Analysis of: Underground church says leaders detained as China steps up crackdown
The Guardian | January 11, 2026
The Chinese state's intensifying suppression of unregistered Christian communities reveals a fundamental tension within actually existing socialism: the contradiction between a nominally atheist party-state and the persistent religious consciousness of significant portions of the working class. This crackdown, targeting prominent 'house churches' like Early Rain Covenant Church and Zion Church, represents not merely religious persecution but the state's assertion of total ideological hegemony over civil society. From a materialist perspective, the Communist Party's concern is less about theological doctrine than about organizational independence. These underground churches function as autonomous social formations outside party control—spaces where people gather, organize, and develop solidarity networks independent of state mediation. When Early Rain's leader Li Yingqiang describes the church as 'an organic and vital component' of civil society amid a 'barren' landscape, he identifies precisely what threatens the party: alternative sites of collective identity and potential mobilization. The state's strategy reveals both its power and its limitations. New regulations banning unlicensed online sermons and Xi Jinping's push for 'sinicization of religions' demonstrate the bureaucratic apparatus's reach, yet experts note the impossibility of total eradication. Professor Yang Fenggang's observation that breaking large churches into smaller groups may actually enhance recruitment exposes a dialectical irony: repression may strengthen what it seeks to destroy. The material reality is that an estimated 3% or more of China's population—potentially 40 million people—identify as Christian, representing a social force that cannot simply be legislated away.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Chinese party-state bureaucracy (ruling political class), Religious community members (largely working and middle class), Church leadership (intellectual/professional strata), Public security apparatus (enforcement arm of state), International human rights NGOs (transnational civil society), US Congressional actors (foreign state interests)
Beneficiaries: Party-state apparatus seeking ideological conformity, State-sanctioned religious institutions gaining monopoly position, Security bureaucracy justifying expanded surveillance powers
Harmed Parties: Religious practitioners denied freedom of assembly and worship, Church leaders facing imprisonment and family separation, Broader civil society losing autonomous organizational space, Working-class believers losing community support networks
The party-state holds overwhelming coercive power, deploying police, detention, and catch-all legal charges like 'picking quarrels and provoking trouble' against citizens with minimal institutional recourse. However, the persistence of underground religious practice despite decades of restriction reveals the limits of state power against deeply-held beliefs and community bonds. The international dimension—foreign governments and NGOs monitoring and publicizing repression—creates some friction but limited material constraint on Chinese state action.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Control of ideological reproduction to maintain labor discipline, Churches as alternative welfare and mutual aid networks outside state control, Professional strata (lawyers, scholars like Wang Yi) providing organizational capacity, Cost of surveillance and enforcement apparatus, International economic relationships potentially affected by religious freedom concerns
The conflict is less about direct production relations than about the reproduction of social relations. The party-state requires ideological conformity to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation under 'socialism with Chinese characteristics.' Independent religious organizations represent alternative value systems and solidarity networks that could potentially challenge or complicate worker compliance with party-directed development priorities. Churches also provide material support (welfare, community) that competes with state provision as a source of legitimacy.
Resources at Stake: Physical property (church buildings, meeting spaces), Organizational infrastructure (membership networks, communication channels), Ideological influence over millions of believers, International reputation and soft power, State legitimacy and social stability
Historical Context
Precedents: 2018 crackdown on Early Rain and Zion churches, Cultural Revolution's assault on religious practice (1966-1976), Post-Mao religious revival and state accommodation, Historical patterns of Christian persecution and resilience globally, Soviet Union's complex relationship with Russian Orthodox Church
This crackdown fits a recurring pattern in state-socialist systems: periodic oscillation between tolerance and repression of religious practice based on perceived threats to party authority. The Chinese state's approach mirrors historical moments when communist parties, unable to eliminate religion through education and economic development alone, resort to coercion. Xi Jinping's consolidation of personal power has coincided with reduced tolerance for any autonomous social organization, religious or otherwise. The specific targeting of churches that maintained 'afterlives as online communities' reflects how digital technology has created new terrains of ideological struggle.
Contradictions
Primary: The fundamental contradiction lies between the party-state's claim to represent the people's interests while suppressing authentic popular religious expression—revealing the tension between bureaucratic control and genuine popular sovereignty in actually existing socialism.
Secondary: Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom versus practical elimination of non-sanctioned worship, Atheist ideology versus religion's persistent appeal to significant working-class populations, Desire to crush organized churches versus recognition that fragmentation may strengthen grassroots growth, Need for social stability versus repression that generates resistance and international criticism, Sinicization policy attempting nationalist integration while creating alienation
The dialectical trajectory suggests neither total state victory nor church triumph. Repression will likely fragment larger organizations into smaller, more dispersed networks—potentially more resilient and harder to monitor. The state may achieve short-term control while generating long-term adaptation. Economic development, urbanization, and persistent material insecurity may continue fueling religious growth despite repression. The contradiction may only be resolved through either genuine democratization of the party-state (allowing civil society autonomy) or escalating authoritarianism that risks broader social instability.
Global Interconnections
This crackdown connects to global patterns of authoritarian consolidation and the worldwide tension between state power and civil society autonomy. China's approach influences and is influenced by other states managing religious pluralism, from Russia's Orthodox nationalism to India's Hindu majoritarianism. The involvement of US Congressional committees and international NGOs situates this domestic repression within great-power competition, where religious freedom becomes both a genuine human rights concern and a geopolitical instrument. The digital dimension—banning online sermons, churches maintaining 'online communities'—reflects how surveillance capitalism and state digital control reshape possibilities for organization everywhere. More broadly, this story illuminates how nominally socialist states can reproduce forms of domination that mirror capitalist societies' suppression of worker organization. The party-state's treatment of churches parallels how capitalist states and corporations oppose independent unions and social movements that challenge managerial prerogatives. In both systems, the ruling apparatus—whether party bureaucracy or capitalist class—views autonomous working-class organization as a threat requiring containment.
Conclusion
The suppression of China's house churches reveals the profound limitations of top-down state socialism that substitutes party control for genuine popular power. For working-class communities, religious institutions often provide what both capitalist and bureaucratic-socialist systems fail to deliver: authentic solidarity, mutual aid, and meaning beyond material production. The persistence of these communities despite decades of repression demonstrates that human needs for connection and transcendence cannot simply be administered away. The trajectory of this struggle will depend on whether Chinese workers and believers can find ways to defend autonomous spaces for organization—religious and secular alike—against a state apparatus that tolerates no rivals. The international left must grapple seriously with this contradiction rather than reflexively defending state action, recognizing that genuine liberation requires freedom of association and conscience that neither capitalist nor bureaucratic systems consistently provide.
Editorial Note: This analysis applies a dialectical materialist framework to news events. It represents one interpretive perspective and should not be considered objective reporting.
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