Xinjiang’s Vanishing Christians

Most people are aware of the Chinese Government’s persecution of the Uyghur Muslims. The vast majority of Uyghurs are Muslims, but there is also a small Uyghur Christian minority who are also being persecuted by the Chinese authorities.

By Georgia L. Gilholy

A Church in Chine. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)

Since its construction in 2000, Sacred Heart Church has sat at the industrial crossroads of Yining, a modest-sized city in the Uyghur Autonomous Region of Northwest China, also known as Xinjiang. Its colourful onion domes, array of icons and white-painted facade are more reminiscent of an eccentric orthodox chapel in Greece or Russia than an overwhelmingly Muslim area of Central Asia under the jurisdiction of a militantly secular state. Or at least, they were.

In 2018 local authorities required the church to remove its crosses, along with four bas-reliefs that adorned the exterior, the two statues of St. Peter and St. Paul on the sides of the building, and its twin domes and bell towers. Recent reports from Asia News now claim that the church will be forcibly demolished to clear the site for “commercial purposes”. For Chinese Christians, especially Uyghur ones, this story is more familiar than it is shocking.

It is to the credit of many fearless testimonies and investigations that there is increasing international concern over the Chinese government’s policies in Xinjiang. The persecution of the Uyghur Muslims, who make up the majority of the region’s population, has received particular attention. Since 2017, over a million Uyghurs and members of other Turkic Muslim minorities have disappeared into a vast network of "re-education" camps. Uyghur Christians, along with Han Chinese dissidents are also interned in these facilities.

Detainees are subjected to political indoctrination, forced labour, coerced into renouncing their religion and culture and in many instances are subjected to torture, rape and organ harvesting. Women in and outside the camps are regularly the victims of forced sterilisation and abortion. Nor is this process of elimination aimed solely toward Uyghur individuals, but their ancient history and culture. Thousands of mosques and shrines, including protected sites, have been damaged or demolished since 2016. The story of Xinjiang's dwindling Christian minority is an equally pressing, and even less well documented one.

A church in China. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)

The History of Christianity in Xinjiang

Although Islam has long been the dominant faith of the Uyghur people, the presence of Christianity predates it by several centuries. The ‘Nestorian’ Church of the East, the common ancestor of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church reached Central Asia, Mongolia and China by the seventh century. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, "the whole tribe were considered Christian." From the fourteenth century however, Christianity essentially disappeared among the Uyghurs for 500 years as a result of conversions to Islam in the Besh Balik and Turpan regions.

The Lutheran Swedish Missionary Society has operated in Uyghur communities since 1892. By the 1930s over 300 Uyghurs, primarily in Kashgar, had converted to Protestantism. Modern Catholic missions in Xinjiang were mounted by the Scheutists throughout the 1920s and 30s from the neighbouring Apostolic Vicariate of Kansu under its authority.

Christianity Under Siege

It is difficult to estimate the current number of Christians in Xinjiang, but regional sources suggest a figure in the thousands. The number is certainly somewhere below 2 percent of the population. Ideological repression is a fact of life across China’s many regions, and the Uyghurs, Muslim and Christian alike, are no exception to this rule. The presence of transcendent faiths, whether they be Islam, Buddhism or Christianity in its various forms, is an inherent threat to the uncompromising ideology of the ruling Communist Party, for whom, in the words of US-based Sinologist Ross Terrill “the religion of China is China.”

Holy Mass in China. (Credit: Aid to the Church in Need)

China’s large and growing Christian community currently stands at around seven per cent of the country’s total population, consisting of approximately 38 million Protestants and 10-12 million Catholics, with smaller numbers of Evangelical and Orthodox Christians. Only over the age of 18 may Chinese youth join churches, and only officially sanctioned Christian groups registered with the government-approved Chinese Patriotic Catholic Church, China Christian Council and the Protestant Three-Self Church are legally permitted. Both in and outside these official Churches, a vast apparatus of repression exists.

As this insider testimony published by Bitter Winter in 2019 demonstrates, the climate for Uyghur Christians is a highly disturbing one.

“If four or five people are chatting on the street, the police will come to question them about what they are doing, and then force them to disperse. “While we were discussing faith in a public space, a local child next to us kept reminding us not to talk about such things,” the Christian added.

On a Sunday, they passed by a Three-Self church and discovered police cars parked in front of the entrance and numerous officers keeping guard. Each person who wanted to get inside was required to show their ID card and undergo an inspection.

One of the local Christians recounted how he once mentioned the Chinese word for “God” (Shàngdì) on the phone, and the call was cut off shortly afterwards. To arrange meetings, they usually speak in code on the phone, like “Let’s go out to eat some lamb.”

Community management staff also go door to door to investigate residents’ religious beliefs. Those that are registered as religious are required to go to the community office once a week to study national policies and “patriotic knowledge.”

The Geography of Tyranny

However, given the extent of persecution across China, why is the majority-Uyghur region being subject to some of the most intense repression? The answer is, as with many likewise violations of human dignity and liberty: money.

The region is home to extensive oil, gas and mineral reserves. It also forms China’s frontier with Central Asia, making it a strategic stop along China’s $8 billion “One Belt One Road Initiative”, which seeks to re-open the historic “Silk Road” trade route between China and the West. The region already has a long history of separatist activism throughout its incorporation in various twentieth-century Chinese regimes.

The Chinese government considers any support for the East Turkestan independence movement to fall under the definitions of "terrorism, extremism, and separatism", and thus characterises any inkling of dissidence by Uyghur communities as a threat to the CCP’s march toward material gain at any moral cost. In fact, many experts perceive the vast network of repression and forced labour, in and outside of Xinjiang, as a response to growing wage demands that threaten its competitive edge in low-cost manufacturing.

Moreover, despite its richness of natural resources, the area is a peripheral one that few foreigners are required or permitted to travel or reside in. It is far easier to ‘hide’ concentration camps in rural Xinjiang than on the cosmopolitan streets of Shanghai or the fashionable suburbs of Beijing. The western world’s brushes with Islamist terrorism, alongside its generally underwhelming of concern for international religious persecution is also key to understanding the ongoing international complacency and complicity with the situation in Xinijang.

What Can You Do To Help?

Many volunteer organisations exist across the UK and Ireland for the purpose of educating and lobbying for the rights of Uyghurs, including Yet Again, Free Uyghur Now, and the Foundation for Uyghur Freedom for whom I volunteer as associate writer. Our Instagram page contains a range of resources on how to counter misinformation, consume ethically, and contact your local politicians for the purpose of expressing your concern over the Uyghur crisis. Follow Aid to the Church in Need to get the latest updates on persecuted Christians in China and across the world, and how you can get involved in fundraising, volunteering or simply spreading awareness. Sometimes we can feel like our actions are a drop in the ocean, but we must be prepared to argue with a thousand people for the sake of changing just one mind.

Georgia L. Gilholy is associate writer for the Foundation for Uyghur Freedom.