The CCP’s War on Christian Faith Has Reached America

The Chinese Communist Party is persecuting Christians — in Texas. Zhang Mei spent more than three decades as a lay leader in house church networks in Henan province, China. With pressure against independent Chinese Christian worship escalating, she fled to Dallas where her daughter was attending college. Zhang’s husband remains in China. Zhang made a new life for herself in Texas, worshipping freely in Dallas’ Nations Church Arlington. But it wasn’t long before Chinese authorities reached out across an ocean. Members of the Yueyang Public Security Bureau, the city in Henan where Zhang used to live, repeatedly called Zhang, asking when she intended to return to China, even as they were carrying out raids against house churches in Henan. Subsequently, Zhang’s husband was warned that his retirement pension could be jeopardized if his wife and daughter refused to return to China. Escaping Chinese territory is no longer enough to avoid Beijing’s increasingly intrusive reach. China exerts pressure on its citizens overseas largely through the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), China’s national police apparatus, which is capable of operating abroad. The Mayflower case reportedly involved public security agents. In May 2026, a federal jury convicted Lu Jianwang of acting as an illegal Chinese agent in connection with an MPS-run police station in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Prosecutors proved that Lu and others established the station under orders from an MPS official. The FBI recovered a banner inside identifying it as the “Fuzhou Police Overseas Service Station, New York, USA.” Even more revealing, federal prosecutors have charged dozens of MPS officers associated with the “912 Special Project Working Group,” a unit based in Beijing that used fabricated social-media personas to attack perceived opponents overseas. The Justice Department made no arrests as the offenders had fled to China beforehand. The FBI said the operation sought, among other things, to censor political and religious speech in the United States. Another source of pressure abroad is the United Front Work Department (UFWD). In 2018, China restructured its apparatus of religious regulation so the UFWD controls the State Administration for Religious Affairs, which governs religious practice in China. Beijing explicitly said the merger was intended to strengthen the Party’s “centralized, unified leadership over religious work.” The same 2018 restructuring also placed overseas Chinese affairs under United Front management. In other words, the Party institution responsible for tightening control over religion at home is simultaneously responsible for significant portions of its outreach to Chinese communities abroad. Bob Fu, the Chinese pastor who founded religious freedom advocacy group ChinaAid in 2002, has testified that this overlap is visible inside North American churches. In November 2025, Fu said Chinese consular officials and United Front-linked intermediaries had approached Chinese-speaking churches in the United States and Canada and pressured pastors to display PRC flags during China’s National Day, hold “patriotic” celebrations, sing patriotic songs before worship, avoid discussing persecution in China, and even allow pro-Beijing actors influence over church elder boards. A PATTERN OF PERSECUTION Zhang is by no means the only example of this repression apparatus operating in America. Grace Jin Drexel faced similar harassment. Her father, Pastor Ezra Jin Mingri, founded Beijing’s Zion Church in 2007 with roughly 20 believers. By 2018, it had become one of China’s largest independent churches. In October 2025, authorities arrested him with dozens of Zion pastors and church workers in a sweeping crackdown. Jin was released in July 2026, following US pressure. And while Jin was in a Chinese prison, his daughter in America also faced intimidation. Drexel said that her mother, who lives near Chicago, received a call from someone impersonating a U.S. federal agent. The caller claimed she was implicated in money laundering, pressured her to return voluntarily to China, and manipulated her into sharing her phone screen and contacts. Drexel reported being watched and followed while meeting people in Washington about her father’s case, while her husband faced targeted phishing and cyberattacks. The family installed security cameras around its home. Drexel said her husband began sleeping with a metal bat beside the bed. THE US RESPONSE The Communist Party is not merely denying Christians religious freedom inside China. It is attempting to decide what Chinese Christians may preach, whom they may worship with, and what they may say about their faith after they reach Dallas, Washington, Seoul, or Bangkok. The FBI already classifies coercion of religious minorities, threats against relatives, passport withholding, cyberattacks, stalking, and forced-return schemes as forms of transnational repression. It should go further. It could increase sustained discreet outreach to Chinese-language churches with substantial ex-pat communities, whose congregants may be reluctant to report threats when relatives remain vulnerable in China. Washington should also use the religious-freedom tools it already possesses. The State Department should issue visa bans on Chinese officials who take part in chasing religious refugees across boards. Public security and United Front officials credibly tied to cross-border religious persecution should be investigated by the U.S. government and sanctions applied where warranted. If the US fails to confront China’s efforts to export its repression to the United States, it will only encourage China to continue and increase its extraterritorial persecution further. Samuel Ben-Ur is a research analyst focusing on the Middle East at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).