By Alex Littlefield, Juicy Ecumenism. (Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons)
Around 2 a.m. on October 11, 2025, Chinese police stormed homes across Beijing and other cities.They handcuffed pastors and seized Bibles in coordinated raids on the Zion Church network, one of the country’s largest unregistered Protestant communities. Founder Pastor Jin Mingri, known as Ezra Jin, was taken into custody at his residence in Beihai, Guangxi Province. He joined nearly thirty other leaders detained on charges of illegally using information networks to disseminate religious content.
Seven months later, on May 21, 2026, eighteen of those leaders, including Pastor Jin, remain held in Beihai City No. 2 Detention Center. Chinese authorities have extended their pre-trial detention and increased pressure on the lawyers who represent them. Pastor Jin’s daughter, Grace Jin Drexel, now five months pregnant, has traveled internationally to plead for his release and for the unconditional freedom of the other detained leaders. She describes conditions inside the center as harsh, with limited nourishment and no direct family contact. International religious freedom advocates, human rights groups, and members of the U.S. Congress have joined her call.
The roots of China’s religious repression reach back to the 1949 Communist revolution. The Chinese Communist Party expelled foreign missionaries and folded churches into state-controlled patriotic associations such as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Underground house churches like Zion took shape as alternatives and grew steadily despite official bans.
Since Xi Jinping’s ascent in 2012 and his consolidation of power by 2015, the campaign has intensified into a systematic effort to subordinate every expression of faith to party authority. Xi’s policy of Sinicization requires every religion to align with socialist values. It strips away what the state labels foreign influence and inserts Communist Party doctrine into sermons, hymns, and the physical layout of church buildings.