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China: Church leader gives inside look at government crackdown on Christianity

For background on Orthodox Christianity in China, see here.

“Persecuted Chinese house church leader gives inside look at government crackdown on Christianity,” Washington Times, July 11, 2024:
A house church pastor imprisoned and violently attacked for his faith is providing an insider’s look at the situation for Christians living in China.

Pastor Yang Hua, an alias he uses for ministry, leads Guiyang Livingstone Church in Guizhou province. In 2017, his ministry prompted Chinese authorities to arrest and sentence him to prison for more than two years for “divulging state secrets.”

“The government claimed that our church is an illegal religious organization,” said Yang. “On the same day, they arrested and slapped four charges on me: disrupting public services, disturbing public order illegally, possessing state secrets, and intentionally leaking state secrets.”

The Chinese government demanded Yang and his church join the state-vetted Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) Church. The TSPM is a strategy to remove foreign influences from Chinese churches to ensure they are devoted to the Chinese government.

“The government uses various measures or regulations to suppress the growth of house churches,” said Yang. “Instead of following the truth in the Bible, these TSPM churches continue their ‘Sinicization of Christianity,’ allowing the government to brainwash or change their members at the places of worship, making Christianity serve China. Since we are a house church and hold different beliefs from the TSPM Church, we decided not to join them and continued our path as a house church.”

The government quickly cracked down on Livingstone Church, sending a joint task force that included officials from the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the Ethnic and Religious Affairs Bureau, and the Civil Affairs Bureau.

Yang underwent 10 days of administrative detention, followed by a criminal detention. The “state secrets” turned out to be a printed list of his church members.

Arrests of other Livingstone Church members followed. The church accountant, Zhang Xiuhong, was sentenced to three years in prison, of which she served two, and placed on probation for five years. Two more Christians were put in jail for more than a year, while others were detained.

While Yang was in prison, authorities confiscated the 7,000-square-foot church building and put it up for auction. After his release, Yang was forcefully assaulted by a government official, causing his prison-impacted health to deteriorate further….

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