The Chinese Communist Party is “keen to eradicate every aspect of independent religious thought,” and has denounced Christians by closing down house churches, separating children from Christian homes, and monitoring every detail of the lives of its Christian citizens. The International Christian Concern (ICC) announced that Thursday.
The ICC, a global Christian advocacy organization that supports persecuted churches, has released its annual report. global persecution index On Thursday, we highlighted the most dangerous places in the world for Christians. China is widely recognized in this study, both as one of the most repressive countries in the world and as a supporter of Christian oppression by allied governments across the globe, from North Korea to Nicaragua. playing a role.
China is the largest communist country identified as a repressor in this study. The ICC noted that Marxism is one of several ideologies, along with Hindu nationalism and political Islam, that fuel the violent suppression of Christianity. The group said advances in surveillance technology and the construction of repressive infrastructure are contributing to the deterioration of religious freedom around the world.
“The details of persecution you will read about in our report are not isolated incidents; they are the lives of millions of Christians around the world who face daily threats to their lives and religious freedom. ICC President Jeff King asserted in a message launching the 2025 Global Persecution Index. The growing use of technology to monitor and repress faith communities, cross-border persecution as regimes target Christians across borders, and the continued rise of religious nationalism, including Islamic extremism. ”
China is officially an atheist, communist state that claims to tolerate only five legal religions: Catholicism, Protestant Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam. All five religions are only legal through government-run institutions, which do not actually preach the teachings of the faith, but rather encourage their followers to abandon their faith and worship dictator Xi Jinping. I encourage it.
The ICC has found that the Chinese government has carried out the most brutal policies against Uyghur Muslims in East Turkestan, and since at least 2017, China has committed genocide, eliminating both the Muslim and indigenous minorities in the region. He pointed out that he was engaged in the act. “They are not concentrated in one area like the Uyghurs, but are spread out across China,” so sending them to concentration camps is not as practical as it is for the Uyghurs. Nevertheless, the report notes that “the arrest and imprisonment of Christians in China stems from the same motives.”
“The government is working to stamp out the house church movement, regularly arresting and harassing church members and leaders, sometimes cutting off contact for years,” the newspaper continued. “In some cases, the government has removed children from families belonging to unregistered religious groups, presumably to indoctrinate the children with communist ideology and prevent them from accepting their parents' faith. be.”
The “house church” movement in China is considered to be a group of: millions of A number of Christians refuse to worship in legitimate communist-controlled churches, where the teachings of Jesus are almost completely absent. Instead, they gather in their homes to pray and study the Bible, which is illegal. To contain the house church movement, China uses a widespread high-tech citizen surveillance network to target and often imprison believers.
“The Chinese Communist Party uses data captured by this system to track and control people it deems dangerous to the state,” the ICC said in its report. “This includes those associated with unregistered house church movements and those who wish to practice their religion outside the confines of state institutions.”
“China leads the world in monitoring its citizens,” the report continued. Although the full scope of its surveillance equipment is likely unknown, investigations have shown that it operates a system designed to track every citizen's movements to determine their loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. ”
“From everyday details like what a person wears to larger observations like who they associate with, this system works to track and understand the loyalties of every citizen. “There are,” the report states.
Another institution identified by the ICC as part of China's mechanism to suppress religious sentiments is the China Organ Transplant Response System (COTRS). For decades, China has faced accusations that it uses political prisoners as fodder for organ harvesting, killing them while their bodies are cut out alive and selling them around the world. A 2022 study by the Australian National University (ANU), citing extensive government data, accused China of carrying out “heart-harvesting executions” in which political prisoners are killed for the purpose of harvesting their organs for sale. .
“The COTRS, secretly created in 2011, is an insidious tool for religious repression in China,” the ICC said in a report this week. “Their mission is to kill and harvest the organs of members of certain disadvantaged groups, including members of religious groups that the government wishes to eliminate.”
China's methods of persecution against Christians are used around the world. The ICC report specifically noted that China supports North Korea, one of the most dangerous places for Christians in the world, to hunt down and eliminate Christians. Outside the region, the ICC Global Persecution Index noted that China is playing a role in Eritrea and Nicaragua.
“Persecution in Eritrea, a Christian-majority country, is primarily driven by political extremism. Ideologically, Eritrea follows many of the patterns seen in communist China,” the study said. There is. “President Afwerki visited China in the 1960s to study Maoism and returned inspired and ready to implement Maoist policies in his country.”
“Eritrea has had close ties with China to this day, especially since the rise of Xi Jinping, whose leadership style bears a striking resemblance to Mao Zedong,” the study continued. “Those who dare to overstep the government are swiftly punished, and many Christians and other people of conscience are imprisoned for maintaining their faith in the face of government persecution.Survivors of these prisons They report regular beatings, severe torture, and poor conditions in overcrowded facilities.”
Nicaragua, like Eritrea, is a Christian-majority country run by a brutal communist dictatorship. Tyrant Daniel Ortega has significantly stepped up his persecution of Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, since a wave of anti-communist protests in 2018 that ended in a deadly regime crackdown. The Global Persecution Index noted that Ortega was subject to government intimidation and surveillance “strikingly similar to that imposed on religious communities by China,” including surveillance of the Catholic Church.
“Nicaragua maintains close ties with China, viewing it as an important ally in the face of increasing Western sanctions and economic weakness,” the newspaper said.
