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China: Christian Man Sentenced to 5 Years Imprisonment for Selling/Distributing Bible

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – A Chinese court has sentenced a  Christian man to five years imprisonment for selling and distributing Bibles in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region in northern China, International Christian Concern (ICC) reports. 

Together with nine other Christians, Ban Yanhong was arrested in April 2021 for “illegally” selling and distributing Bibles in Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia, ICC reports. While his co-defendants are awaiting trial on bail, Yanhong was sentenced to five years in jail on Apr. 15.

Yanhong and his fellow Christians had bought the Bibles legally from a church in Nanjing associated with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM), but were accused of illegally distributing them through an unregistered house church, ICC said.

Strictly supervised by the government, TSPM churches are approved by the state if they are loyal to the Chinese Communist Party and agree to include Chinese nationalist and cultural teaching in their sermons. Because of this, China has a largely underground house church movement made up of evangelical Christians for whom Christ is the only Lord.

“The Chinese Communist Party’s goal is to make sure churches don’t fall out of line with official viewpoints,” the Open Doors international Christian advocacy organization reports. “In the case of official churches, this means they are encouraged to praise and pledge allegiance to the Communist Party and its ideology. Churches that claim Christ as King are viewed with suspicion, especially since Christianity is seen as a primarily Western influence.”

Ruled by the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party, China ranks 19 on the Open Doors World Watch List 2024 of the top 50 countries where Christians are persecuted.