{"id":75716,"date":"2025-12-23T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T01:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/23\/christians-pastors-arrested-detained-china-crackdown-house-churches"},"modified":"2025-12-23T10:00:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T01:00:42","slug":"is-this-real-wife-of-detained-pastor-describes-anguish-as-china-cracks-down-on-unofficial-churches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=75716","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Is this real?\u2019: wife of detained pastor describes anguish as China cracks down on unofficial churches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Church leaders and members detained as government tightens controls on underground Christian gatherings<\/p>\n<p>The knocks came at 2am. Hiding out at a friend\u2019s house in a Beijing suburb, Gao Yingjia and his wife, Geng Pengpeng, rushed downstairs to meet the group of plain-clothed men who said they were police officers. Their son, nearly six, was sleeping upstairs, and Gao and Geng wanted to minimise the ruckus. They knew their time was up.<\/p>\n<p>Two months later, Gao is in a detention centre in Guangxi province, southern China, charged with \u201cillegal use of information networks\u201d. His arrest was part of the biggest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2019\/jan\/13\/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible\">crackdown on Christians in China<\/a> since 2018. It has prompted alarm from the US government and human rights groups, with some analysts describing it as the death knell for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2018\/sep\/28\/we-are-scared-but-we-have-jesus-china-and-its-war-on-christianity\">unofficial churches<\/a> in China.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/dec\/23\/christians-pastors-arrested-detained-china-crackdown-house-churches\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Church leaders and members detained as government tightens controls on underground Christian gatheringsThe knocks came at 2am. Hiding out at a friend\u2019s house in a Beijing suburb, Gao Yingjia and his wife, Geng Pengpeng, rushed downstairs to meet the gr&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,50,370,53,371,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-china","category-christianity","category-human-rights","category-religion","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75717,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75716\/revisions\/75717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}