12/29/2019 China (International Christian Concern) – This Christmas, Guangzhou Bible Reformed Church (GBRC) continued to experience surveillance and were unable to celebrate Jesus’ birth at their own church.

More than a year has passed after the house church was shut down by the authorities in July 2018 for violating the Religious Affairs Regulations. Pastor Huang Xiaoning did not find the 50,000 yuan fine (approximately 7,100 USD) to be fair and filed administrative litigation several times through the court. Yet the attempts were ignored. Finally he wrote a complaint to the High Court, and even though GBRC did not get its church back, they no longer have to pay the fine.

In the past year, the church was split into five, and its members have to meet at different venues every week. But for this reason, they are able to reach out to more people. The number of their members doubled in the past year.

However, many members have been pressured by the government ever since their church was shut down. Pastor Huang had to report to the state security daily before the country’s National Day in October. He was also placed under tighter surveillance before Christmas.

Huang was reminded by the state security before Christmas to “not hold Christmas events and not gather large crowd.” Starting from December 18, he was placed under 24/7 monitoring by the authorities.

Huang told Hong-Kong based iCable News that currently the authorities are busy with trade war against the U.S. and Hong Kong issue, so they have no time for his church. Yet this might not last long. “In substance, the theories of Christianity and Communism are at great odds with each other, so persecution against Christianity is a given. If Communism continues to carry on in China, and the Communist Party of China continues to rule the country, this is inevitable, with no space for negotiation,” he said.

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