With the Chinese New Year beginning on February 10, Chinese Christians face a further year of surveillance, censorship and control, which is being extended right into the heart of the family.
Chinese children and their parents are being forced to sign a document declaring publicly that they renounce Christianity.
UK-based Release International (RI), which serves the persecuted Church around the world, has again named China as a country of particular concern in its 2024 Persecution Trends report.
Schoolchildren targeted
RI’s China partner says schoolchildren are being made to declare whether they are Christians, and those who admit their faith are required by the Communist Party to sign a declaration that they will renounce Christianity.
According to Bob Fu: ‘If parents and grandparents refuse to cooperate in making their children denounce their faith, then their job security is jeopardised. Cases show that grandparents can lose their public health and welfare if parents fail to dissuade their children from believing in Christianity.’
Bob Fu is the president and founder of RI partner ChinaAid. He says one mother was teaching her five children at home about literature, maths and religion, when she found herself surrounded by police and arrested.
‘She learned that her husband had reported her faith. You can only imagine the kind of trauma this is causing right inside the family.’
RI’s partners say the Church in China is undergoing the most severe persecution since the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. They report: ‘The Communist Party is cracking down on the church across the board. It has declared war against Christianity.’
Constant surveillance
The principal tool in China’s armoury is surveillance technology. According to ChinaAid, the population of 1.3 billion people are under constant surveillance by 2.5 billion face-recognition cameras. Says Bob Fu: ‘Every Chinese citizen is followed by at least two digital face recognition cameras every day, 24 hours a day, combined with big-data technology.’
The state is also remotely monitoring citizens’ phones. ‘They know where you are going and where you are heading to on a Sunday,’ says Bob Fu, ‘and they can simply show up and get you arrested. Even in government-sanctioned churches they have to install face recognition cameras in every pulpit and the four corners of the church to monitor the congregation.’
China has declared its churches to be off limits to children, Communist Party members, civil servants, police officers and members of the military. The cameras are to ensure they never go near a church.
Adds Bob Fu: ‘The authorities have created a smart religion app, so if you want to go to church on Sunday, you have to upload your ID, your work address and private information beforehand.’
China has also rewritten part of the Bible to attempt to discredit Christ. In John 8 Jesus intervenes to save a woman from being stoned to death for adultery. But a high school textbook contains a version which turns the story on its head. In the Communist Party account Christ stones the woman himself before declaring: ‘I am also a sinner.’
Persecution Trends report
In Release International’s 2024 Persecution Trends report partners say that persecution is deepening in China. State-registered and underground churches alike have been prevented from meeting and some have been closed.
Evangelicals and others face charges of being corrupt, belonging to cults, or engaged in illegal religious activity. The authorities have targeted leaders and members of unregistered churches for harassment and questioning. Many Christian leaders have been arrested and imprisoned on charges of fraud, including those who take up offerings. Those who talk to foreigners risk accusations of being a threat to national security.
The CCP has adopted an aggressive policy of social control and the ‘securitization of everything’. Censorship is expected to tighten even further in the new year.
Control
‘The Communist Party portrays Christianity as unpatriotic and pro-Western, and therefore a threat,’ says Paul Robinson, the CEO of Release International. ‘It wants to control the Church, and what it can’t control, it seeks to eliminate.’
The Church in China has been growing rapidly in the face of persecution. China has been on course to have the largest Christian population in the world by 2030.
According to Chinese state surveys that growth has levelled off. But the secular Pew Research Centre points out: ‘Some people may choose not to reveal Christian identity because they fear negative social or financial consequence… especially if they belong to an unregistered church. Hypothetically, there could be a real increase in the share of Chinese adults who identify with Christianity that is hidden from survey measurement.’
Despite the persecution of the Church there are still estimated to be more Christians than members of the Communist Party. RI’s partners say the Party’s goal is to ‘eliminate Christianity within China altogether.’
Release International is active in some 30 countries. It works through partners to provide prayerful, pastoral, and practical support for the families of Christian martyrs. It supports prisoners of faith and their families; Christians suffering oppression and violence, and those forced to flee.
