After more than a year in Beihai’s Second Detention Centre in southern China, Pastor Wang Lin of Beijing Zion Church has written a letter urging fellow Christians to persevere and describing their shared suffering as a sign of belonging to one body in Christ. The pastor, pictured with his wife Su Ziming last year, has been detained since the October 2025 crackdown on the large unregistered Zion Church network.
In his recent letter, written on 22 October, Pastor Wang reflects on the meaning of Christian suffering and also describes overcrowding, inadequate medical care and psychological distress. He writes, “Since ancient times, the scar of bearing the cross has been among the most important marks of the entire Body of Christ.”
Pastor Wang is a former lawyer who earned a doctorate in Old Testament theology from Wheaton College, Illinois. He was arrested at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport during the October 2025 crackdown on Zion Church and was transferred to Beihai, a coastal city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. He is among eight leaders who remain in detention following the crackdown, all facing charges of fraud and illegal business operations.
Conditions in detention
Pastor Wang reports that thirty to forty detainees sleep on a communal wooden platform measuring 40 square metres and during the day they crowd into an exercise yard of about 30 square metres. He describes mosquitoes and other insects infesting the sleeping area and writes of being bitten during the night, adding that another detainee discovered a bright red centipede about 5 cm long crawling into his folded clothing.
Meals consist mainly of boiled vegetables, with an egg each morning and soya beans twice weekly. The pastor describes inadequate medical care for detainees with chronic illnesses, including hypertension and diabetes, and reports that a 36-year-old detainee died after suddenly becoming ill in October (he does not identify the person or specify the illness, and China Aid could not independently verify the reported death).
Pastor Wang says that even more distressing than these physical conditions are the daily announcements and instructions issued by loudspeaker at extremely high volume. He writes, “If music can soothe our souls, these loudspeakers seem to tear my soul apart, as if they are trying to shatter my entire being and turn me into a puppet without feelings or thoughts, one that obeys the loudspeaker’s commands absolutely.” He says he relies on prayer and perseverance to endure what he describes as “repeated bombardment”.
Encouragement and inspiration
Pastor Wang draws encouragement from knowing that other Zion Church members are persevering alongside him. Although some are detained just 100 to 200 metres away, he has glimpsed them only occasionally while being taken for questioning.
He writes that thinking about fellow believers who endured similar consequences, despite having played smaller roles in church activities, helped transform his anxiety and self-pity into gratitude and concern for others.
Reflecting on enduring these struggles in his forties, Pastor Wang draws parallels with three of his favourite classical Chinese poets – Li Bai, Bai Juyi and Su Dongpo – who all experienced major political setbacks at the same stage of life.
He is also inspired by Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, and Wang Mingdao, a Chinese Christian leader who endured long imprisonment for refusing to submit his church to government control.
Wang also writes that the experiences of older generations of Chinese preachers, who faced repeated imprisonment during the 1980s and 1990s, help him view his own suffering within a longer history of Christian perseverance.
He closes by encouraging Christians in China and abroad to remember that their hardships, however different, can strengthen their sense of shared faith and belonging. “Let us not be deceived by the devil into thinking that we are facing this battle alone,” he writes. “May the comfort and strength I have received also comfort and encourage other family members and friends who are facing challenges and suffering.”
Overcrowding, malnutrition, inadequate medical treatment
Pastor Wang’s letter comes after earlier reports from relatives and former detainees about overcrowding, inadequate nutrition and insufficient medical treatment during the Zion leaders’ detention.
In a post on X on 7 September, human rights activist Shiming Lei referred to severe weight loss among several Zion Church members. “No wonder Pastor Jin and Pastor Wang both lost thirty jin (about 15 kg) in Beihai Detention Centre, and Sister An Mei got so thin she’s skin and bones,” she wrote.
Family members and released detainees have reported that 36 people sleep on a communal platform bed in a detention room of about 40 square metres, with a washbasin on one side and an open toilet on the other.
Daily life reportedly includes mandatory political re-education (watching state-sponsored news and singing political songs three times a day) and detainees must squat three times a day with their hands on their heads as part of the “Three Positions” exercise and sit in fixed positions for up to three hours at a time – some detainees have described these exercises and fixed-position sitting as “a form of torture” because of the severe pain involved.
Family members say prolonged malnutrition has caused significant weight loss among several detainees and some with serious illnesses have not received necessary medication or treatment. An Mei, who was released on bail in June, reportedly lost 30 kg, while Pastor Wang Lin’s mother Lin Wenyu said in a video posted in August that by June he had lost approximately 15 kg.
In two videos posted in early September, she said mosquitoes enter through the unscreened windows and that detainees must raise their hands and report being bitten before trying to kill them. Lin Wenyu said violations can result in prolonged periods of standing as punishment, and she also said detainees have at times been forced to stand in the rain while eating.
Background
Zion Church is a large network of unregistered house churches in forty cities across China. It was founded by Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, who was one of eighteen pastors and church workers detained in the October 2025 crackdown, when authorities launched a series of coordinated raids on churches in eleven cities across the network. On 18 November 2025 they were charged with “illegally using information networks” and placed under official arrest.
Nine were released on bail on 18 June and the charges against the remaining nine were changed to the more serious “fraud” and “illegal business operations”, charges that Chinese authorities increasingly use against leaders of unregistered churches. In this case, the charges are based on church offerings and tuition fees collected for seminary training.
Pastor Jin was released and flown to the USA in July. He had been held at Beihai Detention Centre in Guangxi along with the eight pastors and co-workers who remain in detention and have become known as the “Zion 8”. (Top row from left: Pastor Wang Lin, Pastor Gao Yingjia, Elder Wang Zhong and Pastor Yin Huibin. Second row from left: Pastor Liu Zhenbin, Pastor Lin Shucheng, Pastor Wang Cong and Wu Qiuyu.)
(China Aid)
Photo credits
Wang Lin and Su Ziming: courtesy photo via China Aid
Photo collage: Zion Church/China Aid