According to China Aid Association’s latest annual report, religious persecution in China more than doubled last year. The increase comes as no surprise, as 2014 was marked by a wave of attacks on church buildings, particularly in the city of Wenzhou and around the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang. The general social tightening that has come to characterize President Xi Jinping’s rule contributed to the pressure on religious believers, as did heightened tensions between the regime and ethnic minorities in western China.
Looking beyond the statistics, the report highlights several root causes that help to explain why religious persecution is apparently on the rise.
The report indicates a huge spike in the number of people sentenced for religious activities. On closer examination, it appears that the vast majority of these were members of the Almighty God cult, formerly known as Eastern Lightning. Here the China Aid report is problematic in that it claims to cover “predominately Christian persecution” and includes the Almighty God sect as a “Christian sect.” Given its history of infiltrating Christian house churches, destroying families and physically attacking pastors, the inclusion of this cult in the report seems to be an anomaly and skews the statistics in a manner that is misleading.
In any case, the government’s efforts to eradicate cults such as this one point to an important underlying cause of persecution, namely, the regime’s emphasis on social stability. Given China’s long history of religious groups militarizing and posing a threat to the regime (the Taiping Rebellion being a prime example), the need for social stability has been a central feature of religious policy even since dynastic times. Under Xi Jinping this emphasis has taken on a new intensity.
Another factor is the regime’s crackdown on dissent. Human rights lawyers, many of them Christians, figure prominently in the China Aid report. Since President Xi has made it clear that he will tolerate no dissenting voices, the crackdown on China’s legal community comes as little surprise, particularly as some of these lawyers have spoken out on behalf of individuals and groups which the regime views as threatening. While such lawyers may be motivated by their Christian convictions, it is their activities, not merely the fact that they are Christians, that prompt official actions against them.
Widespread cases of churches being demolished or crosses being removed suggest the growing tension in Chinese society over the utilization of land (as well as over the degree to which the church should have a visible presence in the community). As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, the forces of urbanization and the thirst for profit among both government officials and developers make it increasingly difficult for Christians to obtain suitable venues in which to meet. The Wenzhou situation may be an extreme example, but the dynamics are similar elsewhere. The lack of a legal basis on which to solve these land disputes puts the verdict in the hands of local officials, leaving believers with little recourse.
Finally, the report mentions efforts within China’s official church to produce a “Sinicized” version of Christianity. This is not a new project; the “Theological Reconstruction Campaign” under former TSPM head Ding Guangxun in the 1990s resulted in the resignation or expulsion of several key faculty in official seminaries but ultimately did little to change the core beliefs of the vast majority of believers within or outside the TSPM. One might expect the current campaign to yield similar results.
What is significant, however, is the re-emphasis of the mandate, contained in religious policy documents dating back to the 1980s, that religion must serve socialism. Like the emphasis on social stability, the concept that religion is subservient to the state is not unique to the current regime but has deep roots in Chinese history and culture. Its current reincarnation, couched in Marxist terms, marks the latest round in a long-running battle between a state that demands the church’s unconditional loyalty and a church committed to the ultimate lordship of Christ.
Historical, economic, and political factors all contribute to the current tension between religion and state, exacerbated by a regime that has become increasingly paranoid about any group that could remotely be perceived as threatening.
While providing a useful window into this tension, the China Aid report does not paint a complete picture of China’s religious believers, particularly China’s Christians, upon whom much of the report focuses. For every church that has been attacked, there are thousands across China where believers meet regularly with little or no interference. For every believer who has been detained, there are tens of thousands going about their daily lives unhindered. This is not to downplay the seriousness of the incidents detailed in the report, but simply to say that the story of China’s Christians is complex and varied, the persecution narrative being but one piece of this larger story.
Image credit: IMG_2236 by Ken Marshall, on Flickr
Brent Fulton
Brent Fulton is the founder of ChinaSource. Dr. Fulton served as the first president of ChinaSource until 2019. Prior to his service with ChinaSource, he served from 1995 to 2000 as the managing director of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Wheaton College. From 1987 to 1995 he served as founding …View Full Bio
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