By Frank Fang
July 5, 2016 AT 10:14 pm
Last Updated:
July 5, 2016 10:14 pm
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A woman prays at a Catholic church in Tianjin on June 7, 2015. Many churches in China's province of Zhejiang have been turned into cultural centers. (Fred Dufour/AFP/Getty Images) |
“A few days ago a preacher came to our church and said that the government had converted some churches into halls or cultural centers,” a churchgoer from Rui’an City in Zhejiang told Radio Free Asia in June.
The churchgoer added: “We are worried, but prepared. Once our church is transformed, we will definitely retreat and abandon the church; we’ll create house churches and gatherings because that’s better.”
Guo Baosheng, a Chinese pastor in the United States, told RFA that the Chinese regime had followed a “strategic process” in transforming 2,000 churches into so-called cultural centers.
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Shang Liang Tang Church (Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of Zhejiang Province) |
The atheist Chinese Communist Party recognizes five traditional faiths, but seeks to push the Party line and propaganda through its state-sanctioned clergy. In Zhejiang, however, the local authorities have been pro-actively suppressing Christianity.
The Zhejiang authorities’ ultimate goal of removing crosses and raising red flags is “the elimination of religion altogether,” Guo Baosheng the Chinese pastor surmised.
Since 2014, at least 2,000 churches have had their crosses torn down in Zhejiang, according to RFA. In Lanxi, a city in Zhejiang, the Chinese national flag is either raised on a flag pole or hung on a wall in over 69 places of worship.
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(L-R) Tashan Temple and Lan Jiang Church (Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee of Zhejiang Province) |
The Zhejiang authorities attempts to suppress Christianity in the province go beyond crude propaganda.
This April, an elderly Christian couple was buried alive by a bulldozer while trying to stop the demolition of their church in Wenzhou, a city in Zhejiang, by a government-linked demolition company, according to China Aid, a Christian human rights nonprofit. Church leader Li Jiangong survived, but his wife Ding Cuimei suffocated to death.
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