• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / China / News China

Forms to Register Believers as Suppression Tool

02/07/2019An Xin |

The requirement to disclose religious affiliation puts people of faith in a serious pickle – betray their beliefs or get into trouble?

Deng Yi, a Christian from the True Jesus Sect house church, and her son, a student at a university in the eastern coastal province of Shandong, found themselves recently in quite the quandary: Risk their earthly futures or deny God before others.

That’s because the university Deng Yi’s son attends has started a new practice of issuing religious belief auditing forms. Those brave enough to indicate they hold religious beliefs quickly find themselves in a load of trouble with teachers. Some are punished. And not only that, the record of their faith lives on documented forever, affecting their futures, their careers.

Despite the risk to his future prospects, Deng Yi’s son was unwilling to mark the form saying he had no religious beliefs, deeming as he did that doing so would be offensive to God.

So, what should he do then?

He asked his mother. And his mother turned to the other Christians at her church for advice, only to discover that many of them were in the same boat, forced to choose between their futures and their faiths by the signing of the surveys.

As Bitter Winter has reported, questionnaires and forms to register believers are nationwide and comprehensive in China – people of all faiths from schools and public institutions to businesses, neighborhoods, and communities are forced to fill them out. The forms usually ask for various personal information, including, name, ID number, home address, occupation, party membership, position within the religious organization, as well as names of family members, their addresses and workplaces.

Statistical table of religious members for a neighborhood in Shandong Province
A table of aggregate information about religious members in a neighborhood in eastern Shandong Province.

“The government knows that to Christians, this type of survey isn’t as simple as just filling out a form and signing it,” Deng Yi said. “Through these kinds of method, they can screen out a lot of Christians, and what’s more, the ones who aren’t willing to deny God are often Christians who are rooted in their faith. These strategies have low costs for the CCP, but for Christians are nothing less than spiritual warfare.”

In the end, Deng Yi and her son decided to write that they “have religious beliefs.”

“If worse comes to worst, we don’t need anything but the Lord Jesus,” Deng Yi said.

For Christians, this decision means paying other prices.

Statistical table of Christian beliefs for a village in Shandong Province
A table of aggregate information about people of Christian belief in a village in eastern Shandong Province.

Chen Lin, a new university student in Zhengzhou city, in central China’s Henan Province, answered truthfully on the survey that he was a Christian. After doing so, his counselor threatened that if they found out he was attending church services, he would be expelled from the university immediately; he was also warned not to wear a cross or evangelize others at school. Since then, Chen Lin and his classmates have been forced to congregate in secret off campus.

After Xiao Liu, a medical student attending university in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian admitted on a form that he held religious beliefs, he became a “special person of interest” at his school. Teachers have even berated Christian students in front of classmates there.

“More and more forms like this are going around,” Xiao Liu said. “When choosing academic advisors, reporting, and interning, no matter what you want to do, you have to fill out a form, and most of the forms ask people about their religious beliefs. If you want to serve in the military, join the party, look for a job, take an exam for serving as a functionary or run for a village official, you also have to go to your registered place of residence and get certification that your next of kin doesn’t have any religious beliefs; otherwise, you will be totally rejected.”

As reported earlier, the paper forms filled out by believers are then compiled by local officials into “statistical investigation” tables according to religious denominations (with aggregate data about the number of registered believers, their age ranges, gender, education, etc.) and are later inputted into a national database.

Statistical table of Buddhist beliefs for a village in Shandong
A table of information about people of Buddhist belief from a village in eastern Shandong Province.

People don’t even have the right to refuse to fill out the form, as this implies that they might be religious, and they will be investigated as a result.

Five years ago, Wu Fang of Fujian’s Fuqing city, who is a Christian with The Church of Almighty God, was arrested and held for 27 days. In June 2018, an official from her village demanded that she sign the statement renouncing her faith. She refused.

