Chinese Pastor, Detained in December, Comes Under New Charges From Regime
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Chinese pastor Wang Yi, who was arrested in December on charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” has now been charged again by the Chinese government with “illegal business activities.”
An elder at a Beijing house church told Radio Free Asia that Chinese Christians see the charge as nonsensical, as Wang was neither involved in the sale of Bibles nor any other kind of Christian literature that could be construed as an illegal business.
As an addendum to the new charges, members of Wang’s Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, 100 of whom were rounded up along with their pastor in early December, were reportedly asked to make false accusations against him—on pain of having their hands and feet manacled for more than 10 days to keep them from sleeping.
“If God decides to persecute the church by the Chinese Communist regime…I am very happy to obey God’s arrangement, because his arrangement is always loving and beautiful,” Wang wrote in an open letter penned in September 2018, which was published by church members, according to his instructions, 48 hours after his disappearance in December.
“I also understand that this is precisely the reason why the Chinese Communist regime is full of fear for a church that no longer fears it,” the letter explains.
Wang Yi was a constitutional scholar and human rights attorney before his conversion to Christianity in 2005.
Earlier, in 2004, he had been listed as one of the 50 most influential Chinese intellectuals by Southern People Weekly, a magazine for Chinese culture and current affairs.