As China Frees Pastor Jin, Christianity Remains a Target

After spending 266 days in a Chinese prison for practicing his faith, Pastor Ezra Jin is now free.

The July 3 release comes weeks after President Donald Trump raised Jin’s case with Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping. While this move may be viewed as a diplomatic gesture, it should also be understood as a carefully calibrated political decision.

Meanwhile, China’s campaign against independent religious practice remains among the most systematic in the world. Protestant house churches continue to be shuttered, Catholic clergy loyal to the Vatican remain under surveillance or detention, and Sinicization — the state policy of forcing religion to conform to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ideology — presses ahead unchanged.

China Makes a Policy of Regulating Christian Practice

Jin was one of 30 church leaders arrested in October 2025 in what was one of China’s largest crackdowns on a single congregation in decades. Eight remain detained. Beijing has 44 million registered Christians, but estimates that include underground house churches run as high as 160 million. Registered Christians belong to one of four official religious bodies.

Since seizing power in 1949, the CCP has often viewed Chinese Christians with suspicion for their ties to Western powers, their history of participating in political uprisings like the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s, and their dissonance with the party’s atheist ideology.

In 2004, China’s State Council passed the Regulations on Religious Affairs (RRA), the CCP’s primary legal instrument for regulating faith. The RRA formalized religious practice under state supervision and established de facto legal recognition of religion. In 2018, Xi reversed the liberalizing momentum the RRA had created.

Sinicization Remains Beijing’s Tactic

Under Xi’s rule, the CCP has expanded efforts to ensure that all religious activity serves the interests of the state. The centerpiece of this effort is Sinicization, a policy requiring religious communities to conform to CCP ideology and national objectives. In practice, Sinicization has meant increased state intervention in religious institutions, including control over clergy appointments, religious education, places of worship, and religious messaging.

For Protestant Christians, this has included demands that churches incorporate patriotic education and display symbols of state authority. For Catholics, Beijing has sought greater control over religious leadership and institutional governance. Tibetan Buddhists and Uyghur Muslims face similar oversight of their religious and cultural practices, overlaid with more overt forms of political control, including genocide in the case of the Uyghurs.

The objective of Sinicization is to ensure that religious identity does not compete with political loyalty to the party. Religious communities that operate independently of state structures continue to be viewed as potential challenges to government authority.

Washington Should Redesignate China a Country of Particular Concern

The United States should judge China’s religious freedom record based on sustained patterns of government behavior, not individual prisoner releases. By that standard, Beijing continues to meet the threshold for designation as a Country of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act.

Redesignation should come with continued accountability measures that include targeted sanctions on officials responsible for religious persecution and restrictions on technologies used to surveil religious communities.

Mariam Wahba is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). For more analysis from Mariam and FDD, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD. Follow Mariam on X @themariamwahba. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security.