China imprisons pastors of prominent churches as crackdown goes on
(The Christian Science Monitor) Two prominent Chinese Protestant pastors were arrested as part of what appears to be the toughest crackdown on civil society since Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.
Gu Yuese, head of China’s largest evangelical congregation, the Chongyi Church in Hangzhou, and his wife, Zhou Lianmei, a Bible teacher, were detained in late January and held incommunicado. Zhou was later released, according to China Aid, a religious freedom advocacy organization.
Days later, Li Guanzhong, who like Gu is a standing committee member of the national council of official Protestant churches, and his wife, Zhang Shuzhen, of Puyang Christian Church, were detained under criminal investigation.
