Faith Under Fire: The Persecution of Christians in Xi’s China

Chinese Christians pray during a service at an underground independent Protestant Church on Oct. 12 in Beijing. China, an officially atheist country, places a number of restrictions on Christians and allows legal practice of the faith only at state-approved churches. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Christians in China, who have faced constant persecution under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), have been meeting in underground churches for years since the state officially prohibited all churches outside the CCP-controlled “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” churches. Those who refuse to attend the state church continue to meet in their homes and at other venues.

According to ChinaAid, in 2022, the CCP’s persecution of underground Christians has been escalating day by day. The environment has become increasingly hostile to foreign missionaries because the CCP views their activities as “Western influence.” In July, China’s new Anti-Espionage Law defined “illegal religious activities” as espionage, and foreign nationals can face lengthy jail terms under the new law.

Christianity Under Xi’s Regime

Under Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the CCP has implemented an unprecedented suppression of Christians. ChinaAid expressed concern over the CCP’s demanding loyalty to Xi Jinping from state-sanctioned churches, and the situation for “house churches” is much worse.

Under the CCP, the regime implemented the “Three-Self Patriotic Movement,” which organized Christian churches under a CCP-supervised entity. What’s taught at these state-sanctioned churches must be approved by the CCP. On the other hand, house churches, or underground churches, function independently of the state, often in private homes and apartments, and are targeted by the regime.

“It has always been bad, but it started to get much worse in 2018 when President Xi changed the constitution and became president in perpetuity,” Pastor Luigi Bilucaglia, an independent Baptist missionary from Québec, Canada, to China for 18 years, told The Epoch Times. “He [effectively] became emperor, and the Xi dynasty began. They started attacking churches severely at the time. I had to go early to our church on Sundays, and I looked to see if there’s police where we’re located.”

Mr. Bilucaglia and his family were expelled from China in late 2021 after he had lived in the country since 2003 as a missionary. CCP authorities raided his church and detained him for interrogation about his activities in China.

“They brought me in for interrogation,“ he said. ”The lead interrogator punched me in the back of my head and told the others [Chinese Christians] that they were in there because of me. They were trying to divide us so that someone might incriminate themselves. After they decided to expel me instead of imprison me, I was given seven days to leave the country, and during those seven days they brought me to five different police stations and interrogated me, in the hopes that they could entrap me in my testimony and associate me with some foreign entity, so that I could be accused of espionage.”

Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid, said the CCP is trying to rewrite the Bible, changing the text to say that Jesus was a “lawbreaker” and “killer.” This was corroborated by Mr. Bilucaglia’s experience; he said the Party rushed to state churches to buy as many copies of the Bible as they could before they stopped printing the current version.

Another concerning trend is reports that people in custody have been having their blood tested, which could be a sign of organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. A person whose blood type is a match for a potential “buyer” might be killed for his or her organs. Mr. Bilucaglia has heard accounts of the police drawing blood from Chinese Christians.

“I hear a lot about prisoners being shot with doctors waiting to take their organs and to sell them,” he said.

Attack on Christian Charities and Schools

D. Smith, who lives in Alabama, was a missionary to China with her husband, who’s now deceased, for more than two decades. They started a church in central China, but the church has since been divided into 14 locations for their Sunday service because of the CCP’s crackdown on house churches.

Ms. Smith told The Epoch Times what Christians from China told her last year: “A SWAT team of 20 to 30 police cars came to the orphanage run by the church and took the orphans away to put them in state orphanages. The police said that they were not allowed to organize orphanages under the banner of Christianity. The Bibles are not allowed, and no one is allowed to minister there. They also started to have posters on every building in China [offering rewards to] people who report on large gatherings.”

Since 2005, the orphanage has been supported by the church that Ms. Smith and her late husband started. The Chinese regime seeks to completely remove Christianity from Chinese society, as it sees it as a threat to the Party’s communist ideology.

Along with house churches established by foreign missionaries, there were dozens of Christian schools in China using the Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) program, a Christian education curriculum from the United States. Those schools weren’t registered with the Chinese state, as the CCP strictly prohibits “teaching religion” to the next generation. Many Christians opt for ACE schools following an American curriculum because they don’t want their children to be force-fed the CCP’s propaganda in state schools.

“They want to brainwash the next generation with only communism,” Mr. Bilucaglia said.

He reported that all those Christian schools were forcibly shut down in early 2022 after CCP authorities tracked down the IP addresses of all participants in an online conference for Christian school educators across China. Foreigners related to the schools were expelled from the country, and many Chinese teachers still face investigations and surveillance to this day.

Draconian Surveillance State

The CCP has increasingly used its high-tech surveillance state to control citizens and to persecute Christians. China is already notorious for its heavily censored internet and social media. In March 2022, the CCP introduced new rules banning all forms of online religious teachings and religious groups. The regime reportedly recruited and trained content monitors for its social media.

“After they introduced the new rules, we became very careful when we do Bible studies and worship services on Zoom,“ Ms. Liu, a Christian Sunday school teacher from central China, told The Epoch Times. ”Usually, we try to have several people sharing one device so the online meetings don’t appear so big. The police also randomly check people’s phones on the street. If they see that we’re using Zoom on our phones, they’ll delete the app and question people about it.”

Pastor Joseph Jiang, a Chinese Christian pastor in exile in New Zealand, said online preaching content is frequently banned.

“We frequently change platforms,“ he said. ”As soon as our content gets a certain number of views, the authorities would ban it. We are trying to find new online sharing platforms all the time.”

Chinese house churches usually meet in secret in apartments. Mr. Bilucaglia said the CCP introduced cash rewards for people who report on church gatherings or even on people who merely hold opinions that differ from those of the CCP.

“We were told to switch off our phones or at least set it to flight mode on Sundays before we leave our homes for church,“ Ms. Liu said. ”Otherwise, the authorities can track your phones through GPS, and when they notice people gathering in an apartment on a Sunday, they will come knocking on the doors.”

Weaponizing the Education System

From the Tiananmen Square Protests in 1989 to the Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Protests in 2019, movements have started from university campuses, where free thinking and Western ideals generally flourished. Therefore, the CCP views education as critical in indoctrinating the next generation to become loyal communists and doing so is a way to safeguard the stability of the regime.

Ms. Liu recalled when Chinese state security officials raided her home: “They warned me, saying that I’m strictly prohibited from ‘teaching religion’ to children or university students. They tried to get me to quit my Christian faith. Right after they raided my home looking for Bibles and Christian books, I saw new propaganda banners around our neighborhood saying that no ‘illegal religious activities’ are allowed.”

Before the CCP usurped power in China through a violent communist revolution in 1949, China was a staunch ally of the United States and the Western world. The communists first sought to divide the population into different social classes—the “oppressed” and the “oppressors”—and the regime encouraged violence against certain classes of people that they branded as “capitalists.” Christianity was a target for persecution since the CCP viewed it as a “plague” from the capitalist West. Religious liberty was a threat to the CCP because it prevented people from being indoctrinated into communism.

From Karl Marx to Vladimir Lenin, communists have viewed religion as “capitalist oppression,” and, therefore, the Soviet Union and communist China actively sought to eradicate religion when they took power. Today, the CCP has created a majority atheist country, with religious leaders and followers having moved underground to continue to practice their faith.

“I preached the Bible, which was the worst thing for the communists,“ Mr. Bilucaglia said. ”It sets people free mentally and physically. I believe the population of China want to get rid of the Communist Party if they can.”