China confronts its growing Christian population

China is cracking down on Christianity.

Over the last two years, government officials have demolished churches. They’ve arrested pastors and Christian church leaders. And laws have passed authorizing the removal of thousands of crosses, causing fierce confrontations between the police and churchgoers.

The suppression of Christianity comes alongside a rapid rise of people identifying as Christian in China. In 2010, the country had 58 million Protestant Christians and 9 million Catholics. As religious minorities grow in China and demand their rights more vehemently, the atheist government is responding by ramping up its aggression toward religion.

The beginning of a trend

The trouble started in early 2014, with the demolition of a prominent church in the Chinese city of Wenzhou. Chinese officials accused the Sanjiang church of violating zoning regulations, because the structure was four times bigger than what was approved. After a week-long standoff between churchgoers and local officials, government bulldozers demolished the church and its 180-foot spire.

While the Chinese government maintained its position that the church was illegal, a policy paper accessed by the New York Times revealed the demolition was part of a strategy to “reduce Christianity’s public profile.”

Clashes continued throughout 2014. In July, authorities in the city of Wenzhou removed a 10-foot crucifix from the Longgang Township Gratitude Church and in the same week, thousands of police officers confronted churchgoers at the Wenling Church in the city of Taizhou.

Later, police and hundreds of parishioners clashed in Wenzhou, where the Salvation Church’s surveillance cameras showed Chinese police beating up protesters who had been holding vigil at the gates of the church for two months. According to reports, more than 50 were injured.

Legalizing religious suppression

China’s Zhejiang province — which includes the city of Wenzhou, known as China’s Jerusalem — has the largest concentration of Christians in the country. In May 2015, the provincial government passed a law regulating crosses. The directive stipulated that many crosses would have to come down. It specified the type and color a cross must be, its size and where it should be located — only on a facade or spire. Local authorities were mandated to remove rooftop crosses from nearly 4,000 churches.

Activists say more than 1,200 crosses have already been removed from churches there, and 49 have been taken down since the beginning of 2016.

Amid the clampdown on Christian symbols, priests have not stayed silent. More than 25 priests from Zhejiang province posted an open letter last year decrying the government’s campaign against crosses. “Everyone has the right to freedom of religious belief,” they wrote. “We must fight by law of reason to protect the cross and defend this basic right to our religion.”

Going after leadership

Now, religious leaders are being taken and arrested.

Human rights lawyer Zhang Kai, who criticized the clamp down on churches, was abducted in August. He disappeared the day before he planned to meet with a U.S. State Department official to discuss religious freedom in China and to denounce the cross-removal campaign.

He wasn’t heard from until February, when the 36-year-old Kai appeared on Chinese state television, urging fellow human rights lawyers to refrain from colluding with foreigners. Angry activists said that this was yet another instance of China’s scripted “confession.”

In January of this year, the Chinese government arrested prominent Protestant church leader Gu Yuese. He, too, criticized the law sanctioning cross-removal. Time magazine described the arrest as “the highest-ranking Christian leader detained since China’s infamous Cultural Revolution.” The pastor was accused of embezzling funds, but his supporters say the probe against him is “linked to his open opposition to a government crackdown on Christian activity.”

Fresh on the heels of this arrest, another pastor, Bao Guohua, who refused to remove a cross from his church’s roof, was sentenced to 14 years in jail. Guohua was reportedly jailed for corruption and inciting unrest. Xing Wenxiang, Bao’s wife, was jailed for 12 years for the same offenses.

So what does the future hold for China’s millions of Christians?

The Chinese Constitution says it guarantees freedom of religion, and Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that “active efforts should be made to incorporate religions into socialist society” at a high-level party meeting last year. But judging from recent government actions, more effort is being put toward preventing millions of Chinese Christians from practicing their faith. And all indications point to the crackdown continuing, at least for now.