Source: Asia Harvest, October 12, 2026
There is a famous saying that “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” In the past, whenever the government [of China] wanted to severely persecute believers, they started by removing all foreign Christians to cut off their influence and to prevent news of what was to follow from reaching the outside world.
In March 2018 we wrote, “You are unlikely to hear much fresh information about the Church in China. Thousands of Western Christians have been expelled from the country, and news about the Church is becoming difficult to access. The government is trying to throw a blanket over the Church so that the rest of the world can’t see or hear what’s going on inside the country.”
The same dark things that occurred in China in the early 1950s were now happening again.
In 2018, Xi Jinping had the constitution amended to make himself “President for life,” and he began to change laws to facilitate his crackdown on religion.
Around this time, many church leaders we know decided it was prudent to cut all communication with believers outside China, as the state was collecting information using unparalleled levels of surveillance, including through 400 million facial-recognition cameras that were installed in every part of China.
Sadly, since that time, everything we predicted has happened. News from China has dried up, not only to us but to every Christian ministry. The news that does occasionally leak out usually tells of mass arrests and persecutions.
The truth is that the Church in China has now gone underground again. It is the sixth or seventh time in history that almost all foreign Christian influence and activity has been shut off from China.
When the Almighty God allowed his bride in China to undergo severe, prolonged persecution a few generations ago, a purified remnant emerged of suffering saints who had discovered a richness in Christ that they would never have otherwise experienced. From the ashes came one of the greatest revivals in Christian history, with at least 100 million people coming to faith in Christ.
See also Stories from Inside the Church in China (China Source). Well worth the read.