International Christian Concern (ICC) works vigorously to track persecution all around the world. In 2020, ICC published a report on China and the restrictions that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) puts on Christians. With it, ICC published an incident tracker summarizing specific events in which the Chinese government targeted Christians for practicing their faith in the year leading up to July 2020. This targeting takes many forms, including Sinicization, the closure or demolition of places of worship, the arrest of Christians, social pressure, and the utilization of its legal framework to restrict legitimate religious activity.
Again, in 2021, ICC has tracked incidents of persecution in China and compiled them in this report. Picking up where the 2020 report left off—at the beginning of July 2020—this report summarizes ICC reporting on the topic in the last year. While the data included in this report began in July 2020, given the limitations of reporting from China where reports often are delayed due to security concerns some incidents could be traced back to as early as March 2020. Most of these reports are based on information from China Aid, Bitter Winter, Radio Free Asia, and Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness.
Readers should note that the number of incidents recorded below does not represent the complete number of cases that took place. For example, even if hundreds of crosses were removed, this report would record it as a single incident if it happened all at once. In addition, while the data here is correct to our best knowledge there could be many cases that were not recorded in this report.
Supplementing the incident tracker below is a map which displays the incidents visually.
