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The Chinese government seems to be nervous about the rapid growth of the Christian faith and particularly the House Church movement. While an estimated 40-70 million Chinese consider themselves Christians, only 10 million participate in the official Christian Church in China. National religious committees are putting pressure on believers to limit their activities to officially registered churches, whose leaders are handpicked by the government. Everything else is considered illegal.
At the moment, Chinese authorities appear to be most concerned about the illegal South Chinese Church, which counts 50,000 members. Church members are fighting for the right to religious freedom anchored in Article 36 of the Chinese constitution, but their struggle has been fraught with torture.
The church's founder, Pastor Gong Shengliang was sentenced to death in December 2001 for using his faith to get around the law as well as for assault and aiding in rape. To prove their charge, they arrested young female members of the church and tortured them until they testified against their pastor. The women later recanted their testimony and were subsequently sent to work camps. Although massive international pressure led the Chinese government to commute Gong's sentence to life imprisonment, the physical abuse he suffered in prison took its toll and he fell into a coma in June 2003.
While some experts say that the situation for Christian groups is improving in parts of China, others, like Dirk Pleiter, China expert at Amnesty International in Germany are less hopeful. "There are differences in the intensity of human rights abuse or changes in the groups of victims -- but the instruments of repression have remained the same."
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