Chinese authorities are setting quotas on the number of Christians that must be arrested and are threatening police officers with dismissal if they don’t meet the minimum standards, according to a magazine that monitors religious freedom in the country. Under President Xi Jinping (2013- ), the Chinese government has embarked on a 3-phase, 14-year plan to gain total control over Christianity in China.
BillionBibles.com gives us an insight into previous harsh treatment of Christians by the Chinese authorities :
It is rising sharply, and the current Christian persecution in China is more sophisticated and multi-faceted than in the past, whose mainstay was brute force.
Until the 1990s, when the Chinese government discovered an underground church , its members were beaten or fined while their leaders were arrested, tortured, sent to labor camps, killed or simply disappeared. The government also restricted the availability of Bibles (see Amity printing and Project Pearl ).
Under Hu Jintao (2003-2013), the Chinese government softened its approach.
Discovered underground churches were "invited" to join the government-controlled Three Self church network, where unbiblical teachings still abound and pastors do not (official pastor training continues to be confined to a China's sole showcase and unbiblical seminary - Nanjing Union Theological Seminary - that annually produces only 100 graduates for China's 1,400,000,000 people).
If the pressure to join the Three Self church network is resisted, the underground church Christians in some regions of China were left alone, while those in other regions were threatened with job loss, placed under house arrest or fined.
The magazine, Bitter Winter, reported that the National Security Bureau in Liaoning’s Dalian city sets the standards, which are based on a “100-point evaluation system.” Bitter Winter interviewed a police officer from the city.
“If the assigned quarterly arrest quotas are not met, the station chief faces losing his job,” Bitter Winter reported. “To fulfill the quotas, police stations distributed a list of previously arrested believers to local communities and building managers to keep an eye on such persons and report to the police if they notice suspicious activities.”
Persecution of Christians in China has been jerked up in 2018. In the spring, China's president Xi Jinping introduced a 5 year plan to "sinicize" all the nation's religions by infusing them with "Chinese characteristics" such as loyalty to the Communist Party.
Over the last several months, the government has taken steps toward this measure by shutting down hundreds of private Christian "house churches" and seizing Bibles.
On the Express, "THE CHINESE government’s crackdown on Christianity has intensified in Henan province where over 7,000 crosses have been destroyed by local authorities. Christianity crackdown threatens church goers wrote CHARLIE MOLONEY
Patheos is even more specific in details:
"In recent months the communist government of China has increased persecution of Christians.
Asia Harvest, a ministry helping Chinese Christians, recently reported that it “received an unconfirmed report from a long-term China missionary” who claimed that the government had murdered 314 house church Christians in recent months and hundreds more are missing. Most house church leaders have gone into hiding, Asia Harvest reports, even going so far as to disconnect their phones and other electronic devices to avoid government surveillance.
Additionally, thousands of house churches– which are considered “illegal,” have closed. Chinese officials have also reverted to 1960’s-era policies of removing crosses and Scripture posters from public places and replacing them with Chinese flags or pictures of President Xi Jinping.
China Aid reports that the most high-profile church punished by the government in this way was Zion Church in Beijing. The head pastor of the church said, “Yes we are scared, but we have Jesus!”
It’s not just Christians who are targeted, however. Anyone who associates with them are punished as well."
In addition,"Landlords who rent buildings to Christians are heavily fined by the government– between 20,000 to 200,000 Yuan– nearly $30,000.
Financial costs associated with Christianity have not only created a climate of fear, but also resulted in the forcing out of Christians from the premises they rented.
The most severe persecution to reported comes from the northwest region of Xinjiang, China, in response to the spread of Christianity. In recent years, church houses have sprung up among the Uyghur, Kazakh and Kirghiz people groups.
Today, most of their leaders have been arrested and taken to concentration camps. News organizations estimate at least one million Christians are being detained and tortured in those camps now. Inmates also initiated a hunger strike. Chinese authorities denied in August that it had detained one million people." Wrote BETHANY BLANKLEY on December 23rd.
The BBC News reported that human rights groups say detainees are made to swear loyalty to President Xi Jinping and renounce their faith.
Instead, Chinese officials claim the camps are “vocational skills and educational training centers.”
The New York Times quoted former detainees saying they were forced to sing songs like, “Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No New China.” Those who couldn’t remember the words were not given breakfast.
What does the Chinese Church need from us?
1. Our prayers
2. Our support
3. Missionaries from us
4. Free nations should keep raising religious freedom pressure on the communist government.
One thing the don't need is pity. The persecuted Church is always the strongest Church. She is always expanding, enduring and influential.
Of a truth, Chinese Christians are either spending the Christmas in hiding or in the concentration camp.
God bless His Church in China.
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