NEWS//We will take your children
“The main reason for us to come to Taiwan is our adopted child. We are worried that he might be taken away by the government.”
In an article published in Persecution, the magazine of International Christian Concern (ICC), Liao Qiang spoke about the reasons he and his family fled China for Taiwan.
Liao was a leader in Chengdu's Early Rain Covenant Church. On December 9, 2018, the police raided his church and arrested more than 100 members. Most were released from jail after posting bail, but head pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to nine years in prison and elder Qin Derfu was sentenced to four years in prison.
Other church members have had adopted children taken from them. ICC documented that authorities forcibly removed children from the homes of church members Pei Wenju and Jing Jianan. CCP officials told them their adoption papers were no longer valid because their children were “trapped by an evil religion.”
Government officials have forced church members to take their children out of the congregation's school and enroll them in public schools. These Christian parents are also threatened with having their biological children taken from them because they belong to a "cult."
In a July 2020 report on persecution in China, International Christian Concern, concludes:
There is no longer a safe place to be a Christian in China. According to our incident report, almost every province in China has seen Christian persecution on the rise, specifically Henan and Anhui province. Cross demolition campaigns have been active in these provinces, which have a high percentage of Christians. Thousands of crosses have been removed since 2018, with some churches leveled to the ground. Deteriorating Sino-U.S. relations could further encourage crackdown against churches in 2020. (Read Persecution’s full report on that state of Christianity in China here.)
Sources: Persecution, Persecution’s YouTube interview, Fox News, Church Leaders, Christian Post