Bob Fu (Founder and President of Church in Chains partner organisation China Aid) recently visited Ireland to speak at the Notre Dame Law School’s annual Religious Liberty Summit, which was held this year in Dublin. Following the event, Bob was interviewed by David Turner (Director, Church in Chains) and also met with David Franklin (Chairman, Church in Chains – pictured with Bob).
How do you assess the current situation for Christians in China?
First of all, David – thank you Church in Chains for your leadership, for your persistent, and tireless effort for many years for the persecuted brothers and sisters globally and particularly in China.
The situation in China, especially the persecution of Chinese Christians, has really risen to the worst level we have seen in forty years, maybe since the end of the Cultural Revolution. We have seen the Communist Party, under the leadership of this new “emperor” Xi Jinping, launching three major wars against our faith. The first war against the cross, the second against the Bible and the third against Christian leaders.
When Xi Jinping took power, the cross was declared as a national security threat. Thousands of crosses across the nation were forcefully demolished and taken down, burned, destroyed – most of these from the officially-registered Three Self Patriotic Movement churches. Christians who resisted the removal of crosses were arrested and detained. Some were even sentenced to 12 to 14 years’ imprisonment.
This was all done in the name of Sinicisation [an ongoing campaign to bring all aspects of religion into submission under the Chinese Communist Party]. Sinicisation is in essence like a repeat of 1933 Nazi Germany when the Nazis forced the Lutheran Church to install Nazi signs in its buildings.
Bible printing has always been limited in China and the Bible was never allowed to be sold in any popular bookstore. However, previously, people could download the Bible to their smartphone or access the Bible through an e-commerce store app, but no more. This is now totally forbidden.
The targeting of children and those who minister to children has resulted in many millions of Chinese Christian children being forbidden to follow their Christian faith and some were even forced to sign a form renouncing their faith in public. This last happened during the Cultural Revolution. And now the authorities have criminalised the long-established practice of tithes and offerings in churches and just in the past week, thirteen Christians from two churches in the same city received prison sentences on such charges [Linfen Covenant House Church and Linfen Golden Lampstand Church].
How are churches operating these days with all these restrictions?
The biggest impact has been on the large organised house churches in the suburbs of large cities. While in the past their status may have been illegal because they were not registered, at the same time they were tolerated and were able to rent large office buildings or use plaza locations where they gathered under the monitoring of the secret police. No more. Such places were forcibly closed.
Churches that remained open were forced to install face recognition cameras on the pulpit to monitor the congregation. Consequently, if you were there with your children under 18, you would be observed and find yourself in trouble. Similarly, Communist Party or youth league members or civil servants or military personnel or even doctors or nurses are all categories of people that are not allowed to go to any church.
And so now many house churches have moved to meeting in small groups and some even use digital formats – we call them “walking churches”. On Sunday, members just use a digital format through their smartphone and go out walking on the street and worship as they walk.
We’ve heard that across China there is intense surveillance of people’s phones, not just Christians. So how do Christians cope when their phones are liable to be searched for Bible apps or what do they do?
China is perhaps the first digital authoritarian regime that has massively deployed face recognition cameras at a rate of 2.7 per person – that’s over two cameras for every person! In China, there are face recognition cameras every hundred metres or so. When you leave your home, everywhere you go you will be seen by face recognition cameras. In every church, there are cameras at all four corners inside the church, outside the church and even on the road leading to the church.
During one of the occasions when the large Zion house church in Beijing was raided, the police basically asked church members to just supply their ID number, but didn’t ask for their phone password because the internet police already had everybody’s password! It shocked everybody. Smartphones are being sold with preinstalled spyware, so when you type a letter it will be immediately monitored. So Christians now understand that nothing on your phone is secret.
Despite this, the church in China is still growing, even the most heavily persecuted Early Rain Covenant church led by Pastor Wang Yi whom you have been advocating for. In the past several years they have planted two to three new churches. This has happened even though all the leadership were removed. One of their leaders recently said “we actually got a lot of new believers coming in”. I think that’s how the Lord works.
Do you think the election of Pope Leo will change the Vatican’s relations with the Chinese government?
Sadly, under the so-called secret deal made by Pope Francis and the Chinese Communist Party [in 2018], the situation of the Roman Catholic Church has not improved or even changed much. There are still at least ten Vatican-appointed bishops who have vanished or who are being detained under secret house arrest. Some have not been heard of for many years.
I’m praying that Pope Leo can really stick to the biblical teaching about freedom and justice and compassion and will see the reality of the situation in China and not bury his head in the sand. He has a lot of experience including as a missionary in South America. I like his really strong stand on evangelism and the Great Commission, because that’s the core reason that Christians are persecuted. If all the Chinese Christians cease to evangelise or throw out the Great Commission, there won’t be any persecution by the Communist Party.