Posted on 10/18/2019 8:12:42 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Chinese government has banned African international students from worshiping in Christian churches under the pretext of “preventing foreign infiltration through religion,” a persecution watchdog group has revealed.
A group of over 80 African students who are residing in a city in the northeastern province of Liaoning told Chinese persecution watchdog Bitter Winter that in September, the person in charge of the Three-Self church that they attended received a government order prohibiting foreigners from participating in gatherings at the church.
“We just want to have a place to congregate,” one student told the outlet.
A Chinese believer at the church said that at an “anti-religious infiltration” symposium held by the local government in August, the officials questioned the person in charge of the church about foreign-related activities.
Shortly after the symposium, the international students were driven out of the church.
“In our hearts, we were unwilling to see them leave,” the Chinese believer said.
The government also pressured or threatened other Christian meeting venues. When the African students asked to be allowed to attend gatherings at another Three-Self church, they were turned down.
A similar incident occurred at a university in the central province of Hubei, where a church attended by over 40 African students received repeated threats from government officials who demanded the church’s director drive out the international students.
The students now are forced to worship in secret, disguising their gatherings like birthday parties, according to Bitter Winter.
One of the students said that he doesn’t understand how the government can claim that there is “freedom of belief” in China. “I don’t understand why China’s rulers won’t allow foreigners to hold religious gatherings,” the student said. “This has forced us to practice our faith in hiding.”
Bitter Winter also revealed that universities in the provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Henan, and elsewhere are required to investigate the religious status of international students and teachers.
An administrator at a university in Jiujiang, a prefecture-level city in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, said that the government secretly monitors African students.
“If any people are discovered to be too close to them, both parties will be watched and investigated. But most African students are completely unaware that they’re being monitored,” the administrator explained.
“As soon as African students are discovered attending gatherings at house churches or spreading the Gospel to other students, they will be expelled from the school immediately,” the administrator said.
According to the administrator, the school has already expelled one African student for preaching the Gospel to Chinese classmates. The student was later deported to his home country.
Under Chinese law, foreigners are prohibited from setting up religious organizations or proselytizing in China, although the law wasn’t enforced until President Xi Jinping took office in 2012, according to the South China Morning Post.
Recently, 13 South Korean families living in China as part of a mission group were deported after Communist officials decided their presence in the country was “illegal” due to their evangelistic work.
China is ranked 27th on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List of 50 countries where it's most difficult to be a Christian.
In recent years, the Communist Party government has banned online sales of Bibles, leveled churches, and arrested hundreds of Christians for "inciting subversion of state power."
In July, it was reported that since the Regulations on Religious Affairs legislation was implemented last year, schools around China have taught children that Christianity is an “evil cult.”
The church is strong in Africa!
How about all those US universities which have satellite campuses in China? Do they allow their students any religious
practices?
How about all those US universities which have satellite campuses in China? Do they allow their students any religious practices?
>those schools are like the NBA.
Historically, Chinese racial attitudes toward blacks would make a Klansman blush.
African Christians trying to worship while in China!!? They’ll feel the full brunt of Han Middle Kingdom arrogance.
The Chicoms are taking over Africa for it’s resources. Would any of their diplomats/businessmen want to be assigned there?
I was in high school in the 1960’s when we learned that ChiComs were infiltrating African states both to spread Maoist revolution and to exploit natural resources which the ChiComs assumed Africans were too primitive to know how to.
Of course, when we see what the former exporting states of South Africa & Rhodesia have been turned into....
Julius Nyere(something like that) kicked the Chicoms put of his country after they built him a railroad. Gratitude. Remember Sadat and the Russians? Will the Turks get it?
There were many Third World leaders who in search of foreign aid baksheesh sought to play off the U.S. and USSR against each other; they were well aware of the Cold War rivalry between the two superpowers.
Communist Cubans were Moscow’s main proxy in southern Africa in the 1970’s as were East Germans.
Sadat threw off the Soviet yoke and made peace with Israel for which he paid the supreme price, but the Egyptians have driven American tanks ever since.
As for the Turks, I am not aware that they are interested in projecting power elsewhere than greater Asia Minor and the Aegean. Sultan/Caliph Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to unleash millions of rapefugees against Europe. Still waiting.
Or will he take on the recalcitrant Poles in an historic reprise of 1683? Or are the Greeks, with hideous memories of Smyrna and Constantinople in 1920, ready to lay down a migrant bloodbath on their national frontier?
“Probe with bayonets. If you encounter steel, withdraw. If you encounter mush, continue” - applies here.
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