ICC Note:

In the West, many may perceive the people in China as free, but that is far from reality. Churches in China may be allowed to exist under the Communist regime, but they are not allowed to thrive since they are forced to undergo government approval for everything. A huge issue this causes is the distortion of the Gospel. Once a church registers with the government, spies will go to the church, listen to the pastor’s sermons and if the pastor preaches on the second coming of Jesus, if he talks about healing or miracles, or if tells the people that their first devotion is to God, not to the government, that pastor will be arrested. This occurrence gives the Church little room to speak the truth boldly. 

09/12/2016 China (Mission Network News) – Before the summit, the United States Commission of International Religions Freedom (USCIRF) urged President Obama to discuss religious freedom with President Xi Jinping. And while he seems to have taken this advice, according to several news stories, it doesn’t appear that the conversation was productive.

Outside of China, it’s hard to get a feel for how things are in China. For many of us, it seems like China is doing a lot better when it comes to human rights than they have in the recent past.

Patrick Klein of Vision Beyond Borders says that’s not really true.

“The perception to the West is, China’s life is so much better, people are doing better economically. We sometimes have this perception that China’s free, it’s open. It’s not.”

He cites an event that took place a little over year ago. An explosion in the busy city of Tianjin killed over a hundred and left several hundred injured, says BBC News. According to the Washington Post, media coverage of the event was heavily covered, and independent blogs and video postings were taken down.

Klein says, “They don’t have freedom of speech, they don’t have freedom of religion, and I think we need to be very careful that we don’t think that China is free just because economically they have prospered. When we see what’s going on with the Church, they’re stepping up the persecution more and more.”

The USCIRF says discrimination from authorities and the government has targeted Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners alike. This includes torture, forced disappearances, imprisonment, etc.

Ministries like Vision Beyond Borders sees examples of this first-hand. Klein has been visiting China for 30 years. He says what’s happening there is a good reminder that ultimately, our hope is with Jesus Christ.

“We’ve heard 2,000 churches have had their crosses removed, we’ve heard stories of pastors being arrested, pastors even being put in mental institutions. We’ve seen crackdowns at the border more and more. I just came back from China just a week or two ago and I was surprised to see so many police.”

Earlier this year, a government-backed church demolition ended in the death of a pastor’s wife. China Aid says they both had been buried alive, but his wife wasn’t able to escape and suffocated under the rubble.

Klein says the government finally allowed Churches as long as they were registered. They thought that Christianity would die out with the older generation. But that’s not what happened. Instead, Christianity grew, and quickly.

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