General
25.11.2025 – Rice against riot shields: places of worship bulldozed in Southern China
Bitter Winter – In mid‑November 2025, two corners of southern China—Hainan and Guangxi—became the stage for a familiar drama: bulldozers, police cordons, and the destruction of places where ordinary people gather to honor gods and ancestors. The script is old, but the performances remain raw.
On November 17, in Meilan village, Bohou township, Lingao county, Hainan, local authorities arrived with a complete demolition squad. Police with shields and batons surrounded a small folk temple, intent on erasing it from the landscape.
18.11.2025 – Shenzhen’s Anti-Xie Jiao Week: VR Headsets Meet Anti-Religious Propaganda
Bitter Winter – In Shenzhen, the city of tech dreams and blockchain ambitions, even your weekend stroll through a heritage village or your child’s VR headset session is now part of a grand ideological mission: the war on “xie jiao.” The term, often mistranslated as “evil cults,” is more accurately rendered as “organizations spreading heterodox teachings”—though what counts as “heterodox” is, of course, determined by the government. And in today’s China, that increasingly means any religious group not officially sanctioned and suspected of harboring independent thought.
Protestants
28.11.2025 – Northwestern Pastor’s Bible copying Ministry: nurturing faith line by line
CCD – Recently, I traveled to a county in Shaanxi Province to visit a longtime pastoral friend and learn about his ongoing Bible-copying ministry, whose impact and spiritual significance left a deep impression on me.
The pastor (whose name is not disclosed for safety reasons) shared with heartfelt conviction, “Without immersing oneself in God’s Word, one’s spiritual eyes remain blind.”
Now in his sixties, the pastor, a graduate of Yanjing Theological Seminary, started to copy the Bible by hand in 2017, inspired by a Bible-copying initiative initiated by the seminary and the Three Revelation Society (Revelation, Enlightenment, Initiation). That year was also the centennial year of the Chinese Union Version Bible. For many years, he has actively promoted the practice of Bible copying, encouraging believers to sit quietly before the Lord and faithfully write out Scripture by hand.
26.11.2025 – Pastors Lian Changnian and Lian Xuliang, and Preacher Fu Juan of Xi’an Abundant Grace Church have been detained again
China Aid – On August 17, 2022, Pastor Lian Changnian, Pastor Lian Xuliang, and Preacher Fu Juan of Xi’an Abundant Grace Church were taken into custody on suspicion of “fraud.” After more than two years, their coercive measures were changed to Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL) on April 12, 2025, and the three were able to return home and reunite with their families. It was an indescribable joy to experience such a miraculous reunion given by God.
The case was tried in court on July 9, 2025, but a verdict has not yet been issued. Strangely, while awaiting the court’s decision, the three ministers were again taken from their homes on November 2, 2025, and detained in a detention center.
26.11.2025 – Tourism as treason: Pastor Sun Chenghao sentenced to four and a half years for a trip
Bitter Winter – It begins, as so many Chinese legal dramas do, with a perfectly ordinary act. A pastor buys a plane ticket, passes through customs, and takes his friends to South Korea’s Jeju Island—a visa‑free paradise better known for honeymooners than dissidents. They return home, suntanned and unscathed. Months later, the pastor is in shackles, accused of “organizing others to cross the national border illegally.”
On December 15, 2023, Pastor Sun Chenghao of Zhangye, Gansu, was arrested. On November 20, 2025, the Ganzhou District People’s Court sentenced him to four years and six months in prison and fined him 10,000 yuan. His term runs until June 15, 2028.
26.11.2025 – Chinese Pastor released after 12 years behind bars
adhrrf – Chinese authorities released Pastor Zhang Shaojie, a 59-year-old Christian, from prison on Nov. 16, after the man completed a 12-year prison sentence.
The pastor conveyed great joy over his release after regaining his freedom.
“Coming out of prison during this month of Thanksgiving has been full of God’s grace,” said Shaojie. “I have seen the Holy Spirit’s presence every day.” The pastor also stated that he was “deeply grateful for the help and support of the international community,” believing that “otherwise [he] might not be here today and might have been ‘disappeared.’”
19.11.2025 – China underground church pastors arrested, face up to 3 years in jail, NGO head says
Reuters – Eighteen leaders of a major Chinese underground church were formally arrested on Tuesday, a Christian NGO advocate told Reuters, meaning they will eventually face trial and a potential prison sentence of up to three years.
