China’s newly announced switch to a two-child population control policy does not resolve the coercive nature of the program, pro-life leaders say.
The disclosure of the change came even as the communist government imposes the most severe oppression in four decades, according to a leading advocate for the Chinese church.
Christians face the “worst persecution in China since the Cultural Revolution,” Bob Fu, president of ChinaAid, said in an article by Christian Today on Oct. 9.
That description is justified, Fu explained to BP in written comments in an email interview today (Oct. 22), due to “both the large scale and the severe degree of [the] violent crackdown” against not only the unregistered house churches but against the government-approved Three-Self Patriotic Movement congregations. About 300 churches have either been destroyed or had crosses forcibly removed recently in an ongoing campaign, and various believers have been arrested, Fu said.
Three-Self pastor Zhang Shaojie of Henan Province received a 12-year prison sentence in July, Fu noted, while Huang Yizi, a Three-Self pastor in Zhejiang Province, awaits trial after rallying prayer support for victims of the government crackdown.
Credible evidence exists, Fu told BP, that demonstrates Xi Jinping, who became China’s president in March 2013, instituted a “more hostile religious policy” last year. His goal is to “contain the over-heated growth of Christianity, according to confirmed and verified officially issued documents,” Fu said. Christianity is listed as a national security threat by the Chinese Communist Party, said Fu, who received the 2007 John Leland Religious Liberty Award from Southern Baptists’ Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission for his work on behalf of the persecuted church in China…Read More
Source and Original Content by Baptist Press