Another Sunday, Another Crackdown in Beijing

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For Beijing police, Sunday is hardly a day of rest. In February an online call for Sunday protests in major Chinese cities including the capital touched off a widespread detentions. This month a Beijing church has twice attempted to hold Sunday services outdoors, and both times its members were confronted by security personnel. While the crackdown that followed calls for a Chinese “Jasmine Revolution” and the efforts to block the Shouwang Church in Beijing from holding public services aren’t directly related, they each reflect the Chinese government’s apprehension of movements outside the direct control of China’s ruling Communist Party.

Yesterday police detained 47 members of the Shouwang Church for attempting to meet in an open-air public space in northwest Beijing, according to the China Aid Association, a Texas-based advocacy group for mainland Christians. Shouwang is a house church, meaning it is not sanctioned by China’s official protestant church. While the name house church implies small-scale gatherings held in believers’ residences, the movement is quite large. Estimates of the total number of Chinese Christians range from 40 million to 130 million, and some advocates say the majority of them worship in unofficial house churches. Shouwang itself has about 1,000 members who raised $4 million to buy a space for their services. But under pressure from police, their landlord refused to give them access to the property, according to China Aid.

Sunday’s crackdown follows the detention of 169 worshipers one week ago. While most have been released, there were concerns about the fate of church members who had been picked up two weeks in a row. Pastor Zhang Xiaofeng and a lay leader were taken from their homes, where they had been under house arrest for almost 10 days, and are now in police custody, China Aid reported on its website. In additions, members have been threatened with eviction from their homes or loss of jobs if they continue to attempt to worship outdoors, the aid group said.

Shouwang, which means “watchtower,” was formed in Beijing’s Haidian district, home to some of the country’s top universities and tech companies. A story in the New York Times describes the church as “a release valve for an educated elite seeking a nonpolitical refuge for its faith,” but goes on to describe how pressure from the government has only sharpened the congregation’s resistance. The Times’ piece notes how, despite the church’s lack of official sanction, the authorities were once willing to compromise in the past and help the congregation find a place to worship.

Is such an era of compromise over? If the past two Sundays are any indication, that might be the case for Shouwang. Next Sunday is Easter, a holiday born out of persecution, and Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper quotes an anonymous Shouwang Church member who says the congregation will attempt once more to meet outside.

But even among such continuing tensions, there are some positive signs for Christians in China. Paolo Xu Guangqi, an early Christian missionary in China who died in 1633, is expected to soon be beatified in Shanghai, the Vatican said last week. Catholics in China face similar questions as Protestants over whether to worship in state-sanctioned churches or congregations the exist outside government controls. The process to beatify Xu was started by Shanghai bishop Aloysus Jin Luxia, who was ordained by the state-run Patriotic Catholic Association and later received Rome’s approval, is known as a conciliator between the two sides. Even as the Vatican continues to denounce the pressures faced by Chinese Catholics, a spokesman praised Xu’s impending recognition “a pleasing light of hope,” AFP reported.