In December 2025, Feng Reng, a contributor to Bitter Winter who had escaped from China in 2022, reported on the latest repetition of an annual ritual that the Chinese Communist Party has been practicing since 2018.
On December 9, 2018,
the large-scale crackdown known as the “December 9th Church Incident” unfolded in Chengdu. Pastor Wang Yi and Elder Qin Defu of Early Rain Covenant Church, along with over a hundred fellow workers and members, were taken away by police, had their homes raided, and were interrogated overnight. The church premises were sealed off, church property confiscated, and many families forced to leave Chengdu. Subsequently, Pastor Wang Yi was sentenced to nine years for “inciting subversion of state power” and “illegal business operations,” while Elder Tan Defu received a four-year sentence. This became one of the landmark cases in the Chinese Communist Party’s systematic crackdown on religion in 2018.
Thanks to the Great Firewall, Feng Reng knew “almost nothing” about all this while he was still in China. He found out about it only after reaching the U.S. and gaining unfettered access to the Internet.
Only then did I learn that in China, there existed such a group of pastors and fellow believers who were hunted down and sentenced for their faith….
Over the past seven years, around December 9, local authorities in Chengdu have consistently launched new “stability maintenance” campaigns: community officials conducting “talks” at homes, state security officers stationed at doorsteps, travel restrictions, forced “tourism-based stability maintenance,” midnight summonses, and even deliberate power cuts—all to prevent the Early Rain Covenant Church from holding commemorative gatherings or online prayer meetings.
The December harassment wasn’t the end of it this time. Now the members of Early Rain Covenant Church have been hit by “Yet Another Wave of Arrests,” Feng reports. “Elders, pastors, assistant deacons, and brothers and sisters were taken away or had their personal freedom restricted. This was accompanied by home raids, home surveillance, communication restrictions, and loss of contact” (January 9, 2026).
Members who have been detained or who “had their personal freedom restricted” include Elder Li Yinggiang: “Taken from his home in Deyang on the morning of January 6…remains unaccounted for”; Pastor Dai Zhichao: “remains unaccounted for”; Brother Ye Fenghua: detained as his family remained home “under surveillance with limited contact with the outside world”; Preacher Yan Hong: taken away on January 6, “no further information available at this time”; Assistant Deacon Zeng Qingtao: taken away on January 6, “no further information available at this time”; Deputy Deacon Jia Xuewei: “remains unaccounted for”; Evangelist Wu Wuqing: taken away on January 6 but “allowed to return home around 11:30 p.m. that same evening”; Sister Shu Qiong: taken away in the evening of January 6 “on charges of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ and allowed to return home around 6 a.m. on January 7.”
Pattern of persecution
In a January 12 report on a Los Angeles event “Giving Voice to the Persecuted Chinese Christians,” Feng Reng observes that Early Rain Church “faces not a one-time arrest or dispersal, but a structured, long-term squeeze…dragging the daily lives of brothers and sisters into prolonged uncertainty and fear…gradual fragmentation of people’s lives—leaving them exhausted, scattered, doubting, and retreating—forcing faith to slowly withdraw from public expression until it can only be ‘hidden in the heart.’ ”
This article also considers the plight of members of Beijing Zion Church, Guizhou Living Stone Church, and others. Different incidents, same pattern: “squeezing spaces, restricting pastors, intimidating believers, controlling families and employment,” and tightening censorship.
