Elder Zhang Chunlei, leader of the banned Ren’ai (Love) Reformed Church in Guiyang, capital of China’s southwestern Guizhou province, has been in detention since March 2021. He stood trial for “fraud and inciting subversion of state power” in November 2022 but the court’s verdict was never made public.
LATEST NEWS (MARCH 2024): On 12 March the judge handling Zhang Chunlei’s case told his wife Yang Aiqing that his case is “still being processed” due to its “special nature”.
Elder Zhang Chunlei is the leader of Guiyang Ren’ai (Love) Reformed Church, a small house church of under one hundred members that refuses to join China’s official Protestant church, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.
Elder Zhang previously worked as a government official in the Guizhou Provincial Department from 1985, before starting his own business in 1993. “Politicians and businessmen were my idols before I was joyfully called to follow the Lord in 2008,” he wrote in 2022. Later, he entered full-time ministry in the church.
Elder Zhang signs Pastor Wang Yi’s Declaration
In 2018 Elder Zhang was one of the first of over 450 Christian leaders to sign a joint statement written by Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu Early Rain Covenant Church, the “Declaration for the Sake of the Christian Faith”, which followed the introduction of China’s revised Regulations on Religious Affairs in February 2018. In December 2018 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cracked down heavily on Early Rain Church, detaining around one hundred members including Pastor Wang, who is serving a nine-year prison sentence.
Elder Zhang travelled to Chengdu to visit Early Rain families affected by the crackdown but on one occasion police forcibly took him from a church member’s home to the police station and on another occasion officials seized him and handed him over to Guiyang national security agents, who forced him to board a plane.
More than half of the pastors who signed Pastor Wang Yi’s statement were summoned to speak with national security officers and many house churches were raided and shut down. Elder Zhang and two other house-church pastors (Yang Hua of Guiyang Living Stone Church and Jin Tianming of Beijing Shouwang Church) issued a joint announcement that they were willing to be given the same charges as Wang Yi.
Ren’ai Church banned
On 30 September 2018 CCP agents banned Ren’ai Church. Nanming District Religious Affairs Bureau issued an “administrative penalty decision” which stated that Zhang Chunlei and others had established a religious venue in the Zhongtian Commerce Building, had organised religious events and had received offerings without being approved. The Bureau ordered the cancellation of all events and the removal of church equipment and signs.
Church members continued to hold services in restaurants and hotels but had to keep moving to avoid raids. Despite the church taking care, however, CCP agents carried out three raids in 2019 – in the most severe of these, on 12 May, approximately eighty CCP agents from the religious affairs bureau and public security department raided a service in a hotel, removed a cross and confiscated Elder Zhang’s computer and other personal possessions. The church moved to a new rental, but in July 2019 CCP authorities threatened the landlord and the church had to move again.
Elder Zhang detained
On 16 March 2021 police raided a gathering in a premises Ren’ai Church had rented in a commercial building within the Wenzhou Hotel complex at the start of a three-day retreat which the authorities described as “an illegal rally”. Police detained at least ten Christians, searched their homes and confiscated possessions.
On the evening of the raid Elder Zhang went to Yan’an Middle Road Police Station in Guiyang’s Yunyan district to negotiate the release of the detained Christians but he was detained for “illegally operating as an association” (an accusation often made against unregistered church leaders) and his home was searched.
Next day he was given a 15-day administrative detention, and after completing it he was sentenced to 37 days in criminal detention on suspicion of fraud – a more serious charge than “illegal business operations” – for illegally collecting donations from church members.
Administrative detention can be used by Chinese police to hold someone for up to fifteen days and does not involve a court process, while criminal detention can be used to hold someone suspected of committing a criminal offence for up to 37 days before the prosecutor approves their arrest, or up to six months in cases involving “national security”.
On 1 May 2021 Elder Zhang was officially arrested on suspicion of fraud. A prayer newsletter published by Ren’ai Church on 1 May 2021 states, “We know that he has been treated so unfairly because of his faith. The so-called charges against him for scamming brothers and sisters are simply unfounded; the ‘suspected fraud’ is outright absurd!”
