Source: Direct Reports from China
Date: June 25, 2015
A printing house in Liaoning Province is being persecuted by Chinese authorities for printing religious literature. In late November 2017, the Communist Party police organized a thriller-like raid of the printing house, fined it with a large sum and, since then, have been subjecting the manager to nonstop summons and threats, repeatedly searching the premises.
Mengxing printing house in Gushan town, the city of Donggang, was regularly printing religious literature for a bookstore in Shenyang. Around 1:00 p.m. on November 29, over 30 officers and officials surrounded the plant and forcibly entered the building. As it turned out, the cause for the joint operation between the Dandong City Public Security Bureau, the Dandong Cultural Inspection Bureau, the Gushan town government, and Gushan police was a religious booklet, Questions and Answers on the Key Way, that was printed by Mengxing. At the time of the raid, the booklet was no longer in print but was still sold.
Once inside, the police searched the premises and used knives to cut open all the packaged books and papers in the warehouse, making a mess of the entire place. They took videos and photos of eight employees who were working in the printing house at the time. Later, the officers confiscated some of the religious literature and all of the computers they found in the printing house. The manager of Mengxing, Gao Quan, was forcibly taken to the municipal Cultural Inspection Bureau for interrogation. Consequently, he was fined 10,000 RMB for printing religious literature and had to spend 30,000 RMB more to get back the confiscated computers.
This, as it turned out, was not the end of troubles forMengxing printing house. On March 28, 2018, the Outline of the Five-Year Working Plan for Promoting the Sinicization of Christianity in China – a document that outlines the strategy of adapting religion to China’s socialist society – came into force, tightening control over Christian churches and forbidding sales of Bibles both online and in bookstores. As a result, authorities confiscate and burn religious materials, including Bibles, even in the government-controlled Protestant Three-Self churches. Bitter Winter has reported earlier of such incidences.
Due to the policy change, Mengxing printing house was searched again, and Gao Quan subjected to investigation. During one of his interrogations, officials told him that the government does not permit to print Christian, Buddhist, and Islamic materials and constitutes it a crime. Around 9:00 p.m. on June 3, 2018, two officials with the Dandong Cultural Inspection Bureau came to the printing house again and attempted to forcibly pry open the door to search inside after the warehouse manager refused to let them in. Threatened by the officials, he later opened the door to allow them inside. Even though no religious materials were found, they arrested and questioned Gao Quan, releasing him only after he assured that no more religious books are printed at his printing house.
