WHILE much of the world welcomed 2026 with cautious optimism, many Christians in China entered the New Year with fear and uncertainty.
In the opening days of January, Chinese authorities detained prominent Protestant leaders in Chengdu and demolished the Yayang Church building in Wenzhou, two incidents that underscore an intensifying campaign to bring religion firmly under Communist Party control.
At the heart of the crackdown is President Xi Jinping’s policy of “Sinicisation”, which requires religious groups to align their beliefs, practices, and moral teachings with socialist values and Chinese culture as defined by the state.
For Christian communities, particularly independent Protestant churches that operate outside government control, this policy has translated into surveillance, arrests, and the erasure of visible religious symbols.
“The message is clear: faith is permitted only when it submits,” Li Wen, a former house-church member who fled China in 2024 and now lives in South-East Asia, said. “Churches are being told to replace crosses with national flags, sermons are monitored, and pastors are forced to preach loyalty to the Party before God.”
Human-rights groups warn that the pressure is steadily increasing. ChinaAid, a US-based Christian charity campaigning on religious freedom, says that more than 1000 police officers recently raided a Protestant church in Yayang Town, detaining almost 100 worshippers. Bibles and religious materials not approved by the state were confiscated, while children were barred from attending services.
A researcher for China at Human Rights Watch, Yalkun Uluyol, described the arrests in Chengdu as a grim signal. “The Chinese government has begun the year by criminalising peaceful worship,” he said. “These actions violate not only international human-rights standards, but China’s own constitutional guarantees of religious belief.”
China is home to tens of millions of Christians, but the Pew Research Center has found that the Christian population has stagnated in recent years, an anomaly in a country where religious communities once grew rapidly.
Analysts link this slowdown to tighter controls, digital surveillance, and fear of reprisal. “The current repression rivals what we saw during the Cultural Revolution,” an independent scholar of religion in East Asia, Maria Thompson, said.
“What’s different now is the use of technology, facial recognition, online monitoring, and data tracking, to suffocate religious life quietly but effectively.”
Submissions to the United Nations have urged global attention, warning of imprisonment, forced indoctrination, and reports of torture. Yet, for many believers inside China, international concern feels distant.
“We pray in whispers now,” a worshipper from Henan province said, speaking through encrypted messages. “Faith hasn’t disappeared, but it survives in hiding.”
