This article, written by a Taiwan-based “sinologist,” has been copied and pasted over several major outlets and a dozen other Christian clickbait news sites. The pastor in question is John Sanqiang Cao, and was charged with human trafficking upon returning from a mission trip to Myanmar.
I don’t know anything about the validity of the charges he’s facing, and I’m quite certain that IF the events alleged by the article are true, then this is a clear miscarriage of justice.
There is something very funny about this story appearing all over American media, though. As if ex-convicts in the US don’t deal with very similar problems…
It’s just standard China-bad propaganda. In fact it’s the oldest kind. Christians love persecution narratives. I can remember being a young child in church and the adults talking about the evil Chinese communists persecuting Chinese Christians and how sad that was and how evil it made them, how oppressive they were for not allowing these western aligned, western thinking, counter-revolutionary, reactionary, backwards forces to operate hand-in-hand with western religious-social ideology instead of putting a stop to what was in fact a modern invasion of China. Christianity was introduced by gun-boat by western nations. Say what you will of Islam, there have been ethnic groups with ties to Islam in China for 500+ years, but before 1800 no meaningful Christian presence.
If the Chinese authorities are persecuting him you know what I have to say to that? Good.
Christian missionaries all deserve Sentinel Island treatment. Wherever there were colonizers they were a step ahead of or just behind them.
Anyways if he hates his people and their culture so much he should go live in burger-land. He has that right as he married an American but he’d rather try and spread his nonsense in a socialist country to destroy its culture and disobey its laws because he thinks he has that right under divine authority and in response to that behavior they have given him the cold shoulder. He should take a hint.
Christian missionaries all deserve Sentinel Island treatment. Wherever there were colonizers they were a step ahead of or just behind them.
This so much, as someone whose family/childhood experiences are a direct result of such missionaries (to my mom, and a bit longer on my dad’s side of the family).
Missionaries are the scum of the earth. It takes a certain kind of mindset, to target the mentally vulnerable and tell them that their native culture and the daily lives of their relatives are “demon worshipping” and whatnot. And that’s before getting into all the other horrendous (and infinitely worse) antics Christian missionaries all over the global south get up to.
Say what you will of Islam, there have been ethnic groups with ties to Islam in China for 500+ years, but before 1800 no meaningful Christian presence.
This is not true. Christianity was introduced to China by Syriac (Syria and Iraq) missionaries and believers of Nestorian Christianity who traveled the Silk Road in the 7th century in 635. Literally 1400 years ago, and 20 years after Islam was even founded.
These missionaries settled in Xi’an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, where they met with Emperor Tiazong, who was extremely interested in the religion, and allowed the missionaries to settle. They then built around 20-30 churches across China, translated the Bible into Chinese, and established a significant presence that would last the next thousand years. There are silk portraits of Jesus, thousands of tombstones dating to 700-1200 with crosses and Christian iconography, and so on.
It’s also an extremely unknown portion of history, but the Mongol Empire was significantly influenced by Christianity and was in close contact with the Papacy. This only spread Christianity further in China.
Fair point. However, the modern trend of Western Christian missionaries is explicitly associated with colonialism. Anyone who willingly contributes to spreading that kind of poison should be viewed with scrutiny.
I think it might be fair to say that while Christianity did exist in China for over a thousand years, it’s probably also true that the Christianity introduced by colonial missionaries barely resembled Chinese Christianity as it existed.
If the Chinese authorities are persecuting him you know what I have to say to that? Good.
Christian missionaries all deserve Sentinel Island treatment. Wherever there were colonizers they were a step ahead of or just behind them.
YES
I had family who was involved in being Christian “missionaries” in Uganda, they successfully got the death penalty instituted for gay people. they would always complain about how they couldn’t get away with shit in China, to which I say, thank goodness.
also if that person is involved in human trafficking, why on earth would I care what happens to him. the survivors of trafficking will have to live with that damage the rest of their lives, if they even survive. so who cares about him
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
BEIJING (AP) — Unable to buy a train ticket, or even see a doctor at a hospital, a Chinese pastor found that even after his release from prison, he is not quite free.
John Sanqiang Cao was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison while coming back from a missionary trip in Myanmar.
Now back in his hometown of Changsha in southern Hunan province, he is without any legal documentation in his country, unable to access even the most basic services without a Chinese identification.
He had studied in the U.S., married an American woman and started a family, but said he felt a calling to go back to his home country and spread the faith.
In the years leading up to his arrest, he had started bringing Chinese missionaries to parts of northern Myanmar that had been impacted by the country’s civil war.
Later in life, the hukou is needed to apply for a national ID card, which is used in everything from getting a phone number to public health insurance.
The original article contains 748 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 77%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
