The “2023 Annual Report on the Chinese Communist Government’s Persecution of The Church of Almighty God” is essential reading to understand religious repression in China.

by Massimo Introvigne 

The number of Church of Almighty God (CAG) members arrested and sentenced in China has reached a record high in 2023. This is the main finding of the “2023 Annual Report on the Chinese Communist Government’s Persecution of The Church of Almighty God,” released on February 7, 2024. Readers of “Bitter Winter” are now familiar with these yearly documents.  We have also explained in previous years the reasons why, while acknowledging that this information comes from the persecuted group itself, we regard it as believable. Although China maintains the largest data base in the world of legal decisions, it is no longer accessible to those outside the Chinese legal system. When it was, however, its data included hundreds of court sentences rendered every year against CAG members. Chinese media and anti-cult organizations continue to publish monthly, if not weekly, news about CAG members who receive heavy jail penalties. In fact, contrary to what some anti-cult opponents have argued, the main source of information about the persecution of the CAG is not “Bitter Winter” nor the CAG itself; it is the Chinese government.

The report reminds us that “since the nationwide lifting of COVID-19 restrictions at the beginning of the year, the CCP has launched a nationwide ‘Zero CAG Member’ campaign.” The numbers are impressive. “According to incomplete statistics, at least 12,463 CAG members were arrested in 2023, of whom 5,832 were subjected to various methods of torture” (or forced indoctrination), “at least 20 CAG Christians were persecuted to death; at least 2,207 members were sentenced to prison, of whom 1,094 were sentenced to three years or more, and 124 were sentenced to seven years or more. The longest known sentence in 2023 is twelve years and six months. These arrest and sentence figures have reached a record high since the CAG published its first annual report in 2017.”

“Especially since the CCP government issued the revised Regulations on Religious Affairs in 2018, which comprehensively increased the persecution of religion, the number of arrests and sentences of CAG members has continued to rise. In 2023, the number of arrests was four times that of 2017, the number of the sentenced was 13 times that of 2017, and the number of church members harshly sentenced to seven years or more was 9.5 times that of 2017. Since the establishment of the Church, 257 CAG Christians have been persecuted to death. According to incomplete statistics, from 2011 to 2023, nearly 460,000 CAG Christians have been arrested by the CCP authorities.” “Since September 2020, when the CCP launched a three-year ‘Final Solution’ to ‘completely destroy’ the CAG, the number of arrests of CAG Christians has exceeded 10,000 per year for three consecutive years.” “These figures are just the tip of the iceberg of the real situation,” according to the report, since the censorship leaves many cases unreported.

There are reasons why the number of arrests grew. “During the past years, the CCP has taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to vigorously develop a nationwide network of camera surveillance, enabling zero blind spots in both urban and rural areas. By using facial recognition and other big data technologies, the CCP has taken comprehensive control over personal information, turning China into an unprecedented digital national prison. This has created conditions for the CCP to conduct long-term surveillance and mass arrests of CAG Christians. The CCP uses the Skynet surveillance system, phone wiretapping, drone tracking and photography, electric bicycle tracking devices, and cameras installed near homes to track and secretly film CAG Christians. Wherever they go and whoever they come into contact with, CAG Christians become targets of CCP surveillance.”

Reports of torture continue to be widespread. To compel CAG members to sign statements where they renounce their faith and to denounce co-religionists, “the CCP police use torture such as ‘Exhausting an Eagle’ (sleep deprivation), suspending with wrists handcuffed, electric shock, and beatings. Some CAG members have been forced to stand or sit on plastic stools as punishment for up to 19–21 hours a day, and have also been subjected to force feeding of unknown drugs, and even forced to eat feces.”

Several disturbing examples are offered in the report. In Hebei, a female devotee was left without food for three days, and the guards compelled her “to stand for 16 hours a day for about 40 days, causing her feet to swell so severely that she could no longer wear socks. Subsequently, the guards continued to torture her for over two months by ordering her to stand with a piece of white paper clamped between her lower legs and under her arms, ranging from half a day to 12 hours daily. In March 2022, she was dealt with harshly again for refusing to write ‘There is no God’ in her thought reports. She was forced to work for 12 to 13 hours daily while standing and to be on duty for two and a half to four and a half hours at night. Her bedding was confiscated, she was forbidden from washing, and her daily necessities and food were withheld. She was only given a quarter of a bun and half a cup of water (300ml) per meal. The guards also incited other prisoners to beat her daily, demanding information about her faith. Her inmates brutally slapped her face with slippers, kicked the insides of her thighs after taking a run-up, and kneed her private parts, causing her to scream in agony and feel like she was about to suffocate. As a result, her legs turned deep purple-black like eggplants, and the left side of her private parts still hurts to this day. Her inmates also forcefully stuffed a toilet-cleaning towel into her throat and punched her until her mouth bled.” Although released, the damage to her health is permanent.

Two tragic stories of torture come from Jiangsu. A female devotee “under 18 was beaten by the police, with wrists handcuffed behind her back, suspended in the air by a wooden stick, mouth sealed with transparent tape, a lit cigarette inserted into her nose, and then dangled from the hanging handcuffs attached to the window.” A 52-year-old woman “was secretly held in an underground transformation center. After trying to escape, she was chased to the rooftop of a nine-story building. She died tragically after jumping off the building.” While the report classified 19 cases in 2023 as instances of “persecution to death,” it is probable that the number of those who died under torture, with relatives told that they had “a heart attack” or “committed suicide,” was in fact much higher.

A particularly interesting part of the report deals with Xinjiang. Because of the stricter censorship there, data about Xinjiang are not included in the tables counting those arrested and sentenced. However, the CAG has a significant presence in Xinjiang and its members “have been listed as national security threats along with Uyghurs and strictly confined in prisons, re-education camps, and drug rehabilitation centers,” as well as psychiatric hospitals. Although statistics are missing, the authors of the report have been able to ascertain that among the CAG members presently detained in Xinjiang, “17 were sentenced to 10 years or more, including two with 15-year sentences, and 73 were sentenced to five years or more, with an average sentence of seven years.”

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The report also notes that the situation is not easy for CAG members who have been released from jail either. To force them to abandon their faith, they are denied “the right to employment, education for their children, basic living allowances.” The authorities are “refusing to issue them any official documents, and banning them from leaving the country.” CAG devotees “are unable to normally live, work, get married, have children, seek medical care, or travel,” and the persecution also affects the elderly and the disabled as well as the youth.

The conclusion of the report is political, connects the brutal repression with Communist ideology, and expresses the perception of the persecution by CAG members themselves. But its assessment of the religious situation in China is accurate and the appeal sincere. “Under the CCP’s rule, the entire country is under multiple layers of surveillance and supervision, making it impossible for CAG Christians to engage in normal religious activities. They are forced to flee from place to place, with nowhere to hide or live, making survival even more difficult. Even fleeing overseas does not shield them from the CCP’s pursuit as they face the risk of being extradited back to China…. CAG members have no choice but to risk their lives to bring to light the truth of how they have been persecuted and related data and information, hoping to get help from the international community and human rights organizations.” We can only hope that their appeal will be heard by many.

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