Friday, 24 October 2025
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** There’s only room for one God in China
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There is only room for one god in China and that god is Xi Jinping. This message was delivered with force earlier this month when more than 30 pastors and churchgoers in cities across the country were arrested ([link removed]) . Most were from the Zion Protestant Church. Chinese law requires Christians to worship at one of two officially recognised churches: the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement. The Zion Protestant Church is not one of them. Instead, it’s a dominant unofficial church, which has risen in popularity as an alternative to the tightly controlled official ones.

China has a complicated relationship with Christianity. The faith came to the country in the Tang dynasty (618-907) and courtesy of Western imperialism firmly established itself during the 19th century. For Mao Zedong religion was “poison” and was a top priority to wipe out during the Cultural Revolution. Except nothing quite drives conversion like repression. And so Christianity survived. Then it flourished after Mao. Christianity has grown faster in China than anywhere else in the world over the last half century. According to Chinese official data 44 million people are members of official churches. The true numbers are probably much higher, some say as many as 130 million, and others even more. Certainly there are more people who now belong to a Christian church than to the Chinese Communist Party.

I’ve interviewed scores of Chinese Christians, for Index ([link removed]) and beyond. Of the Hu Jintao era just before Xi, they spoke to me of repression yes, a ban on proselytising for example, and of general social disparagement. And yet they could largely practise their faith free from fear or interference. The Chinese government even expressed interest in some aspects of Christianity, such as the Alpha Marriage Course which was seen as useful to counter rising divorce rates.

That all changed when Xi came to power.

The faith’s transnational nature, its ability to unify people and of course the number of members made it both a threat and a target for repression. By the end of Xi’s first year in power, Christian apps had been banned, crosses ripped off churches and some places of worship fully demolished. As for the practitioners, in 2014 a leading pastor was arrested and jailed for 12 years. He was Zhang Shaojie, who led the Nanle County Christian Church.

Xi later called for the "sinicisation" of religion and introduced regulations to force official churches to demonstrate loyalty to the CCP. Portraits of Xi were hung in churches, sometimes in place of religious images. Surveillance cameras were installed too, congregants closely watched from the altar. More people were detained, including prominent pastor Wang Yi, jailed for nine years.

Prior to his arrest Wang said the CCP had waged “a war against the soul”. Today that war has scaled, and not just in terms of the latest arrests. There have been other detentions this year, stories of house church raids are common and new guidance seeks to prohibit online sermons conducted by unlicensed groups.

A well-known Chinese idiom – “kill the chicken to scare the monkeys" – is being referenced by China’s Christians today. They fear the Zion Protestant Church is the chicken and the state will come after the monkeys who don’t quit the faith.


Jemimah Steinfeld

CEO, Index on Censorship


** More from Index
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From Italy to Iran: The week in free expression ([link removed])

A round-up of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days ([link removed])

Police in Islamabad raid the press club in an escalated attack on the media ([link removed])

Akbar Notezai travelled to Pakistan’s capital to talk to some of the journalists ([link removed])

Reports of Urdu’s death are greatly exaggerated ([link removed])

An exploration of Urdu’s origins and its increasing popularity among the young ([link removed])

North Korea fears the Squid Game effect ([link removed])

Kim Jong Un is more afraid of Korean television drama series than he is of foreign attacks ([link removed])

Scotland’s culture wars: the library curation challenge ([link removed])

How do librarians manage displaying books that challenge ideas or might be unpopular? ([link removed])

Why we need to support Global Encryption Day ([link removed])

Breaking encryption for one breaks it for all ([link removed])

Silence in the valley: The brutal repression of Kashmiri writers ([link removed])

Works are banned and authors raided if they are seen to promote secession ([link removed])

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** New report: From Survivor to Defendant
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A new report, From Survivor to Defendant: How the law is being weaponised to silence victims of sexual violence, by Index on Censorship reveals how survivors of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the UK and Ireland are being silenced through abusive legal actions known as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs).
READ THE REPORT ([link removed])


** From Italy to Iran: The week in free expression ([link removed])
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** >> ITALY: ([link removed]) Bomb explodes outside home of top Italian investigative journalist ([link removed])
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** >> RUSSIA: ([link removed]) Street singer charged for singing songs by prohibited musicians ([link removed])
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** >> UK: ([link removed]) No further action against men arrested for Trump Windsor projections ([link removed])
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** >> IRAN: ([link removed]) Leaked wedding video tarnishes hard-line official ([link removed])
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** >> USA: ([link removed]) Cuomo condemned over racist AI ad against Zohran Mamdani ([link removed])
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** >> AFGHANISTAN: ([link removed]) They should pity themselves - a short essay by a teacher ([link removed])
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** >> UK: ([link removed]) The assault on academic freedom ([link removed])
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** Flashback
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We academics must fight the mob – now ([link removed])

by Arif Ahmed ([link removed])

Volume 50, Issue 4 ([link removed])

This week, Michael Ben-Gad, a professor of Economics at City St George’s University, was labelled a war criminal and threatened with beheading by activists who stormed his lecture. He was targeted for being Israeli and having served in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) in the 1980s.

While it is unclear if all the activists were students, the horrible event brings to light a wider conversation around the targeting of university professors and free speech on campus. We look back at this piece by Arif Ahmed following the campaign against Professor Kathleen Stock at the University of Sussex. Read the story here. ([link removed])


** Support our work
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The world is becoming more authoritarian and our work calling out human rights abuses and promoting freedom of expression in countries such as China, North Korea and Kashmir has never been more important.

By supporting Index on Censorship today, you can help us in our work with censored artists, jailed musicians, journalists under threat and dissidents facing torture or worse.

Please donate today ([link removed])

Photos by: (Church in central China) Associated Press/Alamy; ( University of Sussex) Joolz / CC BY-SA 2.5

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