Nearly 30 pastors and staff belonging to Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the government, were detained by police nationwide in mid-October, Reuters earlier reported, in the biggest crackdown on Chinese Christians since 2018.
19.11.2025 – The weeping believer: A report from a Chinese Christian
Bitter Winter – As an ordinary Christian, recalling my journey from ignorance to awakening, from worship to disillusionment within the Three-Self Church, my heart brims with sorrow and helplessness. Like many brothers and sisters, I once sought the Lord’s comfort within its walls, only to gradually discover this was not God’s sanctuary but a cage forged by a secular regime. Under the guise of “patriotism,” it blinds believers, betraying the Lord’s will by replacing the glory of the cross with the shadow of the five-starred red flag. As an awakened believer, my heart twists in agony: staying means compromise, leaving is a gamble. In this era of “Sinicization of Christianity,” where do we helpless, weeping souls turn?
19.11.2025 – China formally arrests 18 leaders of underground Zion Church amid religious crackdown
China Aid – Chinese authorities formally arrested 18 leaders of a major underground church, clearing the way for their prosecution and potential prison sentences of up to three years.
According to Reuters, which reported the arrests Wednesday citing a Christian NGO advocate, nearly 30 pastors and staff members belonging to Zion Church were detained by police in mid-October in the biggest crackdown on Chinese Christians in seven years.
ChinaAid, a Christian nonprofit human rights organization, said in a statement that the leaders were arrested on “politically motivated charges.”
Falun Gong
27.11.2025 – Reported in September and October 2025: 851 Falun Gong practitioners arrested or harassed for their faith
Minghui – A total of 851 incidents of Falun Gong practitioners who were arrested or harassed for their faith were reported in September and October 2025.
The 851 cases included 482 arrests and 369 harassment cases. Among them, 243 practitioners had their homes ransacked and 27 were held in brainwashing centers. Some of the persecution cases took place years ago. The delay in reporting is due to the information censorship in China under the communist regime, which made it difficult for Minghui correspondents to collect, verify, and report the data in a timely manner.
25.11.2025 – Twice jailed for 11 years, 60-year-old woman sentenced to another five years for her faith
Minghui- A 60-year-old woman in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, was recently sentenced to five years and fined 10,000 yuan for her faith in Falun Gong.
Ms. Zhong Fangqiong, born in August 1965 and a former transport company owner, was arrested on July 7, 2024, and held in the Chengdu City Detention Center. She was sentenced by the Xindu District Court on November 18, 2025. She is now appealing the verdict.
This is not the first time that Ms. Zhong has been targeted for her faith, which she took up in March 1999 and credits for curing her congenital large cavernous hemangioma (abnormal growth of blood vessels) and severe cerebral ischemia (insufficient blood to the brain). Since the onset of the persecution in July 1999, she has been arrested and detained numerous times for upholding her faith. She was given a one-year labor camp term following an arrest on June 14, 2000, for writing an article exposing the persecution. She endured brutal torture at the Nanmusi Women’s Forced Labor Camp and had her term extended by three months.
24.11.2025 – 64-year-old Chongqing woman dies while serving second prison term for her faith in Falun Gong
Minghui – Ms. Li Wenfeng was seen in a prison surveillance video making her bed after getting up one morning, when she patted her head twice before collapsing on the ground. Her head hit the edge of the metal bed across from hers. She remained motionless and was later rushed to a hospital, where she died despite attempts to resuscitate her.
According to an insider, the guards at the Chongqing Women’s Prison played the above footage to other Falun Gong practitioners jailed there to prove that they had nothing to do with Ms. Li’s death.
23.11.2025 – Abused in custody despite disability, woman arrested again for filing complaints against police
Minghui – A 61-year-old disabled woman in Qiqihar City, Heilongjiang Province, was arrested on October 25, 2025, for filing complaints against those who tortured her for her faith, Falun Gong, during an earlier detention weeks ago.
Ms. Li Chunhua’s ordeal stemmed from her arrest on August 21, 2025, for writing information about Falun Gong in public places. Officers Li Hongyu, Qu Yongpeng, and Yang Zhongyu interrogated her in the basement of the Wulong Police Station, restraining her in a metal chair for over 30 hours. Years ago when she was persecuted, she sustained a fractured lumbar vertebra, and the prolonged sitting aggravated the injury to her lower back. She fainted during the interrogation. The head of the Longsha Domestic Security Office poured water over her ears and into her clothes and blew air into her face.
