By Aaron Earls
John Sanqiang Cao rode a bamboo raft back across a river into China after helping Myanmar Christians as he had for years. But the trip last March ended up much differently.
Chinese security agents waiting for him as he returned to shore apprehended Cao. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for “organizing others to illegally cross the border,” a charge the AP says is more commonly applied to human traffickers.
Cao has been prominently involved in the Chinese house church movement, and that may have been what made him a target.
“I suspect (Cao) was singled out for this arrest,” Xi Lian, a Duke University scholar of Christianity in China, told AP.
Lian said other pastors with “lower visibility” have been being doing similar work without consequence, but Cao’s prominence and house church involvement made him “the kind of person that may make the Chinese government nervous.”
Cao became a Christian after meeting an American Christian couple who came to his hometown as tourists. They gave him his first Bible and wrote letters with him about his newfound faith.
Later, he told the couple that he felt called to be a pastor in China after listening to radio broadcasts from Billy Graham.
He married an American woman, completed seminary training in the United States, previously pastored a Chinese-American congregation in North Carolina, and is a legal permanent resident of the United States.
But he split time between the two countries, retaining his Chinese citizenship to aid in his religious and charity work in China and Myanmar.
“Nothing my father organized was ever political,” said Ben Cao, the arrested pastor’s 23-year-old American son. “It was always just religious or charitable. We hope that China will be merciful and see that my father’s intentions were good.”
Bob Fu, the elder Cao’s friend and Christian rights activist, said the arrest reflects a more aggressive approach to religious freedom under Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“In the past when they talked about foreign infiltration, they were referring to the activities of foreign missionaries inside China, but that has now expanded to include Chinese missionaries going overseas,” Fu said.
The expanded religious persecution in China has recently included banning online Bible sales and destroying the church building of a 50,000-person congregation.
AARON EARLS (@WardrobeDoor) is online editor of Facts & Trends.