The Chinese Communist Party’s campaign against unregistered Christian communities escalated sharply last month (November 2025) with the formal arrest of 18 leaders from one of the country’s most influential underground churches.
Rights group ChinaAid announced that the detentions—part of a sprawling, multi-city clampdown—signal an increasingly aggressive posture toward independent religious activity, deepening concerns about the shrinking space for faith outside state-sanctioned channels.
The arrests, which follow weeks of nationwide raids targeting members of the Beijing Zion Church, underscore the Chinese regime’s growing intolerance for religious networks operating beyond the control of the state’s ideological apparatus.
For many observers, the developments reflect not only a hardening of the CCP’s longstanding suspicion of unregulated religion but also its willingness to deploy criminal charges to dismantle organisational structures it views as politically threatening.
A campaign that swept across cities and provinces
On October 9, police in Beihai, a coastal city in southern China, launched a coordinated operation against members of the Beijing Zion Church, a prominent house-church movement founded in 2007.
Over the next several days, authorities arrested nearly 30 pastors, ministers, and congregants from multiple regions—including Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Shandong, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan—reflecting the scale and premeditation of the campaign.
According to ChinaAid, the 18 individuals who remain detained were formally arrested on November 18 after weeks of incommunicado confinement.
Under Chinese criminal law, suspects can be held for a maximum of 37 days before authorities must either release them or escalate their detention. In this case, the formal arrests indicate a decision to pursue prosecution, marking a shift from temporary detentions to criminal cases.
Bob Fu, founder and president of ChinaAid, said the detainees face charges of “illegally using information networks”—a vaguely defined offence that carries a sentence of up to three years in prison.
Rights advocates argue that Chinese authorities frequently weaponise such broad cyber-related laws to suppress online communication among religious groups, particularly those that refuse to register with state-controlled bodies.
A pastor targeted for influence, not violence
Among those arrested is Mingri “Ezra” Jin, a widely respected pastor and founder of the Beijing Zion Church. Jin, 56, converted to Christianity after witnessing the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, an event that shaped his public ministry and moral convictions.
With roughly 5,000 regular worshippers across almost 50 cities, the Beijing Zion Church became one of the largest unregistered congregations in China.
After authorities shut down its premises in September 2018, declaring all gatherings illegal, the church shifted to online services and small group meetings.
During the pandemic, its digital services—particularly on Zoom—led to significant growth, something analysts say may have intensified Beijing’s scrutiny.
ChinaAid and other rights groups argue that Jin’s influence has long unsettled authorities, particularly because he refused to bring the church under the government-run Three-Self Patriotic Movement, which oversees all legal Protestant churches in China.
Jin’s continued popularity, coupled with his refusal to align his ministry with state ideology, positioned him as a figure of concern for the CCP’s religious affairs apparatus.
Pressure on families and congregants
Reports from ChinaAid and The Epoch Times indicate that several detainees were initially held in Beihai City’s No. 1 and No. 2 detention centres.
Four were released on bail on November 10, and Jin’s daughter told Reuters that five others had been released in October. The rest, however, now face extended confinement under formal arrest.
The crackdown has also affected families. On November 13, police allegedly questioned the wife of one detainee, adding to fears that relatives may face harassment or surveillance as part of the broader effort to isolate church leaders from their support networks.
Jin’s daughter, U.S. citizen Grace Jin Drexel, said the family remains deeply worried about his health.
Jin has diabetes and requires regular medication—access that families of political and religious detainees often struggle to secure.
While Jin met his lawyer on October 14 after media attention intensified, the lack of transparency surrounding the detainees’ treatment continues to raise alarm among rights advocates.
A ‘chilling milestone’
Bob Fu described the arrests as a “chilling milestone in the CCP’s all-out war on Christianity in China,” arguing that the regime is turning pastors and church workers into political prisoners.
“Their only ‘crime’ is preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ, shepherding God’s flock, and refusing to turn Christ’s church into a propaganda tool of the Communist Party,” Fu said.
He added that the arrests were intended as a warning: independent churches must submit to state oversight or face eradication.
Zion Church’s history of resistance to government control—especially its refusal to install surveillance equipment in its worship spaces, a request made by authorities in 2018—has long put it on a collision course with the CCP.
Its rapid expansion during the pandemic, largely through digital platforms, appears to have triggered renewed attention from regulators who have recently tightened restrictions on online religious activity.
A wider campaign against online preaching
In September, shortly before the crackdown on Zion Church began, China’s Religious Affairs Administration issued new guidelines restricting online religious content.
The rules prohibit clergy from unregistered groups from preaching online and tighten controls on the sharing of religious messages across social-media platforms and private messaging apps.
Rights advocates argue that these restrictions are designed to criminalise faith communities that rely on digital tools to stay connected—particularly those that have been denied physical spaces to gather.
For churches like Zion, which were already forced online after their premises were shuttered, the new regulations create a catch-22: comply and cease religious activity, or continue and risk arrest.
Condemnation abroad, silence at home
The U.S. State Department and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom swiftly condemned the arrests, urging Beijing to release the detainees and end its crackdown on unregistered Christian groups.
But inside China, public discussion remains limited. Social media platforms, heavily censored and monitored, have scrubbed posts related to the arrests, while state media has offered no public explanation.
For China’s underground churches, the sweeping crackdown on Zion Church represents a stark reminder of the CCP’s determination to dismantle religious networks it cannot control.
The arrests of 18 leaders—not merely congregants—signal a hardening approach: an effort to eliminate the organisational backbone of one of China’s most influential unregistered churches.
As the legal process unfolds, the fate of the detainees remains uncertain. What is clear is that China’s tightening grip over religious expression shows no signs of easing, and the arrest of these church leaders marks another escalation in a long campaign to bring every expression of faith under the authority of the state.
