American Thought Leaders - How the CCP Dehumanizes Christians in China | Pastor Bob Fu

Episode Date: March 7, 2026

Pastor Bob Fu was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement and later led an underground Chinese house church. In 1996, he was imprisoned for “illegal evangelism.”He later fled China and came to the United States, where he founded ChinaAid, a Christian human‑rights organization that documents cases of persecution, provides legal aid, and advocates for religious freedom in China.In this episode, we dive into the escalation of religious persecution in recent years in China, including the growing dehumanization of Christians.Echoing Mao Zedong’s targeting of “five black classes” during the Cultural Revolution, in 2012, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders labelled Christian underground churches as one of five new “black classes” or black categories.Fu says that the CCP’s leadership is determined to destroy the positive image that Chinese people have of Christian believers.“Xi Jinping wants to play God,” Fu says. “The Communist Party treats these people as a threat to the regime’s existence. The goal is to eradicate Christian faith from the map of China.”We also discuss a case now at the Supreme Court, Cisco v. Doe, which could have important repercussions for American companies that enable China’s human rights atrocities.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The goal is to really eradicate Christian faith. This is a deliberate destruction of your conscience. Pastor Bob Fu is the founder and president of China Aid. He was a student leader during the 1989 Pro-Democracy Student Movement in China and later became a member of an underground house church. In 1996, he was imprisoned for, quote, illegal evangelism. It used to be called a faith recognition. Now they're called a form recognition system.

Based on when you walk or move, then based on that pattern, they would quickly recognize there was a religious gathering. How is the CCP escalating its tactics to persecute Christians and other religious groups? A communist party of China regime has no authority to nominate a Catholic bishop, and yet the Vatican chose to dance with the war. with a wolf. This is American Thought Leaders and I'm Jan Yekjekyllic. Bob Fu, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.

Thank you, Jan, for having me again. Bob, we were talking just a couple of days ago about persecution of religious minorities in China and I mentioned that I saw, anecdotally, what looked to me like an increase in dehumanizing rhetoric against Christians in the Chinese propaganda, so-called media. And when I said that, you said that you're seeing this as well, which kind of freaked me out, to be perfectly honest. I just want you to explain to me what it is that you're seeing.

This is, in fact, what precipitated this interview. Yes, John, what I have seen also in the context of the dramatic escalation of religious persecution under Xi Jinping, especially in recent years. The kind of dehumanization from treatment to the government propaganda also deepens. So that is a new kind of way to see this worst persecution in. against religious minorities across the spectrum. So not only really just Falun practitioners since 1999, but now it has reached to other religious minorities.

We certainly have seen what has been happening toward the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region and now we have heard and received stories after stories about the mistreatment against Christian house church members leaders and the independent Catholic clergy people and even the Tibetan And so I think this is a very serious development that is happening now. So let me touch a little bit on this, the rhetoric part. The reason I am so concerned with the dehumanizing rhetoric ramping up is because that's always sort of a prequel to atrocity crimes. And we've seen this phenomenon for those of us that look at crimes.

against humanity often. There's always that part that happens because, you know, basically even in whatever society, whatever totalitarian dictatorship, most people are not psychopaths and they need to be kind of tricked in their minds into treating someone or a group as less than or other or maybe they're bad, they're doing bad things, they're harming society. This is always how it's always portrayed. Or they're lesser than I am. they're kind of less important.

And so, yes, as you pointed out, right, this is what was done to the Falun Gong in 1999 with massive propaganda being pushed through the system, but also to ethnic minorities, to the Tibetans and Uyghurs in particular who are kind of demoted, right, in terms of their level of humanity in the rhetoric itself. Can you give me some examples maybe

of what you've seen with Christians in this respect? Yes, certainly. I mean, what you and I talked really reminded me about the so-called, you know, the black categories, Hei-Wle. You know, back to 1960s, actually a little earlier, that after the communists took power and the chairman of all, I mean, kind of labeled things. There are five different categories of people. They call the black categories,

