A Chinese government campaign to remove crosses from church spires has left the countryside looking as if a typhoon had raged down the coast, decapitating buildings at random.

1. Decapitated Churches in China’s
Christian Heartland
By IAN JOHNSONMAY 21, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/world/asia/china-christians-
zhejiang.html?
emc=edit_th_20160522&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=48152027
A cross that had been torn down by Chinese government workers at a Protestant
church in the village of Taitou in Zhejiang Province last year. CreditMark
Schiefelbein/Associated Press
SHUITOU, China — Along the valleys and mountains hugging the East
China Sea, a Chinese government campaign to remove crosses from
church spires has left the countryside looking as if a typhoon had raged
down the coast, decapitating buildings at random.
In the town of Shuitou, workers used blowtorches to cut a 10-foot-high
cross off the 120-foot steeple of the Salvation Church. It now lies in the
churchyard, wrapped in a red shroud.
About 10 miles to the east, in Mabu township, riot police officers blocked
parishioners from entering the grounds of the Dachang Church while
workers erected scaffolding and sawed off the cross. In the nearby
villages of Ximei, Aojiang, Shanmen and Tengqiao, crosses now lie
toppled on rooftops or in yards, or buried like corpses.

2. On a four-day journey through this lush swath of China’s Zhejiang
Province, I spoke with residents who described in new detail the
breathtaking scale of an effort to remove Christianity’s most potent
symbol from public view. Over the past two years, officials and residents
said, the authorities have torn down crosses from 1,200 to 1,700
churches, sometimes after violent clashes with worshipers trying to stop
them.
“It’s been very difficult to deal with,” said one church elder in Shuitou,
who like others asked for anonymity in fear of retaliation by the
authorities. “We can only get on our knees and pray.”
The campaign has been limited to Zhejiang Province, home to one of
China’s largest and most vibrant Christian populations. But people
familiar with the government’s deliberations say the removal of crosses
here has set the stage for a new, nationwide effort to more strictly
regulate spiritual life in China, reflecting the tighter control of society
favored by President Xi Jinping.
In an image from video, a Catholic church’s cross was toppled by a government
worker in Zhejiang Province last year. Over the past two years, officials and
residents said, the authorities have had crosses from 1,200 to 1,700 churches torn
down.CreditDidi Tang/Associated Press
In a major speech on religious policy last month, Mr. Xi urged the ruling
Communist Party to “resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via
religious means,” and he warned that religions in China must “Sinicize,”
or become Chinese. The instructions reflect the government’s
longstanding fear that Christianity could undermine the party’s
authority. Many human rights lawyers in China are Christians, and
many dissidents have said they are influenced by the idea that rights are
God-given.

3. In recent decades, the party had tolerated a religious renaissance in
China, allowing most Chinese to worship as they chose and even
encouraging the construction of churches, mosques and temples, despite
regular crackdowns on unregistered congregations and banned spiritual
groups such as Falun Gong.
Hundreds of millions of people have embraced the nation’s major faiths:
Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and Christianity. There are now about 60
million Christians in China. Many attend churches registered with the
government, but at least half worship in unregistered churches, often
with local authorities looking the other way.
But Mr. Xi’s decision to convene a “religious affairs work conference”
last month — the first such leadership meeting in 15 years — suggested
that he was unhappy with some of these policies. People familiar with
the party’s discussions say it intends to apply some lessons from the
campaign in Zhejiang to rein in religious groups across the country.
While the government is unlikely to begin tearing down crosses across
China, the sources say, local authorities are expected to begin
scrutinizing the finances and foreign ties of churches and other spiritual
institutions as part of an effort to limit the influence of religions the
party considers a threat, especially Christianity.
“What has been happening in Zhejiang is a test,” said Fan Yafeng, an
independent legal scholar in Beijing. “If the government views it as a
success, it will be expanded.”
Broadening the campaign to regulate religion could backfire on Mr. Xi,
with worshipers abandoning government-run churches in favor of
underground congregations, which typically meet unobtrusively in office
buildings or homes. It could also antagonize many of the urban, white-
collar professionals who have embraced Christianity.

4. In 2014, a church blocked a gate to protect its cross. CreditDidi Tang/Associated
Press
“Treating it as a foreign religion could alienate these people,” said
Fredrik Fallman, a scholar who studies Chinese Christianity at the
University of Goteborg in Sweden. “But this might also be the purpose —
to be a warning.”
Set in a valley 10 miles from the coast, Shuitou is a small market town of
streaked-concrete housing blocks and pell-mell streets. Most of its
traditional places of worship — Buddhist, Taoist and ancestral shrines
for deceased relatives — are small structures, sometimes built on the
side of a mountain and usually hidden from view.
But since the 1980s, 14 churches in Shuitou have been financed with
donations from local entrepreneurs eager to show off their newfound
prosperity and hard-won faith. The naves are several stories tall, and the
spires rise more than 100 feet.
Until recently, most were topped with bright red crosses. But crosses
have been removed from half the churches in Shuitou, with orders
coming every month for more to come down. Many worshipers
interviewed said they feared an era was coming to end.
“For years, we had no problems with the authorities,” a local worshiper
said. “Our churches were welcomed by the government.”

