Mainland China

Hundreds of Christians in China were detained Sunday as they tried to hold worship service outside.

They were members of Shouwang Church, one of the largest unregistered Protestant churches in Beijing. The congregation was evicted from the restaurant that they were previously meeting at.

The church claims that the Chinese government has been pressuring landlords not to rent them space to worship. more >>

One of the largest unregistered Protestant churches in Beijing plans to risk arrest by worshipping in the open air this Sunday after eviction from the restaurant where they have met for the past year.

The owner of the Old Story Club restaurant issued repeated requests for the Shouwang Church to find another worship venue, and authorities have pressured other prospective landlords to close their facilities to the 1,000-member congregation, sources said. Unwilling to subject themselves to the controls and restrictions of the official Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), the congregation has held three services each Sunday in the restaurant for more than a year.

Church members have said they are not opposed to the government and are not politically active, but they fear authorities could find their open-air worship threatening. more >>

A U.N. human rights agency has demanded that the Chinese government release Christian lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has gone missing for nearly a year.

Gao is a self-taught lawyer who fought for human rights in legal cases involving medical malpractice, land redistribution, employment disputes, and forced sterilization of pregnant women under China’s one-child policy. He is perhaps best known, however, for defending journalists and religious minorities including house church Christians and practitioners of the Falungong spiritualist movement. Gao is a member of the house church community.

“The U.N. Working Group held that the detention violated international law because Gao’s disappearance was punishment for exercising his fundamental human rights and because the government failed to meet even the minimum international standards for due process,” the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said in a statement. more >>

Christian political dissident Liu Xianbin received a ten year prison sentence Friday after being tried for treason in The People’s Court of Suining in China’s south-central province of Sichuan.

Liu was also ordered not to accept interviews, publish writings and make speeches within a period of two years and four months.

His sentence comes a month after an unknown blogger called for a “Jasmine Revolution” in China’s major cities, an apparent call to replicate the popular uprisings that toppled Tunisia’s dictator. more >>

The reporting policy that China loosened ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was tightened up this past week with new restrictions placed on foreign journalists working in the communist nation.

Under the new rules, journalists from other countries must now have prior government permission to interview anyone in a public area in China. Previously, rules announced in 2008 allowed reporters to interview any Chinese citizen who agreed to be interviewed.

Furthermore, authorities are now reportedly threatening to expel foreign journalists from the country if they report from the Beijing city center without applying for permission at least three days ahead. more >>

The YouVersion Chinese edition app is helping missionaries distribute Bibles to cell phone users throughout China.

Last year, Smartphone sales in China reached nearly 30 million. Apps, which can be downloaded from internet to phone, have become increasingly popular amongst the country’s techno-savvy adolescent and young-adult age group.

As the YouVersion app allows users to download the entire Bible onto their Smartphone, missionaries and theologians see this as an opportunity for Bible distribution to China’s new generation. more >>