Norwegian NGO Reports on the Case of House Church Leader Cai Zhuohua

November 20, 2005

In an August 24 report, Forum 18, a religious freedom NGO based in Norway, reviewed the case of Cai Zhuohua, a Beijing house church pastor who the Chinese government prosecuted for "illegal business practices." Pastor Cai's case "highlights the severe restrictions Christian publishing is forced to operate within in China," according to the report.

In an August 24 report, Forum 18, a religious freedom NGO based in Norway, reviewed the case of Cai Zhuohua, a Beijing house church pastor who the Chinese government prosecuted for "illegal business practices." Pastor Cai's case "highlights the severe restrictions Christian publishing is forced to operate within in China," according to the report.

Chinese authorities detained Pastor Cai in September 2004 for possessing a large number of copies of the Bible and other Christian religious materials. Officials subsequently detained Xiao Yunfei, his wife, and her brother, Xiao Gaowen, and his sister, Hu Jinyun. On July 7, 2005, after three postponements, Chinese authorities tried the four under Article 225 of China's Criminal Law, which makes it a crime for anyone to commit "illegal acts in business operation and thus disrupt market order." In 1998, the Supreme People's Court issued the Explanation Regarding Certain Questions About the Specific Laws to be Used in Adjudicating Criminal Cases of Illegal Publications, which allows courts to use Article 225 to imprison anyone who "publishes, prints, copies, or distributes illegal publications." Almost two months after the court proceedings concluded, the court has not yet issued a verdict.

Cai and his family have been prosecuted for what is essentially an economic crime, but events surrounding their detention demonstrate that the government believes that these four Christian religious activists represent a threat to the Communist Party's control over religious practice in China:

  • On September 12, 2004, the day after Cai's detention, authorities raided an unregistered seminary associated with Cai, detaining its students for three days and fining them.
  • During the trial, Cai's lawyers tried to argue that Cai was being persecuted for his religious activities, but the judge would not permit arguments about religious issues.
  • On July 8, 2005, Ye Xiaowen, the Director of the State Bureau of Religious Affairs, told the Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao that Cai and others had illegally published 40 million copies of the Bible and other tracts and illegally sold over 2 million of them. Ye expressed the view that religion is a point of penetration through which Western anti-China forces seek to Westernize and disintegrate China.

For additional details and analysis on the Cai case, see below.
 


According to a report by the China Aid Association (CAA), a U.S. NGO that monitors the religious freedom of house church Protestants, a credible source claimed that the government was putting pressure on Cai's lawyers to discourage them from defending him. The CAA also reported that, although nine lawyers had volunteered to defend Cai (including Professor Fan Yafeng, an associate researcher at the Institute of Legal Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), presiding judge You Tao permitted only five of them into the courtroom. At the trial, the CAA report said, all the accused recanted their written testimony, which was drawn from police interrogation records, saying that they were tortured and forced to sign it and that they did not know what it contained. During the trial, Cai's lawyers argued that Cai intended to distribute the seized literature without collecting a fee, and thus he was not conducting a business for profit and could not have been guilty of an illegal business practice under Article 225.

Chinese authorities use an extensive system of prior restraints to restrict the right to publish guaranteed in China's Constitution to government-sponsored, domestic publishing houses that have enough money to meet the government's burdensome registered capital requirements and that are willing to obey the Communist Party Central Propaganda Department and the General Administration of Press and Publication.

The Forum 18 report notes that, in addition to these restrictions, the government limits permission to publish Bibles to the two state-recognized "patriotic" religious associations, the China Christian Council and the Catholic Patriotic Association. In addition, while the Bible is available in most Chinese cities at a relatively low price, the demand for Bibles in rural areas always exceeds availability. According to the Forum 18 report, believers in such areas must rely upon Bibles "smuggled" in from such places as Hong Kong, and by those printed within China by such people as Pastor Cai.