Campaign Underway to Demolish Christian Churches in China
By Carol Wickenkamp, Epoch Times | April 29, 2014
One of the most memorable scenes in Lewis Carroll’s classic “Alice in Wonderland” is the Queen of Hearts shrieking “Off with their heads!” whenever she is displeased. Xia Baolong, the Communist Party secretary of Zhejiang Province, seems to have taken a leaf from the Queen’s playbook, when he conducted an inspection tour of the province earlier this year. Pointing at a cross on a church in the small town of Baiquan, he is reported to have announced that it was “too conspicuous and splashy.” It was therefore to be “rectified,” he said. The cross was ripped down and a smaller one placed on the wall.
Xia’s peremptory remarks, which continued during the inspection tour, seem to have cascaded into a wave of church demolitions across the province recently, under vague provisions of economic development and urban renewal. On April 28, the target was the state-approved Sanjiang Church in Wenzhou City. Wrecking crews moved in on that church, ripping down its facade even as congregants attempted to stop them through protests. The Telegraph reported a witness saying: “I saw three or four excavators out front, demolishing the church, and three or four out back, demolishing the annex building. I also saw a small excavator going inside the church doing demolition work inside.”
A photograph, unverified, later appeared online appearing to show that the whole structure had collapsed. The assault on the Sanjiang Church is just one part of a campaign that crosses Zhejiang Province and beyond. In Hongzhou of Zhejiang, 200 people from the local government came and removed a cross from a small church. “They said the cross is too conspicuous, and it should be moved inside the church building and should shrink in size,” said Pastor Sheng of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement church, which is affiliated with the Chinese state. An official told him the removal was a “rectification.” Officials in Yongjia County demanded that the congregation get rid of the cross, and also the entire top floor of the church. Reports from Anhui Province indicated that the purge of churches and crosses was moving forward in other provinces too.
The buildings in Zhejiang Province may be but the first casualties in an all-out war against churches, and perhaps ultimately, all religious buildings in China, under the provisions of urban renewal and economic development campaigns. Wenzhou’s Christian population, about 15 percent of Wenzhou’s 9 million citizens, has brought it the nickname “China’s Jerusalem,” a potentially concerning term for the militantly atheist Communist Party.
The Sanjiang Church in Zhejiang Province was a target for demolition on April 28. A provincewide plan for urban development targets religious structures, official documents reveal. (via Weibo.com)
Read more: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/646741-the-church-scalpers-of-zhejiang/
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