The Christian activist from Dalian has been pursuing Xi since he became president of China in 2013.
by Tan Qiu
Meet an unbreakable, irrepressible Christian woman—Zhou Jinxia.
She has been detained on February 20 because she went to the Xinhuamen, the entrance gate of the Zhongnanhai area in Beijing where the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party live, preparing to welcome President Xi Jinping back from the Winter Olympics and tell him he should accept God and publicly repent. She was detained for a crime frequently ascribed to protesters and dissenters. “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
Xi Jinping was inaugurated as President of China on 14 March 2013. Zhou Jinxia, a Christian from Dalian who had been unjustly evicted from her home, took seriously Xi’s statements that he would fight corruption, and wrote to him repeatedly.
Not having received an answer, Zhou concluded that no solution to China’s problem would be possible unless Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan would receive God in their hearts. On Christmas day 2014, she went to the Zhongnanhai and started holding a sign reading “God, who loves the world, is calling Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan.”
She lasted for a few minutes, after which she was detained and brought to a psychiatric hospital for examination. Doctors said she had no mental health problems, but she was kept under surveillance. In fact, she went again to the Zhongnanhai, was detained again, and kept in jail for ten days.
On March 5 , 2016, she showed up again in front of one of the Zhongnanhai entering gates with a sign addressing Xi Jinping and Peng Liyuan, and proclaiming that “Freedom, equality, justice, and integrity come from God. Let the country be held high, sin is a humiliation of the people! The kingdom of heaven is near, you should repent!” She was detained again.
Overall, Zhou has tried to reach Xi Jinping and put in his sight signs calling him to convert and repent more than a dozen times. Now, she has been detained again. As Zhou’s is becoming a well-known case among house church Christians and her efforts were mentioned in social media, although postings were promptly cancelled, there is a risk that authorities would react more harshly this time by having the Dalian activist sentenced to a long prison term.
