China’s hunt of Christian churches

More than 100 members of a demolition squad raided a church in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province at 5 a.m. on Wednesday last week, and removed the cross there. Church members who had been safeguarding the cross by staying overnight for days got into physical clash with demolition squad members, and some of them suffered injury after being beaten with suppressing clubs, Hong Kong’s Singtao daily reported recently.

The authority of Baixing County ordered the church to remove the cross days before deploying the public demolition force, saying that "the size of building space is larger than the regulation," and made surprise raid on the day and started removing the facility.

Earlier the Zhejiang provincial government was attempting to forcefully remove a Sankang Church in Yungjia Prefecture in Wenzhou City from early April. More than 3,000 believers of Christian church came to the church en masse and held negotiations, trying to block the demolition of the church building, but it was removed on April 28 in the end.

Since April this year, more than 100 churches have been removed in Wenzhou City alone at the pretext of "construction law violation" and other reasons the church. A hunt for “church crosses” is being staged out of blue.

The New York Times and media outlets on the greater Chinese community including Mingjiang Network with servers in the U.S. introduced the move to remove churches by the Chinese authority, which is staging the campaign targeting the test area of Wenzhou. The authority cites violation of construction law as an excuse, but analysts say that the move is related to robust expansion of protest churches in China and their link with democratization movement forces and others.

Chang Bori, a pastor and one of the "21 people on the wanted list" and student activist during the Tiananmen incident in 1989, said, “Most of the churches being prosecuted in Wenzhou are churches that were approved by state,” adding, “The biggest reason is that the number of Christians is growing too fast.”

According to official statistics by the Chines authorities, the number of Christians in China amounts to 23 million. However, some say that the number is close to 100 million. Purdue University in the U.S. estimated that the number of Christian believers in China will hit 160 million in 2025, and 247 million including Catholics in 2030. It means that China will become the world’s largest Christian state that exceeds Mexico, Brazil and the U.S.

The Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the Beijing authorities fear that rapid expansion of Christians, primarily among young generation and intellectuals, would weaken loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Ultimately, the authorities judge that it could become threat to the Chinese regime controlled by the Communist Party.

Particularly, since the Tiananmen incident, a significant portion of anti-government activists seeking democratization is Christians, which helps spread the perception that “Christians equal anti-government activists.” Data suggesting that more than 70 percent of Christians in China became Christian followers since June 4, 1989 incident, which is a cause that makes the Chinese authority wary of, Minjiang Network said.

Wenzhou became a hub of Christian evangelism in China, partly because merchants in the region were engaged in activities overseas since long time ago, and naturally had chances to encounter knowledge and things from foreign countries, and came into contact with Christianity earlier than in other regions.