Picture a regime so smug and dismissive of democracy that it brags about crushing lives and freedom. That’s China’s Communist Party (CCP) today, crowing on WeChat and state rags like Global Times about “smashing cults” — a fancy way of saying they’re bulldozing churches, jailing and torturing pastors, and strangling all the freedom of all citizens with a high-tech noose unlike anything the world has seen.
While their methods are new, their impulse remains the same. In 1989, Tiananmen Square ran red with the blood of dreamers like Bob Fu, a kid who dared defy the Communist Party’s iron fist. Today, he’s a Texan with a fire they couldn’t kill — and his fight screams a truth we’re sleepwalking past: China’s not just crushing its own, it’s exporting the noose to other countries.
Fu grew up in Shandong, force-fed the CCP line: the party’s your god, and dissent means death. But college lit a spark. He joined the Tiananmen protests, shouting for liberty until tanks turned his dream of a better China to ash on June 4, 1989. Hundreds — maybe thousands — died; Fu lived but was branded a criminal, and his world and spirit were crushed. “I’d reached the end,” he said, his voice heavy as he remembered the past. Then a smuggled book about a Chinese believer slipped through, and outlaw American missionaries whispered of a freedom no bullet could touch. Fu grabbed it — a lifeline in the dark.
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He didn’t sit on it. By ’96, his Beijing apartment was a rebel church, prayers rising like smoke with the State looking to put out fires. The police arrested him and his pregnant wife Heidi for “illegal evangelism” and dodging the one-child law. They fled from Hong Kong to America with a baby and faith in tow. In 2002, Fu started China Aid in Texas, a voice for the silenced Church. China has tightened the screws. International Christian Concern (ICC) reports that the CCP is boasting about “intensified efforts” to shred house churches with a Ming Dynasty slur — “xie jiao” while a sprawling security system tracks and records every move. The Roys Report quotes Fu: “Even official (CCP-controlled) churches get hit for sticking to their Bibles.” This isn’t random — It’s a machine, cold and relentless.
Call it the Social Credit System on steroids — millions of cameras and sensors record every citizen’s movement and electronic trail. The data is fed into one of the world’s biggest databases and then analyzed and watched. It knows your face, your friends and your thoughts before you think about them. It creates a score for you that decides if you work, travel or vanish.
Go to a prayer meeting? You’re flagged. Share the wrong verse or message? You’re done. Associate with the freedom-loving crowd? Your thoughts will be re-educated at special camp for people just like you. It’s Tiananmen without tanks, a digital cage where dissent dies silently. Fu faced bullets; today’s Chinese face a system that owns their shadows. As you read this, the CCP is not only perfecting this beast (raids and arrests are spiking), but they’re also selling it to tyrants from Tehran to Caracas, exported to any regime with cash and a lust for power and control.
A line from a the Book of Hebrews says, “Remember those in prison as if you were there with them” (Hebrews 13:3). It’s a call from folks who knew all about chains. Fu gets it. He escaped, but millions didn’t — executed, caged or carved up for organs while he breathes free in Texas. That gnaws at him, a brutal and beautiful fuel.
So what? China’s betting we’ll yawn. They think the West’s too fat, too drowsy to care about a freedom-killing machine spreading like wildfire. Prove them wrong. Wake up. Speak out — call your reps and back fighters like China Aid and ICC, but above all, see the beast for what it is. This isn’t just about churches; it’s a world where no one will be free if the CCP blueprint wins. The church in China is not smoldering, rather they turn the CCP’s fire into fuel and the church is on fire. The ghosts of Tiananmen are begging us to join the fight. They don’t need your tears — just your guts. If liberty is worth a damn, we can’t sleep through this.
Jeff King has served as ICC President since 2003 and is one of the world’s top experts on religious persecution. He has advocated for the persecuted everywhere, testifying before the U.S. Congress on religious freedom. He has been interviewed by leading media outlets such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and The Washington Times. Jeff King is also available as a guest speaker. To learn more, go to Christian Persecution and Spiritual Growth Speaker | Jeff King Blog.
