Crossroads Podcast: Trump’s China Trip And Questions About Religious Freedom
At the heart of Chinese life is a “social-credits system,” fine-tuned in 2019, in which citizens are required to follow 389 rules in daily life, 124 that reward behavior that state authorities consider “good” and 265 that punish “bad” behavior.
Local authorities can be more strict than that, when faced with emergencies — such as the coronavirus pandemic — or disturbing trends, such as the rapid growth of independent religious groups.
The digital framework of this system appears over and over in The Free Press article that served as the hook for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, in a discussion linked to President Donald Trump’s high-stakes visit to Beijing for talks with China's leader Xi Jinping. The headline on that feature: “China vs. God — Underground churches, middle-of-the-night arrests, and an alleged drugging: Frannie Block investigates China’s detention of Pastor Ezra Jin, and the CCP’s war on Christianity.”
The Big Idea for this podcast? The social-credits system shifted into high gear the year after China, in 2018, launched sweeping new regulations to crush religious activities that lacked formal government approval. Digital technology is at the heart of China’s efforts to control the beliefs of its citizens.
Yes, Trump may raise questions about the jailing of Jin and other pastors or even call for their release. However, the president’s China entourage includes a number of Big Tech leaders — such as Apple’s Tim Cook and Elon Musk of Tesla and X — who have professional and personal reasons for wanting China to be less authoritarian on matters of speech and digital information.
Any concessions that China makes on Internet issues will also affect freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. Consider this long, detailed passage about Jin and one of his ministerial colleagues, Pastor Sean Long. It weaves several of these issues into one thread. After 2018:
The Bible could no longer be sold on the internet, and churches were forced to display banners with Chinese Communist Party slogans, and perform the national anthem before singing traditional Christian hymns. … Police threatened to pull the Christian children out of their school and freeze families’ bank accounts if they continued to go to church.
One day in August, the police arrived at Long’s home. He pressed record on his phone before opening the door.
What kind of relationship does he have to the church? they asked Long, according to the recording of the interaction reviewed by The Free Press. Why hadn’t he joined the Three Self Patriotic Movement churches? His denomination was in violation of the state’s new religious regulations, the police said. Long responded calmly: “No state agency, individual, or power can interfere with citizens’ freedom of belief. This is number one. I think this regulation is clearly suspected of violating the constitution and trampling on freedom of belief.”
Long was not arrested, but authorities soon began jailing others. Then there is this important passage about Pastor Jin, the jailed Christian leader whose cause has been openly discussed during preparations for Trump’s trip.
A month after the police interrogated Long, they showed up at Zion Church in Beijing and demanded that Jin place facial-recognition cameras inside the church’s nave. “It is quite creepy,” Long told me, “just like George Orwell’s novel, 1984 said, the Big Brother is watching you everywhere.” Jin refused to comply. The government shut the church down.
Why put digital cameras inside the church?
The Free Press article includes several other passages that point to the importance of the Internet and digital networks in discussions of religious freedom and freedom of conscience in modern China.
For example, why is Jin in prison, along with others? Note this summary:
Along with at least 17 other pastors, Jin is sitting in a prison in Southern China. The clergy face charges including the illegal dissemination of information online. Their real crimes were establishing underground churches, hosting worship sessions, and offering sermons outside of the Communist Party’s strict authority. In China, any deference to an authority higher than the party’s can make you an enemy of the state.
“It’s really just such a strong exhibition that the state cannot tolerate independent belief,” Bill said. “It can’t tolerate any sense of meaning, of spiritual authority, or moral authority outside of what the party wants.”
How did Pastor Jin’s sermons threaten state authorities, even though he was trying to remain apolitical? Note this passage:
After the government shut down Zion in Beijing, Jin got creative. He moved his sermons online. His followers could pop in their headphones anywhere in the country and go on a walk and listen to him and other ministers preach.
During the pandemic, Grace said Jin’s virtual sermons began to fill the void for hundreds of thousands of Christians across the country trying to survive the harsh lockdowns. The church flourished — reaching a membership of more than 10,000 people.
One more digital connection? This was the shoe that dropped just before Pastor Jin vanished into a stark jail cell, with a window open to the elements, and without his Bible or his diabetes medications:
In September 2025, the government passed a law making it illegal to disseminate religious teachings online outside of government-approved websites.
The strength of this report in The Free Press — by investigative reporter Frannie Block — is fresh reporting based on many digital recordings, videos and other information captured on the smartphones of family members and colleagues of the jailed pastors.
It is also important that the story focused on the growing flocks of Protestants and evangelicals in China — an important trend among the estimated 160 million Christians spread out across China. In the past, journalists have tended to focus on government interactions, positive and negative, with the nation’s six to 12 million Catholics. That remains an important, ongoing story.
Meanwhile, China’s systematic persecution of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities has received important coverage by journalists around the world. Activists believe that more than one million Muslims have been detained, tortured, denied freedom to practice their faith or pushed into forced labor (click here for various reports).
When it comes to religious liberty issues in China, all of these persecuted groups are important and worthy of coverage. In this report, The Free Press focused on an often overlooked part of that larger drama.
All of these religious-freedom issues are inevitably connected to the Internet issues that will surface in these new talks between Chinese officials and Big Tech leaders such as Musk and Cook. The connections, to be blunt, are the cables and networks that put the bite, or bytes, in China’s social-credits system that awards citizens who cooperate and punishes those who do not.
Here is one story from the history of Pastor Jim and his family, focusing on their activist daughter, Grace:
As a young child growing up in Beijing, Grace, 31, knew her parents were considered outcasts in Chinese society because of their faith. Grace wasn’t allowed to go to church with her parents, she said, thanks to a law that forbade proselytizing to minors.
In 2001, as a first grader, she was the only one of her classmates not invited to join the Communist Youth League. Every morning, her classmates would line up in the gymnasium, their red scarves tied neatly around their necks, and salute the Chinese flag. Grace had to stand still, her neck bare and her arms by her side. A teacher told her that her faith was “incompatible” with the Chinese Communist Party. “If you just say you’re no longer a Christian,” Grace recalled her teacher telling her, “then you can join.”
Joining the youth league, of course, would influence her future educational options, as well as her ability to be employed in key businesses and industries. She needed to renounce her faith in order to put positive information in the files that would, eventually, end up in the digital social-credit system.
How do social-media platforms such as X fit into this picture? How about the security systems in millions of Apple iPhones, tablets and laptops?
It’s hard to imagine someone like Musk, or maybe even Cook, not asking hard questions about Chinese officials continuing to control the hearts, minds and souls in this manner. And their wallets, as well.
Stay tuned.