Two months later, while working on arrangements to construct a house for her family, government officials brought over her house construction application with the statement that she refused to sign, saying that if she didn’t sign it again, her house wouldn’t be approved. Once again, Wu Fang refused.

Another two months later, when Wu Fang went to pay her medical insurance, workers also requested that she handprint (as a way of signing) a guarantee that she no longer believed in God; otherwise, she wouldn’t be allowed medical insurance.

This type of practice is even more prevalent in Xinjiang, in northwest China, where religious individuals are being forced to declare renouncements of their faith before audiences publicly, or they will be suspected of “harboring God in their hearts.”

Statistical table of members of xie jiao
A table of members of xie jiao and Qi Gong for a village in eastern Shandong Province.

Wen Yongqiang, of a city in northern Xinjiang, and three other members of The Church of Almighty God who had previously been arrested and later released, were asked to read their allegiance declarations renouncing their faith before an audience at a flag raising ceremony last April. If they didn’t, it would prove they had ideological problems and would then be taken away to “study.”

As the local government repeatedly pressured her to sign the statement, Wen Yongqiang chose to go on the run instead.

(All the names are pseudonyms.)

Reported by An Xin

Tagged With: Anti-Religion Activity in Schools, House Churches, The Church of Almighty God

bw-profile
An Xin

Uses a pseudonym for security reasons.

Related articles

  • Church of the Rock: Pastor Geng Zejun Sentenced to 1 Year and 3 Months in Prison

    Church of the Rock: Pastor Geng Zejun Sentenced to 1 Year and 3 Months in Prison

  • Beijing Shouwang Church: The House Church That Refuses to Die

    Beijing Shouwang Church: The House Church That Refuses to Die

  • Henan Preacher Arrested for Purchasing Christian Books Online

    Henan Preacher Arrested for Purchasing Christian Books Online

  • Wenzhou, Parents Asked to Sign a “Kindergarten Family Commitment Not to Believe in Religion”

    Wenzhou, Parents Asked to Sign a “Kindergarten Family Commitment Not to Believe in Religion”

Keep Reading

  • Shanghai Uses Holidays to Indoctrinate Children Against “Illegal” Religion
    Shanghai Uses Holidays to Indoctrinate Children Against “Illegal” Religion

    Students in Zhuanghang Town were summoned to watch and discuss videos on “bad” religion and xie jiao.

  • Shaanxi: Persecution of the Church of Abundance Continues
    Shaanxi: Persecution of the Church of Abundance Continues

    Pastor Lian Changnian, Brother Lian Xuliang, and Sister Fu Juan remain under detention after two months. Church members have been beaten.

  • Zhao Weikai: Russian-Style Jail Sentence for “Extremism”
    Zhao Weikai: Russian-Style Jail Sentence for “Extremism”

    Inspired by Putin’s crackdown on “illegal” religion, Chinese authorities now claim that pastors they do not like are guilty of “extremism.”

  • Cornell University, Chinese Students, and the Uyghur Genocide: It’s the Money, Stupid
    Cornell University, Chinese Students, and the Uyghur Genocide: It’s the Money, Stupid

    They tried to silence their Uyghur classmate Rizwangul Nurmuhammad, whose story was told in Bitter Winter. Incredibly, the university tried to appease them.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • Cultural Genocide: The Indoctrination of Uyghur Children by Gulfiye Y
  • Wenzhou, Parents Asked to Sign a “Kindergarten Family Commitment Not to Believe in Religion” by He Yuyan
  • Why “Cults” (and “Brainwashing”) Do Not Exist by Massimo Introvigne
  • Pakistan: Ahmadi Mosque Vandalized by Police During Ramadan by Marco Respinti
  • A Uyghur View: Putin Got His Arrest Warrant—Xi Jinping Should Be Next by Kok Bayraq
  • Thailand and Pakistan: No Friends of Uyghur Refugees by Marco Respinti
  • “Do Not Dissolve the Unification Church!” 1. An Award-Winning Journalist Speaks Out by Masumi Fukuda

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY