by Luke Booker, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Nine Chinese Christians have been sentenced to up to four years in prison and fined amounts up to a million yuan (more than $136,000), according to a religious liberty and human rights magazine.
The charges stem from 2021 arrests, when Christians bought legally published Bibles in Nanjing but were accused by the Chinese government of running a criminal evangelistic enterprise by purposely reselling them below cost, according to Bitter Winter.
The Christians were convicted of illegal business operations because, although the Bibles were legally published, they belonged to an unregistered house church that refused to join China’s government-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement, according to the International Christian Concern.
Earlier this year, the Chinese government boasted about its intensified crackdown on independent religious groups in 2024. “China’s public security authorities intensified efforts to dismantle cult organizations in 2024,” the state-run Global Times reported. “They have worked to curb the growth and spread of cult organizations, mitigating potential threats to national political security and maintaining social stability.”
In the 2025 World Watch List by Open Doors, China is ranked 15th out of 50 for severe Christian persecution, up four spots from the previous year. This rise is due to stricter regulatory enforcement, resulting in the shutdown of unregistered churches and heightened scrutiny of official ones. Open Doors estimates there are about 96.7 million Christians in China.
Since the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, Christianity has experienced significant growth, increasing from 4 million Christians to an estimated 58 million Protestants and 9 million Catholics by 2010.
Despite ongoing intense persecution and strict government controls, current estimates suggest that there are between 80 and 100 million Christians in China, including both officially registered members and those in unregistered house church communities.
Copyright 1999-2026 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
More Worthy News
Iran declared 40 days of public mourning after confirming that 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes on his compound in downtown Tehran.
The U.S. State Department on Monday urged Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen Middle Eastern nations as the war with Iran entered its third day and regional security conditions deteriorated.
Israel announced Monday that it eliminated the head of Hezbollah’s intelligence apparatus in an overnight strike on Beirut, as Lebanon’s government declared it would move to prohibit the terror group’s military activities following a dramatic escalation along the northern border.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is forcefully rejecting claims that the United States and Israel are entering into a prolonged conflict with Iran, declaring that the current military campaign will be swift and decisive.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of plaintiffs in a lawsuit against a California law that allowed public schools to conceal a student’s “gender transitions” from their parents, a policy SCOTUS ruled likely violates the First and Fourteenth amendments.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whom President Donald J. Trump calls “secretary of war,” said Monday that Operation Epic Fury against Iran was “the most lethal, most complex, and most precise aerial operation in history,” though he declined to rule out the possibility of American ground forces becoming involved.
Iran has rejected negotiations with the United States as military escalation spread across the Middle East and into the eastern Mediterranean after the U.S. and Israel began striking the Islamic Republic early Saturday.