The Modern Axis of Christian Persecutors

In China, faith in Christ as the only way to heaven is considered “cultist” theology by the government. In Russia, Christians must seek state approval to proselytize and are often refused. In Iran, the state has leveraged its upgraded domestic digital surveillance network to crack down on its Christians. And in North Korea, merely possessing a Bible can land up to three generations of a Christian’s family in a labor camp.

These patterns of oppression may seem unrelated, but in reality they are connected by a technological and ideological alliance against Christianity.

In their new book, Axis of Aggressors: Countering the Cooperation of China, Russia, Iran & North Korea, my colleagues Bradley Bowman, Elaine Dezenski, and Mark Montgomery document how China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are increasingly “cooperating across economic, cyber, technology, and military domains in ways that threaten U.S. security and raise the odds of simultaneous major wars.”

Yet as Axis of Aggressors further explains, cooperation among these four authoritarian countries also serves to reinforce their domestic repression. Though each regime has a different axe to grind, there is at least one group that none can tolerate: Christians. And just as the new Axis cooperates militarily, it is also coordinating the persecution of Christians.

The Ideological Framework of Axis Persecution

The Axis of Aggressors is, among other things, an axis of religious control. It supplies the technology, legal frameworks, and ideological concepts necessary for each state to control, repress, and persecute Christians. The commonality within their persecution, regardless of other characteristics, is that these Axis countries insist their people must not hold any force, even God, above the state. 

During the 2017 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, China and Russia—with Iran, which attended as an observer—expanded the definition of “extremism” to include the legally ambiguous categories of “ideology and practice.” This was in contrast to the 2001 Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism, which had principally defined extremism in objective terms involving violence. This shift gave member governments greater legal latitude to suppress religion even without any violent or criminal activity to prosecute.

While vague, this new terminology closely mirrors Russia’s principal anti-extremism law, which Moscow adopted in 2002 and which includes behavior that incites “religious discord.” 

A year before the 2017 summit, Moscow had pioneered this concept by passing a package of anti-terrorism legislation called the “Yarovaya Laws.” These statutes sharply restricted missionary activity, limited where and by whom evangelism could be conducted, and penalized unauthorized religious outreach.

A few months after the summit in 2017, Beijing—clearly inspired by Moscow—announced its “Five-Year Plan to Sinicize Christianity,” through which it seeks to imbue Christianity with China’s “core socialist values.” Under this program, China uses what it calls xie jiao law, which roughly translates to “cult,” to persecute Christians. The CCP used xie jiao laws in May to send a 77-year-old pastor to three years in prison for such “cult” behavior as believing that faith in Christ leads Christians to heaven.

Similarly, Pyongyang views Christian worship as an “anti-state crime.” Though North Korea is arguably the worst persecutor of Christians in the world, it seeks to maintain a weak façade of religious tolerance. Russia has been instrumental in this regard, aiding North Korea in constructing its only Russian Orthodox church, which is purely for show. It has no permanent congregation and exists only as an international propaganda tool. 

Pyongyang’s fake Russian Orthodox (ROC) church was blessed by the official Russian Orthodox Church, when then-Metropolitan Kirill, who now leads the ROC as Patriarch, traveled to Pyongyang in 2006 and consecrated it. Kirill also ordained North Korea’s first state-approved Orthodox priests. The ROC serves as a propaganda arm of the Kremlin and has built arguably the most effective state-church façade in the world. 

Meanwhile, Tehran has cooperated with Moscow in developing an ideological alternative to universal religious freedom. The ROC and the Iranian religious establishment have maintained a formal Orthodoxy-Islam dialogue since 1995. Iran often calls Christian groups, particularly converts, “extremists,” and has used this language to justify its crackdowns on believers.

At the sixth Russian-Iranian Commission meeting in Tehran in 2010, participants declared that “human rights and freedom cannot be set against religious tradition.” They agreed that the ROC and Iran’s Shiite establishment should develop a concept of “traditional values” and seek its recognition in international law. Patriarch Kirill explained the relationship at the commission’s 12th meeting in 2023 by saying that Orthodox Christians and Muslims shared fundamental values and should work together against Western interference and “extremism.”

Although explicitly framed as religious, “traditional values” is a broad and politically adaptable category whose content is defined by state-aligned Russian and Iranian religious institutions. This formulation is analogous to China’s efforts to Sinicize Christianity, which requires it be subordinated to Beijing’s “core socialist values.”

Chinese Technology Fuels the Axis

China represents the cornerstone of the axis, providing the majority of technology and intelligence to the other members. North Korea in particular has had its persecution of Christians greatly enhanced by China. Pyongyang views all Christian worship as “anti-state crime” and thus seeks the most comprehensive apparatus of oppression.

Chinese authorities have created digital maps to identify support networks for North Korean escapees and track their contact with Christian groups. Beijing often repatriates fleeing North Koreans to Pyongyang, where they then face especially harsh punishment, including torture, forced labor, and possible execution.

Even though UN investigators warned China in 2014 that this information-sharing could constitute aiding and abetting crimes against humanity, Beijing continues this insidious practice to this day.

Similarly, Tehran’s ability to minimize public Christian worship might have faltered had it not been for China. Iran seeks what Bowman, Dezenski, and Montgomery call “sovereign internet,” that is, “the ability and right of the state to control citizens’ access to the internet.” 

In 2021, Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer Tiandy supplied networked video recorders and other surveillance products to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, police, and regular military through an Iranian distributor.  

This technology’s purpose became clear during the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising, when Iranian forces, with the aid of Tiandy cameras, killed at least 551 protesters and bystanders and detained more than 18,000 people.

While Tehran targets all perceived domestic enemies, these Chinese-supplied capabilities strengthen the same security institutions that monitor house churches, track Christian converts, and suppress unauthorized worship.

The U.S. Must Prioritize Christian Persecution by the Axis

Fortunately, the Trump administration has made addressing Christian persecution a significant feature of its foreign policy. Axis of Aggressors includes important insights and practical recommendations that can help protect Christians from authoritarian regimes.

Washington should expand Global Magnitsky sanctions against manufacturers, distributors, security agencies, and financial intermediaries that help authoritarian governments identify converts, monitor house churches, censor religious material, or repatriate Christian escapees. Congress should also heed the book’s proposed “qui tam” mechanism, allowing whistleblowers with credible evidence of sanctions evasion or illicit surveillance transfers to bring cases against these institutions in America’s federal courts on behalf of the U.S. government and receive part of recovered penalties.

Likewise, Washington should utilize its offensive information capabilities to expose the imprisonment of pastors, sham churches, coercive “extremism” and “cult” laws, and the technology that enables religious repression. Finally, it should expand secure internet access, satellite connectivity, and encrypted communications for Iranian Christians, North Korean escapee networks, and underground churches threatened by state surveillance.

For the sake of Christians living under the Axis of Aggressors—and for Christians in countries that might seek to join the Axis in the future—the United States must prioritize religious freedom when confronting these regimes.

Samuel Ben-Ur is a research analyst focusing on Christian persecution at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.