Hey Wulay. They are the landlord, the wealthy, De Fu, Fan, means the counter-revolutionaries, Huai means just bad people, and you means the rightist. So the whole world actually,

had witnessed how horrible, I mean, those people who were mistreated and really like a subhuman being under these five black categories. If you were classified as a landlord like my neighbor, In my childhood home when I grew up, who was classified as a former landlord or counter-relutionary. I remember like, you know, five, six o'clock in the morning, I always heard the party secretary of my village. I mean, started shouting up, yelling to my neighbor said, get out, it's time to sweep the street. Then I could hear, you know, the door. opened and then the main street of our village was being like a swept inch by inch by that of my neighbor I even called him grandpa according to the generation gap so he was really treated

like a scum like a piece of scum like does not constitute a worthy of existence I mean it's kind of in essence it was like a communist party engineered slavery system and now I mean I think it's back to maybe ten years or a little bit earlier according to a communist party controlled think tank leader, Mr. Yuanpong. He was the director of Institute American Studies under the so-called Institute of Contemporary International Relations, which is totally founded and controlled by the Ministry

for State Security, Guo Anbo. He classified a new black categories. And you know, Yang, you may have heard about this. But the new so-called black categories, the illegal religious or underground religious groups, that's one of the categories. And also practitioners, of course, political dissidents, and human rights lawyers, and, I mean, just the five different new categories. I mean, basically, he make these five new categories single out.

It's just those people like not worthy to be called Chinese citizens. And of course, for the Chinese Christians, we all know how they have been mistreated. I remembered even in back to 2002 when I received a stack of handwritten testimonies about torture from mostly a group of Christian ladies who was tortured in most human nature. I mean, those Christian ladies, I think at least I still have that, you know, return form, they use their own blood, you know, finger blood, just fingerprinted, and basically testifying how truthful they shared. I mean, from strip off their clothes totally naked to like eight, the electric shock buttons, touching them from the head to toe, and including their private parts.

And one lady even described she was taken to a provincial police academy in a dorm, like a four or five police man half naked and basically put her naked and start torching her and until, I mean, with the electric shock buttons. And she was crying out, basically asking the Lord to take her life. I mean, you and I, you know, we know our Christian faith. We, we, we, um, rarely heard any Christians would commit suicide and that is doctrinally not even allowed. But she just was tortured so severely. She was asking the Lord to take her life that she said she would rather to be in the presence of the Lord than being tortured that way. And then all of a sudden, an electric shock baton was put into her mouth, into her mouth. And she passed it out.

And then she was taken even to a ER room in the local hospital. Even the local, I mean, the hospital nurse starts rebuking this policeman and said, you know, what did she do, you know, any wrong for this. young lady to warrant such a torture against this lady. And, you know, I also read testimonies like that, you know, that the one Christian lady during her interrogation. The interrogator specifically put kind of a piece of paper. I write a paper. I write a a letter God or like force her to stoop on the name of God. I mean, you see, this is like a purposely deliberate destruction of your conscience by force.

They try to, I mean, remind me, of course, what happened to some Falun practitioners, right? and they wanted when during the the interrogation they put the mr. li hong zhir's name or picture there and then i have read testimonies of these Tibetan monks and who were forced to do the same thing on the portrait and picture of Dalai Lama basically to to step on and have to shot a slogan like something utter hatred toward their spiritual leader. This kind of treatment is in alignment with the similar Communist Party's ideology and doctrine. I know you have a book coming out, analyze from the very deep theological or theoretical analysis,

why communism kind of in the end is the source of this kind of evil. So I've seen, I mean, even as recent as just in 2025, when the Xi Jinping launched the largest wave of persecution against an urban house church movement like the Zion Church. many of their family members were being mistreated that way too. I mean, like one of the house church pastors from Zion Church in Beijing, when he was being arrested and put a handcuff, and her mom, I mean, who was a very elderly lady,

was in front of him and had a heart attack. I mean, even in the most kind of ordinary circumstance, you know, you would let the son at least to comfort his mom a little bit who was dying, right? No, I mean, those state security agents did not even allow this pastor to take care of his dying mom. and somebody else had to call an ambulance to rescue her in the emergency room in the local hospital. And you have seen the family members went to the Bayhai City, you know, number one, number two detention center, where the 18 arrested are being held. So I think this is happening across the board. Well, let me tell you what's on my mind, right?

