China

Last month, Chinese police abruptly abducted a “Three-Self” pastor from his own state sanctioned church in Henan Province, according to International Christian Concern.

China’s closure of a dozen churches in Hainan Province while threatening to close many more strongly suggests that the Communist government has a clandestine plan to eliminate all unregistered house churches, according to the China Aid Association.

Incidents of Christian persecution in China rose by 42 percent last year as compared with 2011, according to a report by China Aid, a Texas-based human rights group.

Visitation rights for the family of a prominent Chinese house church leader incarcerated in Xinjiang have been severely curtailed, according to International Christian Concern.

The secretary of the Central Politics and Law Commission said China would end the practice of sending its citizens to labor camps without the benefit of a trial, but critics remain skeptical.

A high profile house church Christian in Shanghai who has been continually targeted for government harassment was just handed an extra-judicial sentence to a forced labor camp.

Police in Xinjiang recently raided a house church Sunday School, holding 70 children and their teachers for questioning while detaining seven other teachers.

Authorities in China’s Sichuan province have asked a large house church to stop all its activities, the church’s pastor told Radio Free Asia.

A blind Chinese activist who was supported by Christians in fighting against forced abortions and defending the disabled has left China for the United States, ending a near month diplomatic standoff between the two nations, witnesses said.

A church in Zou Gang, Feixi county, was illegally demolished last month by government-backed real estate developers, according to ChinaAid.

Blind activist Chen Guangcheng now wants to go into exile in the United States rather than remain in China on account of fears for his safety and that of his family.

In Xilinhot, officials from the Religious Affairs Bureau, the Public Security’s Domestic Security Protection Squad, the United Front Work Department as well as local police raided a house church, confiscating its property and arresting the pastor and several of his congregation.

Chinese authorities have stepped up their “longstanding opposition to Christianity” in China last year, an influential human rights group said in comments monitored by Worthy News.

One of China’s largest house congregations planned to hold its last outdoor worship service on Christmas Day in the capital Beijing after months of detentions, while elsewhere several congregations were raided by Chinese security forces as part of a Christmas season crackdown, local Christians and activists said.