Mainland China

In the wake of the 31st anniversary of China’s One-Child Policy, an organization is rallying churches to pray for the millions of female lives that have been lost in the name of population control.

The One-Child Policy, which limits Chinese families to having just one child, was established in 1980 as a response to an exploding Chinese population.

Due to the Chinese preference for male children, sex-selective abortions, female infanticide and the abandonment of female children has become an integral part of Chinese culture over the last 30 years. more >>

Last Sunday (Aug. 28) five members of a house church in Fangshan, Hebei township woke at 4 a.m. and traveled for two hours to a public square in Beijing in order to worship with members of the embattled Beijing Shouwang house church.

On their arrival at 7 a.m., waiting police sent the five back to their local police station, according to a report posted Tuesday (Aug. 30) on Shouwang’s Facebook page. Officials then urged them to sign documents repenting of their decision to support the Shouwang church. All five refused but were eventually released.

The Fangshan five are part of a growing wave of house church Christians determined – despite the consequences – to support Shouwang church in its stand for greater religious freedom. more >>

Authorities this week sentenced Shi Enhao, deputy leader of the Chinese House Church Alliance (CHCA), to two years of “re-education through labor” – a sentence that requires no trial or conviction, according to the China Aid Association (CAA).

Shi was officially charged with holding “illegal meetings and illegal organizing of venues for religious meetings,” due to his leadership of a house church movement of several thousand people meeting in several venues around Beijing, CAA reported.

Zhang Mingxuan, president of the CHCA, has also faced multiple arrests and detentions since founding the alliance in 2005. more >>

An American woman blogging from China has the Internet aflame after posting several photos of elaborate, yet "fake" Apple stores in a remote city in the Communist country's southwest province, replete with Macboks, iPhones, and iPads- which may or may not be the real thing. The fake Apple stores are so elaborately replicated that even staff working there have been fooled.

The stores, located in Kunming in China's Yunnan Province, not only have the Apple logo prominently displayed inside and outside the buildings, but the sales associates wear similar uniforms and name tags like those found on employees at actual Apple stores, according to photos posted on the "BirdAbroad" blog.

China, already notorious for being the source of knock-off Nikes, Louis Vuitton handbags and Microsoft products, has never been noted for being home to an entirely fake operation like what the American blogger and her husband came across. more >>

DUBLIN - Leaders of the troubled Shouwang house church in Beijing have established a legal committee to assist church members facing arrest or house arrest, the loss of employment or homes and forced relocation to their home towns.

In a press statement issued Tuesday, the unregistered church described the forced relocation of one church member to Shandong province as “a flagrant violation of the law.”

Leaders charged the committee, composed of legal experts within the church and officially formed last week, with collecting evidence of “citizens of faith being forced to leave their jobs or being evicted because of their religious belief.” The church would hold officials legally responsible for these violations, as outlined in an earlier press statement on May 12. more >>

BEIJING - Chinese authorities detained a member of one of Beijing’s largest unregistered churches on Monday (June 27) and sent him to his home town in Shandong Province, sources said.

Three officers from Beijing’s Dongsheng police station detained the Shouwang church member at about 5 p.m. while he was at a market to get a mobile phone fixed, they said. They handed him over to a Shandong office based in the capital, which sent him to his hometown that evening. He was the second member of the church to be expelled from the city since authorities allegedly compelled the owners of the church’s rented facility to stop leasing to the congregation in April, forcing them to meet outdoors the past three months.

The same Dongsheng police station in Beijing’s northwest Haidian district sent the first Shouwang member to be expelled from Beijing to his hometown in Hubei Province on May 8, sources said. more >>