Chinese authorities often make false accusations of fraud against leaders of unregistered house churches, based on the collection of tithes and offerings, as a way to have them imprisoned. Fraud charges can carry a prison sentence of more than ten years.
On 21 April 2021 Elder Zhang’s wife Yang Aiqing was served a criminal summons, also on suspicion of fraud. She was detained and interrogated about Ren’ai Church and the Christian faith for 24 hours, during which she was handcuffed and shackled.
Additional charge of “inciting subversion”
In November 2021 Elder Zhang’s lawyer learned that his client was also being investigated by the State Security Bureau “for allegedly inciting subversion of state power”. Also that month, Yang Aiqing said in a social media post that the Public Security Bureau in Guiyang had accused her husband of “not having the status of a state-approved religious clergyman while holding religious gatherings and swindling believers of about 100,000 RMB” [approximately €12,600].
Elder Zhang was officially charged with “inciting subversion of state power” on 27 January 2022 and Guiyang Municipal Intermediate Procuratorate combined both charges (fraud and inciting subversion) into one case.
His lawyer was allowed to meet him on 5 January 2022 at the Guiyang No. 2 PSB Detention Centre and reported that while his client appeared to have lost weight he was otherwise in good physical and mental health. Elder Zhang had been denied access to his lawyer from June 2021 because the Guiyang branch of the National Security Bureau had designated his case a matter of “state security”.
Trial
Elder Zhang stood trial for “fraud and inciting subversion of state power” at Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court on 29 November 2022. The court’s verdict was not made in the courtroom and has never been announced – his family still has no information about his conviction and sentencing. Yang Aiqing applied in advance to attend the trial but the court refused and did not allow her to see her husband afterwards.
Elder Zhang made a statement in the courtroom in which he recounted his life experience of working in politics and business and then in full-time ministry and explained that what he does is for the sake of the gospel and that he neither incited subversion of state power nor defrauded anyone.
The trial lasted over six hours and the entrance to the courthouse was so heavily guarded that security staff said they had never witnessed such a massive show of force. Some members of Ren’ai Church waiting at the entrance were removed by local authorities and some were followed.
Family
Elder Zhang is married to Yang Aiqing and they have two adult children and a grandchild.
TIMELINE
2008 Zhang Chunlei became a Christian. He later gave up running his own business to enter full-time ministry.
2018 Elder Zhang was one of the first Christian leaders to sign Pastor Wang Yi’s “Declaration for the Sake of the Christian Faith”.
30 September 2018 CCP agents banned Elder Zhang’s church, Guiyang Ren’ai (Love) Reformed Church. Members continued to meet in restaurants and hotels, moving frequently in an effort to avoid raids.
12 May 2019 In the most severe of three raids in 2019, eighty CCP agents raided a service in a hotel and confiscated possessions.
16 March 2021 Police raided Ren’ai Church at the start of a three-day retreat and detained over ten members for interrogation. Elder Zhang was taken into detention for “illegally operating as an association” and his home was searched.
17 March 2021 Elder Zhang was given a 15-day administrative detention. After completing it he was sentenced to 37 days in criminal detention on suspicion of the more serious charge of fraud, for illegally collecting donations from church members.
21 April 2021 Yang Aiqing was served a criminal summons, also on suspicion of fraud, and was detained and interrogated for 24 hours in handcuffs and shackles.
1 May 2021 Elder Zhang was officially arrested on suspicion of fraud.
27 January 2022 Elder Zhang was officially charged with “inciting subversion of state power”. Guiyang Municipal Intermediate Procuratorate combined both charges (fraud and inciting subversion) into one case.
29 November 2022 Elder Zhang stood trial for “fraud and inciting subversion of state power” at Guiyang Intermediate People’s Court. The verdict was not announced.
August 2023 Elder Zhang was treated in Sanjiang hospital after suffering a bout of cholecystitis (gall bladder inflammation).
12 March 2024 The judge handling Elder Zhang’s case told Yang Aiqing that his case is “still being processed” due to its “special nature”.
Read more about the persecution of Chinese Christians in Church in Chains’ China Country Profile.
(China Aid, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Congressional-Executive Commission on China, US Commission on International Religious Freedom)
Photo: China Aid