Social Stability - 3. page

Eighteen pastors and members of China’s Zion Church have been formally arrested, marking the latest casualties in the government’s suppression of urban house churches. Religious observers report that 2025 has brought noticeably tighter religious policies, with increased arrests, interrogations of church personnel, and new regulations making faith propagation more difficult.

Since a large-scale cross-provincial crackdown on Zion Church began on October 9, eighteen of the twenty-three detained pastors and congregants have been formally arrested by prosecutors in Beihai, Guangxi, while five were released on bail. Similar cases have emerged beyond Beijing’s Zion Church, with incidents reported in Linfen, Shanxi; Changsha, Hunan; and Xi’an, Shaanxi. In May, Pastor Gao Quanfu from Xi’an’s Light of Zion Church was detained for “using superstitious activities to undermine law implementation,” and in June, several members of Linfen’s Golden Lampstand Church received prison sentences for fraud.

While Christianity is among China’s five legally recognized religions, only registered Three-Self churches under official supervision are sanctioned. Numerous house churches face mounting pressure since President Xi Jinping took power, as they are considered illegal gatherings. Even credentialed Three-Self church pastors now face restrictions when preaching at other congregations, and government officials have reportedly been transferred after faith-related inquiries, despite religious freedom technically being permitted for non-Party members.

Buddhism, traditionally less persecuted, saw a major case this year when Shi Yongxin, former abbot of Shaolin Temple, was arrested in November following investigations into criminal activities and violations of Buddhist precepts, despite decade-old allegations of misconduct previously going unaddressed. Yiguandao followers, practicing a faith outside the five recognized religions, face heightened exit-entry risks, with ten Taiwanese adherents detained in mainland China over the past year.

New regulations implemented throughout 2025 have systematized religious control, requiring foreigners and Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan residents to obtain special approval for religious activities, and restricting online preaching to licensed organizations only. Despite these measures, some house churches continue operating through small encrypted groups and trusted networks, carefully avoiding official detection.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), November 20, 2025
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202511200360.aspx

Two protest banners briefly appeared on the streets of Beijing’s Sanlitun district on October 25, shortly after the conclusion of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to posts on social media platform X by the account “Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher.”

The white banners reportedly called for the lifting of party restrictions, freedom to form political parties, free competition, free choice, and the establishment of a “new China” based on freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. Security personnel quickly arrived at the scene and removed the banners.

One banner denounced the Communist Party as an “anti-human cult” that would “bring endless disasters to China,” while the other urged political reform. Both were signed with the tag “pque2025,” though the identity of the protester remains unknown.

Sporadic acts of dissent against the Chinese government have emerged periodically in recent years. Before the 20th Party Congress, dissident Peng Lifa—also known online as “Peng Zaizhou”—hung anti–Xi Jinping banners on Beijing’s Sitong Bridge, an act that drew international attention. In April 2025, democratic slogans were similarly displayed on a pedestrian bridge in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

According to reports, both Peng Lifa and Mei Shilin, a 27-year-old involved in the Chengdu protest, were arrested following their demonstrations. Peng was later sentenced to nine years in prison.

Earlier this year, ahead of the September 3 military parade, a separate act of protest occurred in Chongqing, where someone used projection technology to display the message “Overthrow the CCP” on a university district building for more than 50 minutes. The organizer, Qi Hong, had reportedly left China for the United Kingdom with his wife and children before the incident and operated the projection remotely from abroad.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), October 26, 2025
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202510260053.aspx

The dystopian surveillance world depicted in George Orwell’s 1984 has, under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), become an everyday reality. According to research by Chinese-American political scientist Minxin Pei, the CCP employs tens of millions of “informants,” “eyes and ears,” and intelligence operatives to monitor millions of citizens deemed potential threats. Yet Pei cautions that surveillance is no cure-all, as the regime continues to grapple with corruption, economic stagnation, and internal insecurity.

In his recent book, Pei challenges the widespread belief that China’s control over its 1.4 billion people relies primarily on cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and high-definition cameras. Instead, he argues that the true strength of the CCP’s surveillance system lies in its vast organizational reach and mobilization capacity. A wide array of ordinary citizens – food delivery workers, taxi drivers, postal employees, shop owners, business managers, residential committee members, healthcare professionals, teachers, cleaners, hotel operators, and even temple monks – have been recruited as grassroots intelligence gatherers.

Drawing on official documents, Pei estimates that during the 2010s, China maintained between 10.2 and 15.8 million informants, along with 560,000 “special intelligence personnel” as of 2022, and 830,000 to 1.2 million “eyes and ears” active in any given year. These dense informant networks monitor assigned “positions” such as commercial sites, Tibetan temples, university campuses, and online spaces. Surveillance targets – numbering between 7.3 and 12.7 million – include habitual petitioners, protesters, ethnic minorities, and religious figures.

Despite this pervasive monitoring apparatus, sporadic protests still erupt, such as the 2022 White Paper Movement opposing zero-COVID restrictions. Pei notes that such spontaneous demonstrators often fall outside established watchlists, exposing a critical weakness in the CCP’s system of preemptive control. While economic modernization has historically fostered democratization in other nations, in China it has instead furnished the regime with greater resources to refine its surveillance state.

Pei warns that unresolved corruption, deepening economic decline, and rising elite anxiety triggered by Xi Jinping’s ongoing political purges could ultimately erode the regime’s stability from within.

Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), October 9, 2025
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202510090070.aspx