Free Republic

BEIJING: China imposed a lockdown on Sunday (Feb 2) on a major city far from the epicentre of the coronavirus epidemic, as its death toll from the disease soared to 304 and the first fatality outside the country was reported in the Philippines. The events added to deepening concern about the potential for the virus to spread, as governments around the world closed their borders to people from China. Struggling to contain the virus, authorities took action in eastern city of Wenzhou on Sunday - some 800 kilometres from Wuhan, the metropolis at the heart of the health emergency -...

Two days before Christmas, members of a rural Christian congregation in the eastern city of Wenzhou welded some pieces of metal into a cross and hoisted it onto the top of their worship hall to replace one that was forcibly removed in October. Within an hour, township officials and uniformed men barged onto the church ground and tore down the cross. […] That means that the worshippers in Wenzhou, like many Christians in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, will worship this Christmas under a cross-less roof. Provincial authorities have toppled crosses from more than 400 churches, and even razed...

On May 30, 2014, The New York Times published a story by Ian Johnson about what seems to be a concerted government effort to clamp down on Christian churches in Wenzhou, the city with the highest percentage of Christians in China. It has long been known that there are regional differences in official attitudes toward religion, not always reflecting the views of the central government. It is conceivable that the events in Wenzhou could be a relatively local matter. But at any rate one aspect of the story makes one wonder: The provincial head of the Communist party who initiated...

This week's demolition of a massive Protestant church in the eastern city of Wenzhou highlights the growing uneasiness of the ruling Chinese Communist Party over burgeoning numbers of Christians in the nominally atheist country, analysts said. Authorities completed on Monday the demolition of the 85,000-square foot (nearly 7,900-square meter) Sanjiang church, which once dominated the city with its soaring spires, gleaming white walls, and stained glass windows, saying it had far exceeded the size allowed in the building permit. Christians in Wenzhou, whose large numbers have earned it the nickname "the Jerusalem of the East," launched a frantic campaign to...

A riot involving around 1,000 people broke out last Saturday in Cangnan county of Wenzhou city, Zhejiang province, resulting in the hospitalization of five chengguan, China's notoriously abusive and under-regulated urban enforcement officials. The alleged cause for the riots was the five's brutally killing a civilian. According to reports, the chengguan "hit the man with a hammer until he started to vomit blood, because he was trying to take pictures of their violence towards a woman, a street vendor." This man later died while being rushed to the hospital. [....] According to eyewitness accounts, the crowd -- which was growing...

Christians have flocked to defend a church in eastern China after Communist Party officials claimed it was an "illegal construction" and announced plans to demolish it Thousands of Chinese Christians have mounted an extraordinary, round-the-clock defence of a church in a city known as the 'Jerusalem of the East' after Communist Party officials threatened to bulldoze their place of worship. In an episode that underlines the fierce and long-standing friction between China's officially atheist Communist Party and its rapidly growing Christian congregation, Bible-carrying believers this week flocked to the Sanjiang church in Wenzhou hoping to protect it from the bulldozers....

By staff reporters Zhang Bing, Zheng Fei and Zhao Jingting 10.11.2011 14:36 Cash Crash for Wenzhou's Private Loan Network Everyone can win and everyone can lose in a Chinese city that plays a risky game of high-interest rate, private lending Dubbed the nation's capital of private financing, the city of Wenzhou offers a textbook example of how non-bank lending has fueled private sector prosperity – and risk-taking – in China. A recent central bank survey said about 60 percent of all local businesses and the vast majority of households are interconnected through the city's private lending system. a It's a...

Remodeled German system possibly linked to crash A major Chinese newspaper has reported that an automatic control system blamed for Saturday's fatal train crash was a Chinese remodeled version based on German technology. The government's investigation team on Thursday released initial results of its probe into the crash between 2 high-speed trains that occurred in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. The team said lights at a station near the crash site failed to change from green to red after lightning knocked out power to one of the trains. It blamed the problem on a design flaw in the signaling equipment. It also...