And thank you for referencing Killed to Order my book. Indeed, a big part of it is trying to explain to people the nature of that system and why this forced organ harvesting industry that exists is sort of a feature, not a bug of it, so to speak. But, you know, I keep thinking about this, right? when this organ harvesting industry was started, right? It was started immediately after the communists just put massive propaganda into the system to dehumanize the Falun Gong practitioners to make their fellow man, so to speak, hate them

and look at them as lower, as I was saying, right? And then when no one really did anything about it for 14 or 15 years, they did the same thing to the Uyghur people. They, of course, isolated area in the northwest of China under military control, they pushed more of that dehumanizing rhetoric into the system. They incarcerated millions of them now and started using them in the organ industry. Actually, Ethan Gutman has a very important book coming out very soon called The Xinjiang Procedure, trying to assess more of the details of how that played out. But, you know, as I'm watching, right, you know, it's this kind of the nameler poem comes to my mind, right?

You know, it started, first they came for the Jews, but I wasn't a Jew, so I didn't do anything. It kind of goes on like that, right? And now I'm concerned, you know, to be honest, as I'm seeing and you're kind of validating that there's this increased rhetoric, dehumanizing rhetoric against Christians. And of course, the persecution is very clear, you know, the whole Zion Church being wrapped up. rolled up. There's all these leaders still in prison. There's these increased controls on the Catholic clergy. I think I saw that come from China Aid, from your organization. You know, there's this whole kind of ramping up happening. And, you know, maybe it's time for us to kind of challenge this, this whole horror show. At the very least, you know, reduce our own complicity in some of these

extreme atrocity crimes, lest they start happening to yet another group. That that's what I'm thinking. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like if you read these Communist Party rhetoric and terms, you couldn't help but concluding on the treat those that in their eyes as a dissidents or evil cult members or now the new term of the new term of the the inciting of a state subversion of state power, in recent weeks against the early-Reyn Covenant Church, seven of them, and at least four are formally arrested

under this charge or use the term fraud against those Christian leaders in many provinces, like in Shanxi province in Linfen City, just last June alone. sentenced this one church, the 12 church leaders received 15 years, 10 years, and 8 years. I mean, 12, all of them were sentenced for basically, you know, as a peaceful church leaders. And so they are, I mean, the term they often used is they call it, think syshian,

truanhuanhua, means like mind transformation. Or, I mean, they treat you treat this, this really peaceful, loving people, faith as like genia peak, like a little, you know, mice in the lab, that they can change your behavior. I mean, the only difference is one, these animals they put in the lab to control the behavior through medicine or other medical control. The other is of this human being. They cage you in the concentration camp to the mind control transformation centers all over China.

and I think basically they're doing the same kind of practice and experiment like the Nazis to the Druze in the 1930s to 40s. Don't we think there's similarities behind this thinking? Bob, when you were describing this new classification system of black classes that was created a while back, one thing that struck me it might not be obvious to everybody, but you talked about underground religions becoming one

of those black classes. And that, of course, refers to the House Church Christian group specifically. That's kind of their description, as I understand it. That's correct. So, I mean, basically, you're saying that that's,

that was kind of the genesis of this particular focus and kind of increased rhetoric and increased fixation on persecution? Yes, I think that was the genesis for the CCP's targeted campaign. Why now, why is there this, why do you think there's this increased dehumanizing rhetoric kind of starting really to bubble up now? I mean, I don't want to overly spiritualize, but there is a spiritual factor as Christians, you know,

It was, I mean, still is, a battle between the darkness and light. I mean, I think the amount of corruption and darkness among this CCP system really could not tolerate a group of peaceful, genuine, loving, caring, bright people of faith. I mean, the Christians in 2008, when the Wenchuan earthquake happened, they're the first group. I mean, even like they're being classified as illegal. They drove their tractors and riding bicycles. I mean, from all over China to Vangchuan in Sichuan province. That's where actually the early Roman covenant church in Chongdu. So near Chengdu, even the Ministry of Civil Affairs actually in public in their announcement

praising the Chinese Christians who are the first group of rescuers with hundreds of thousands, when there are some even migrant there to take care of those orphans who are the parents were buried and died, and some started schools for them, some are still living there. And yet, after a few months, you know, the first group of rescuers to the earthquake areas were targeted, are Christians again. So the Communist Party called it a mind and heart battle. They feel like the generosity, the love, the care of Christians have successfully brought or changed the heart of mind, of the perception of Christians in the earthquake-reliquake affected areas that the Communist Party cannot bear for that change. and they want to basically destroy that, the positive image of Christian faith. And second, I think everything is political in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party.

