President Xi Jinping spent his first term of office (2013 – 2018) in consolidating his power, escalating repression and testing policy mainly in his old stamping ground of Zhejiang. He was elected to a second term of office after the constitution was amended to remove presidential terms. He spent this second term establishing his authority, especially over Hong Kong.
Laws changed
In early 2019, Beijing made controversial changes to Hong Kong’s Basic Law. This triggered protests, which in turn triggered a violent crackdown. For twelve months Hong Kong resembled a war zone. In February 2020, with the protests subdued, President Xi installed Xia Baolong as Director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office.
A ‘ruthless enforcer’ and close ally of Xi, Xia Baolong gained infamy among Chinese Christians when he led the CCP’s 2014-15 campaign to remove crosses and demolish churches in Zhejiang province.On 30 June 2020 Beijing passed national security legislation into Hong Kong (HK) law, bypassing HK’s legislative council, effectively ending the ‘one country, two systems’ era.
TheSinicisation of Christianity
On 18-19 May 2023, for the first time ever, a seminar on ‘The Sinicisation of Christianity’ was held in Hong Kong. The event was jointly hosted by the China Christian Council (CCC, an official umbrella organisation for China’s Protestant churches), the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM, the government-controlled Protestant body) and the Hong Kong Christian Council.
The Chinese delegation of 24 attenders included TSPM chairperson, Rev Xu Xiaohong, who presided over the seminar, CCC president, Rev Wu Wei, five TSPM academics and other clergy. Around 120 Protestant leaders from Hong Kong attended the seminar.
The CCP portrays sinicisation as ‘Christianity with Chinese characteristics’, and a positive step towards a healthy nationalism that rejects colonial impositions. In practice, however, sinicisation requires religion (Christianity and Islam) serve the State/CCP.
Indeed, the primary obligation of sinicised Christianity is to lead the people to love and obey the CCP. According to the high level CCC and TSMP officials who addressed the May seminar, sinicised Christianity is ‘patriotic’ Christianity, and true Hong Kong Christian patriots will sinicise their churches – as occurs on the mainland.
The implication is that anyone who rejects the order to register with and function as a tool of the CCP will be branded unpatriotic and treated as a threat to national security – as occurs on the mainland.
The May seminar undoubtedly heralds the end of an era for Hong Kong’s estimated ‘850,000 Christians (12.4 percent of the population), roughly 1500 churches, 35 Bible Colleges and multiple Christian media organisations. Five years after that TIME magazine article was published, Hong Kong is no longer ‘in the freer world’.
Beijing will now move to fully assimilate the Church in Hong Kong into the mainland’s CCP-controlled Church. As on the mainland, the choice facing Hong Kong’s Christian leaders is: (a) to submit and assimilate with the CCP-controlled Church to avoid persecution, OR (b) to move underground and assimilate with the mainland’s unregistered (and therefore illegal), sorely persecuted Church. A very dark period of arrests and persecutions looms.
India – Manipur burns
On 3 May Hindus from Manipur’s dominant Meitei tribe launched a pogrom against predominantly Christian ethnic Kukis in Churachandpur. The violence spread to the capital, Imphal, where it evolved into a sectarian pogrom with Hindus targeting all things Christian. Meitei Christian converts were ‘severely victimised’ and are reportedly ‘under immense pressure to reconvert [to Hinduism]’.
Hindu rioting in Manipur, in India’s Northeast, has left over 70 dead, some 230 wounded and more than 45,000 displaced – virtually all ethnic minority Christians. Around 100 churches and 1700 Christian-owned homes – along with thousands of cars – have been vandalised, looted and torched; many reduced to rubble and ash.
Christians insist the police did not intervene to protect them. By 12 May the situation was largely under control and thousands of mostly Kuki-Chin Christians had been evacuated to camps under military protection. The situation in the north-eastern BJP-led state remains volatile.
‘The situation is out of control’, the RevdZuankamangDaimai of the Manipur Baptist Convention Centre told Catholic media on 4 May. ‘Our people are in shock, praying for peace. The [dominant, mostly Hindu] Meitei group acts as if it is above the law while [the mostly Christian] minority groups are hiding for their lives.’ The violence has left Manipur’s Christian community deeply shaken.
The ruling BJP has turned much of India into a tinderbox - one spark is all it takes to ignite a raging fire. Such violence is the natural consequence of years of Hindu nationalist propaganda. It is what happens when politicians incite religious hatred for political gain.
Please pray
For Hong Kong: May the Church in Hong Kong receive all the wisdom she will need to navigate the increasingly treacherous path ahead.
May God grant the Chinese Church patience and persistence in prayer, along with endurance and faithfulness in glorious hope as the Lord works out his eternal purposes concerning President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party, the nation of China, and the Chinese Church that will one day be free!
May China’s long-persecuted house church movement be preparing, even now, to support the faithful Church in Hong Kong to endure the coming persecution.
For Manipur:May those who rampaged against their neighbours, fuelled by hatred fed them by Hindu nationalists, repent of their sin and pursue reconciliation. May ringleaders, arsonists and killers be arrested; may justice prevail.
May God comfort and heal Manipur’s grieving, wounded and traumatised Christians. May God provide their every need: for enduring security, for the funds to rebuild, and for grace to forgive.
May God protect and help Meitei Christian converts – especially those in the Meitei- and Hindu-dominated Imphal Valley. May the Holy Spirit empower them to stand firm in their faith amidst threats, hostility and intense pressure to return to Hinduism. May the Naga and Kuki believers stand with them, to support them, advocate for them and bless them, in a powerful demonstration of the uniting power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. May they all ‘shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life…’ (from Philippians 2:12-18).