The Chinese Communist Party is taking extreme measures to shut down house churches and places of worship in order to halt the fast-growing number of believers in the country, according to Bitter Winter, a magazine about "religious liberty and human rights in China."
One major crackdown method has been tasking local governmental authorities to monitor people of faith in their jurisdictions, the magazine said, adding that they're "forced to take personal responsibility for any failure."
'We have to report our work to the township government twice a day'
"The government is taking the matter of religion very seriously now. Every day, they ask us how many people in our village believe in God. If we say there aren't any believers, they claim that we're concealing what we know and failing to report it. If it is determined that we didn't report the situation truthfully, we will be punished," a grassroots-level official in the central province of Henan told Bitter Winter. "Now, we have to report our work to the township government twice a day. We also need to fill out a form in the evening. We're so busy that we don't have any free time at all." READ MORE
