Accusing the CAG of a crime it never committed was part of a broader fake news campaign against the religious movement.
by Massimo Introvigne
Article 2 of 6. Read article 1.
As reported in the first article of this series, in 2017 I went to China with other Western scholars to discuss The Church of Almighty God (CAG) with Chinese police officers and scholars. The claim that we agreed with our Chinese counterparts published by government-controlled Chinese media totally misrepresented our position, but confirmed the CCP regarded the exchanges as important.
The Chinese conference panel, which included senior officials of Office 610, i.e., the central police office combating “cults,” admitted that members (not only leaders) of the CAG, as soon as they were identified as such, were routinely arrested and sent either to jail or to “reeducation camps” to be “reformed.” They insisted that this was justified because the CAG was guilty of “serious crimes.”
The Chinese authorities admitted having no evidence of “serious crimes” committed by those they had arrested, although they had collected “rumors.” These referred to various riots and accusations of violence and murder in the 1990s, in respect of which Chinese propaganda had circulated photographs of Christian pastors hostile to the CAG allegedly mutilated by CAG members (including one who had an ear cut), and offered “eyewitnesses” to be interviewed by visiting Western anti-cultists and scholars. For these cases, however, there was no evidence that anybody had been prosecuted or sentenced, and no police files or other documents were available, making it impossible to establish any facts beyond the rumors. It is also worth noting that Australian scholar Emily Dunn, in her work discussed in the first article, reported that she found much clearer evidence in China of violence, including murder, perpetrated “against”the CAG by other Christian groups and movements fearful of its success.
For other cases, however, scholars were directed to documents published by Chinese media and agencies. Thus the 2017 conferences in China allowed for the first time Western scholars to study the crimes allegedly committed by the CAG on the basis of Chinese official documents.
The first and most frequent accusation concerns the Zhaoyuan McDonald’s murder of 2014, which I will discuss in detail later. The second most often mentioned case of a crime reputedly committed by members of the CAG happened on August 24, 2013. A woman gouged out the eyes of a young boy named Guo Bin in Shanxi. The boy later became internationally famous for undergoing a successful ocular prosthesis surgery performed in Shenzhen.
American scholar Holly Folk carried out an examination of the available sources and concluded that the crime was perpetrated by Guo Bin’s aunt, a mentally disturbed person who later committed suicide and had nothing to do with the CAG. In fact, Chinese anti-cult sources started associating the crime with the CAG only in June 2014, after the McDonald’s murder, and ten months after the local police had closed the case by concluding that the aunt was the sole perpetrator. Folk also learned that accusing Christian missionaries of gouging out the eyes of the Chinese was a common theme in Chinese anti-Christian literature since the nineteenth century. Her study traces the spread of the false accusation that the CAG was involved in the Guo Bin incident from obscure anti-cult websites to a pro-CCP newspaper in Taiwan and then to Western media. It is a fascinating reconstruction of how fake news is fabricated and travels.
Third, the CAG has also been accused of predicting the end of the world in 2012, within the global framework of the 2012 phenomenon, based on prophecies attributed to the Maya civilization, causing riots and even crimes throughout China. This was another justification used by Chinese authorities to arrest a great number of members of the church. Regarding this case, Dunn wrote that, like many other Chinese, some “members of Eastern Lightning embraced the Mayan prophecy” but they “appear to have done so without sanction from the group’s self-proclaimed authorities,” who in fact declared Mayan and other theories about the end of the world to be theologically and factually “mistaken.” Some of these members were expelled from the CAG. The CAG officially stated with reference to the 2012 rumors, “We do not preach the end of the world… The theory of the end of the world is wrong.”
Later, Dunn, whose approach to the CAG is not exactly sympathetic, argued that, while not believing that the world would end in that year, the CAG did try to use the 2012 Mayan fashion as an opportunity for presenting its own views to a larger Chinese audience, but these views were different from the popular end-of-the-world scenarios. As mentioned earlier, the belief that the world would end in 2012 was inconsistent with CAG theology. The church anticipates that some of the catastrophes predicted in the Book of Revelation will occur soon, but only after the departure of the person the church identifies as Almighty God, who is still on Earth today.
The CAG also maintains that some flyers and banners depicted on Chinese anti-xie-jiao websites as evidence of its belief in the 2012 prophecies were in fact never part of the materials produced by the CAG. In particular, a brochure was supplied by the Chinese Anti-Xie-Jiao Association and other Chinese sources to Western media and scholars to “prove” that the CAG had announced the end of the world in 2012. The unsigned brochure (one photocopy of which is in my collection), however, does not mention the end of the world at all, despite its title, “After 2012, the Last Ticket: Gain Salvation in the Catastrophes.” If it has not been fabricated, it must be an example of the literature produced by CAG dissidentswho resisted the church’s warnings and, when identified, were promptly expelled.
Dunn believes that the contested brochure might be authentic, since the same ark drawing appears on another brochure once distributed by the CAG. However, that brochure, “The Church of Almighty God—The Last Ark,” does not mention 2012 at all, nor does it mention theories of the end of the world.
Certainly opponents of the CAG resort at times to questionable tactics and produce false documents. In the U.K., for example, a website called Church of Almighty God UK had been created in 2017 at the address www.chinesetouk.co.uk/. A “Declaration concerning Websites Imitating The Church of Almighty God” was issued by the church denouncing the site.
A fourth example of fake news, which unfortunately was uncritically repeated in the West and also played a role in denying asylum to some CAG refugees in Europe, is that “a [CAG] member receives 20,000 yuan ($3,237) for every new person they convert” and that new members should pay “2,000 yuan ($323) in membership fees” and spend money buying CAG literature.
CAG members interviewed by me and other scholars vehemently deny that this is the case, and given the high number of converts, even the richest religious organization in the world would have been quickly bankrupted by giving money awards for each new convert. The church insists there is no membership fee for any CAG members. As for the literature, the CAG rules mandate that “believers of The Church of Almighty God can enjoy all of the books of God’s words, spiritual books, and audio and video productions without charge.”
Obviously monetary contributions are needed for a large organization such as the CAG. The CAG’s “Principles”, however, allow great latitude on this point: “Some insist on making an offering of ten percent, while others contribute in different ways. As long as it is being offered willingly, God will gladly accept it. God’s house only specifies that those who have only believed in God for less than a year are temporarily exempt from providing any offerings, while poor people are not required to provide any offerings but can make offerings according to their faith. The church will not accept offerings that might lead to family disputes. Those making an offering of money must pray several times, and only after they are sure they are completely willing and are certain they will never have any regrets are they to be allowed to make their offerings.” (“全能神教会历年工作安排精要选编(实用本)” [Selected Annals of the Arrangements of the Work of The Church of Almighty God (Practical Version)], Seoul: The Church of Almighty God, 34). The derogatory and inaccurate information on fees was spread by the “Newsweek”-associated “International Business Times”in 2014, in an article largely based (and quoting verbatim on this issue) a post-McDonald’s laundry list of false accusations against the CAG published by the official newspaper of the Chinese regime, the “People’s Daily.”
A further accusation, that the CAG had “kidnapped” Christian pastors, refers to a much more complicated story, that I have discussed elsewhere in a scholarly article interested readers may want to consult.