5. The campaign began in 2014, when the government abruptly
announcedplans to demolish a church in the neighboring city of
Wenzhou, saying it had not received the proper building permits. Then
the government began issuing orders for churches across the province
to remove their crosses.
The Salvation Church, a complex with three spires atop a three-story
congregation hall, offices and a parking lot, quickly became a center of
resistance. Hundreds of parishioners encircled the church to protect the
cross, facing off against hundreds of riot police officers.
In one confrontation, about 50 church members were injured. Pictures
of bruised and beaten Christians flooded social media and the websites
of overseas Christian advocacy groups.
According to parishioners, the government put pressure on the most
active members of the congregation. Some businessmen say their
partners were pressured into canceling contracts with them. Others were
told by their employers that they would lose their jobs if they continued
to participate in protests.

6. After the church in Wenzhou was demolished, the Salvation Church gave
in and agreed to take down its cross.
The government said that it was enforcing building codes and that all
structures had been affected, not just churches. But documents reviewed
by The New York Times show that provincial officials were worried that
churches had begun to dominate the region’s skyline.
The crosses have come down in waves, with at least 1,200 removed as of
last summer, according to people working for government-run churches.
Many local residents estimate the figure is now close to 1,700.
“It was quiet late last year,” one local Christian said, “but the
government is now making it clear that all of the crosses will go.”
As the authorities pressed the campaign, prominent Protestant and
Catholic leaders across China, including senior figures in the
government’s religious affairs bureaucracy, spoke out against it in
sermons and on social media.
One of them was Gu Yuese, the pastor of one of the biggest churches in
the Chinese-speaking world, the Chongyi Church in the provincial
capital of Hangzhou. As one of the best-known Protestant leaders in
China, Mr. Gu was influential, and his criticism resonated beyond the
region.
“These actions are a flagrant violation of the policy of religious freedom
that the party and the government have been implementing and
continuously perfecting for more than 60 years,” he wrote in a statement
released on official government letterhead.
Then he was silenced. In January, the police detained Mr. Gu and
charged him with misusing church funds. A few days later, another
pastor in Zhejiang who had also spoken out was detained on similar
charges.
“It’s a method to make us pay attention,” said the pastor of a
government-run church in Wenzhou. “None of us have financial
training, so if you send in an accountant, they will probably find
something wrong.”
Several clergy members in the region said they were under pressure to
demonstrate their loyalty to the Communist Party. Some churches, for
example, have begun extolling Mr. Xi’s campaign to promote “core
socialist values” — a slogan meant to offer a secular belief system that
bolsters the party’s legitimacy.

7. Other churches have begun displaying their building permits, implicitly
endorsing the government’s authority to approve or reject church
construction, including crosses.
“We have to show that we are loyal Christians,” said an employee of the
historic Chengxi Church in Wenzhou, “or else we could face trouble.”
A Sunday service at a state-sanctioned church in Wenzhou in 2014. There are an
estimated 60 million Christians in China. CreditSim Chi Yin for The New York
Times
In February, a prominent lawyer was shown on state television
confessing to having colluded with foreign forces, especially American
organizations, to stir up local Christians. The lawyer, Zhang Kai, had
been in Zhejiang providing legal advice to churches that opposed the
removal of their crosses.
Unregistered churches appear vulnerable, too. In December, the police
detained several members of the unregistered Living Stone church in
southern China’s Guizhou Province after they refused to join a
government-run Protestant church. The pastor was later arrested on
charges of “divulging state secrets.”
“It’s easy for them to fabricate a crime and accuse you,” said the pastor
of a large unregistered church in Wenzhou. “We have to be very careful.”

8. Many worshipers in Shuitou are eager to keep their heads low, in hopes
that the storm will blow over.
One Sunday last month, about 300 people attended services at the
Salvation Church, women sitting on the left side and men on the right —
a reflection of traditional views toward worship. In the front of the
church, above a big red cross, were six big characters that read:
“Holiness to the Lord.”
Most of the people there were in their 50s or 60s, in part because many
of the younger worshipers were boycotting Sunday services to protest
the church’s decision to comply with the government’s order to remove
the cross.
They have begun attending services on Thursdays instead, to mark the
day of the week the cross came down. They used to participate in the
church’s Bible study groups, but now study independently. Some wonder
if they and others may stop worshiping in registered churches entirely
and go underground.
A senior church leader, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said
he and others had agreed to take down the cross because they feared the
church would be demolished if they did not. People were on the verge of
losing their jobs, he added, and church elders felt they had no choice but
to call on parishioners to give in.
“More than three decades ago, we didn’t even have a church,” he said.
“Persecution in church history has never stopped. All we can do is pray.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 22, 2016, on page A6 of the New
York edition with the headline: China Suppresses Christianity From the Top
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