2014-06-24
Officials check vehicles leading to the town of Oubei, outside the city of Wenzhou on April 30, 2014, where Chinese authorities began demolishing a Christian church two days earlier.
AFP
Authorities in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang have stepped up a clampdown on Christian places of worship in the region, with dozens of groups receiving notification that crosses must be taken down from buildings.
Local officials of the ruling Chinese Communist Party are targeting any crosses that are visible from state highways and railway lines, according to local sources.
Within days of the demolition of the the Yahui church’s cross in Pingyang county near Zhejiang’s Wenzhou city last Friday, some 40 churches in Pingyang and neighboring Cangnan counties have been informed that their crosses will be next.
The demolition of the more visible and ostentatious signs of Christian worship in affluent Wenzhou is part of an ongoing “three reforms and one demolition” political campaign to lower the profile of Protestants in an area where they have more money and visibility than in many other places in China.
“I think these demolitions are pretty threatening,” one Protestant worshipper, who asked not to be named, told RFA on Tuesday.