Article By Jon Brown
WASHINGTON — Ding Shuqi, a pastor from the persecuted Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, China, urged the world earlier this week to remember the suffering of Chinese Christians, whose freedoms he said are being crushed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“Today, I will show you the reality of religious persecution in China through firsthand information,” Ding told the audience gathered Wednesday at the Museum of the Bible for a three-hour briefing titled “CCP Oppression in America and China.”
The event, which was sponsored by the Religious Freedom Institute, the International Religious Freedom Summit, ChinaAid Association and other religious freedom advocacy groups, featured an array of speakers who highlighted the CCP’s escalating oppression of Christians and other religious minorities.
Noting that his remarks are the first Ding has made publicly since arriving in the United States last year, ChinaAid founder Bob Fu introduced the Reformed Presbyterian pastor by saying his ministry “reflects the commitment of China’s house church movement to remain faithful to biblical teaching, Christian fellowship and the Great Commission, despite restrictions and surveillance.”
Ding was among the more than 100 members of Early Rain Covenant Church who were rounded up and detained in December 2018 amid a wider nationwide crackdown against Chinese “house churches” that remain unregistered with the communist regime.
The CCP banned Early Rain, seized its property and charged Ding with “illegal business operations,” which is commonly leveled against house church leaders. Others from the church were charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” according to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
After five months in detention, Ding was released on bail on May 7, 2019, though he and other members of Early Rain Covenant Church have continued to face surveillance and harassment from state authorities. He was last detained in 2023 for two weeks, and founding pastor Wang Yi continues to serve out the nine-year sentence he received in 2019 for “inciting subversion of state power” and “illegal business operations.”
Ding opened his remarks in Washington by recounting a story from the CCP’s crackdown in 2018, when police in Chengdu stopped members of his congregation in the street and demanded they take off their T-shirts advertising their church. He said such treatment continues, noting some Early Rain members were arrested earlier this month for organizing a reading group to study a book about walking with Jesus through suffering.
Ding, a father of two young children who lost his wife to cancer earlier this year, explained that suffering is a common experience for Christians in China.
“Like every house church in China, we don’t have a church building. Some Sundays, we split into small groups and meet in some church members’ living room; other Sundays, we take [the] risk to rent a hotel room,” he said, adding that police are empowered to arrive at any time, sometimes in tactical gear.
“They check our IDs illegally, interrupt our worship, traumatize our children and take our church leaders away,” he said.
Ding remembered his experience in 2018, when he spent five months “in a cell with around 30 other men, enduring terrible food and sleepless nights.” He was stripped of his name in his cell and reduced to a mere number: PO7.
“Other prisoners warned me that if the detention center has no record of your name, you can die inside and the outside world would never know. I don’t know if that was true, but it felt true,” he said.
Ding said for two weeks, he was tortured with a physical stress position, the Chinese name of which translates to “the dragon holding the pillar.” He illustrated the excruciating pose in which he was forced to crouch with his bound hands clasped behind his shackled legs.
“I had no lawyer, no contact with my family and no Bible,” he said, pausing as he was overcome with emotion. “The guards assigned two inmates to sit on each side of me to watch my every move, and I was forbidden to speak a single word. In 2023, I was detained again for two weeks, and many, many times I spent the night at the police station, locked up 24 hours.”
“I want you, please, to understand that my story is not special. It’s not special: it’s across the whole [of] China. And lots of Christian leaders wake up every morning, not knowing if today is the day the police will come for them,” he said, adding that many persecuted leaders are threatened into keeping quiet about their state-sanctioned mistreatment.
Ding went on to recount the stories of Preacher Dai Zhichao, Elder Li Yingqiang and Deacon Jia Xuewei, who were among the key members of Early Rain Covenant Church who were swept up in another mass arrest on Jan. 6 of this year. Charged with inciting subversion of state power and illegal assembly, Dai and Li potentially face up to 20 years in prison, he said.
Dai’s wife gave birth shortly after his arrest, but he has been unable to hold his baby, Ding explained. Jia, a journalist who enjoys writing poetry and is beloved by the children of the church, was charged with illegal assembly and faces up to five years.
“Those three brothers are still in detention right now. Based on the experience I just shared with you, you can already imagine what they are probably facing inside. I hope they don’t have to go through ‘the dragon holding the pillar.’ That was tough,” he said. Another member he mentioned was arrested, but later released on bail.
“Those are not just stories I heard from others. They are four men I really know, and I really love them. They and their families are carrying a heavy burden right now,” he said.
Ding noted the pervasive, widespread nature of the CCP’s persecution against house churches, which he warned is a direct assault against the foundation of all human rights.
“In America, you truly understand [and] have the common sense [that] religious liberty is the first freedom. It’s the absolute foundation of all other human rights,” he said. “But in China today, the first freedom is exactly what the government is trying to crush. It started a war [against] religion.”
Ding urged the international community and the media to act on behalf of those who are suffering in China by using “every resource at your disposal to press President Xi Jinping to respect freedom of religion.”
Ding’s testimony came a week before Chinese President Xi Jinping is slated to visit Washington for his first formal state visit to the U.S. since 2015. In an op-ed published in The Washington Post on Thursday, family members of those who remain detained in China urged President Donald Trump to ask Xi to “free 100 prisoners of conscience” in the country, including Wang Yi and eight leaders from Beijing Zion Church.
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