan in Chinese in June 2016 and in the US in English in January 2017.
An English translation of his 40-page report, “2016 Human Rights Report for China”, was published in October 2017. Briefing and summary & Full Text .
Gao’s current status: he has been “disappeared” since November 2017.
See: Christian advocate confined in an “infinite darkness”
-- the plight of Gao Zhisheng
By Elizabeth Kendal, Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin,15 November 2017.