And in essence, when Xi Jinping wants to play God, the true triune in the Bible that those Christians believe, have become, at least regarded as infidels, as like not true patriotic citizens who refuse to worship and bow to Xi Jinping's portrait imposing the church, and synagogue, or temples. So to them, to the Communist Party loyalists, Xi Jinping's followers, this constitute a betrieble or like the disloyalty to the absolute command of the Communist Party.

So they are not really tolerating the existence of this group. So that's why I made a conclusion that unlike the past waves of persecution, launched from the beginning of the Communist Party taking power in 1949. This new wave, the goal is to really eradicate Christian faith, from the map of China. But we all know they will fail and fail miserably, because historically how many Caesars in Roman Empire tried, but failed miserably. And even in the history of People's Republic of China,

the multiple political leaders had tried, but again, failed miserably, and even the revival of the church has happened instead of demise or destruction of the church. But they want to try anyway. So I think that's how I can see or interpret what they're doing. Well, and there's this, it strikes me that there's this really kind of, I don't know what we call it, increased insecurity. Like we have, you know, of course with the Zion Church,

It was a fascinating situation, right? Because when COVID happened, they took all of their operations online, right? In actually a very public way, which is kind of, you know, almost surprising. And then, but what they did was they didn't, you know, they weren't, say, like the Falun Gong practitioners where they're actively asking people to quit the Communist Party and, you know, revealing the crimes of communism or something like that. This is in, at the Zion Church, people were just simply, you know,

practicing their faith in a very basic way, going to having these church services and so forth. And really, as Grace Jean recently explained to me, right, like really trying to minimize anything that could possibly be considered a problem by the regime. But that actually wasn't enough because, you know, in this context of an online church, all sorts of people, it spoke to a whole lot of people and a whole lot of people wanted to join this, right? And even in this sort of, you know, extremely careful environment, the regime had to jump in and basically crush it and, you know, jail the leadership and, and as far as I can tell, you know, push more of this sort of language and way of thinking that would, you know, make us,

make the population hate and, you know, dislike these people, be suspicious of them, right? This what they always excel at doing. That's right. I mean, it's in a sense the Communist Party treat these people as the threat to the regime's existence. I mean, I know when the Hujenthal's time, even in public speaking, I mean, he mentioned about like the internet freedom is the existential threat to the Communist Party. I mean, to them if the lozen or allow the internet freedom, the regime will face a death sentence. I mean, I think now it implies with those they called new black capital,

categories, the Hewoulet, you know, the underground church leaders, the human rights lawyers, like, you know, Gao Zhishong. I mean, we, I'm holding this book, you know, published by the American Bar Association, who awarded Gao Zhum as the best, most courageous lawyer in China. And just simply, I mean, for taking up cases of, according to the Chinese own law, to defend Falun practitioners, Christians in the court of law. I mean, this man, I mean, suffered first ten years of non-stop torture. I mean, any human being cannot imagine. 10 years, this is a record that after he was released, of course, now he has been under enforced disappearance for another 8 and 1 half years.

So, I mean, this is a real patriot in any standard, a real hero for any normal society, but in the eyes of the country. Communist Party and he is regarded as a cancer does not even deserve to have a voice, to have even a basic announcement of whether he was where he is, dead or alive to his family members. For eight and half years already, this man has been missing. and he's an American citizen, a wife and daughter has been searching and calling for just a basic the whereabout of their loved ones, called Jashon. So this is, I think, one example, very, I think, real illustration of what's happening now in China today.

if you are classified as like a danger to the so-called political stability and regime, security, you name them, and then you are subject to this kind of treatment. Yeah, Gao Jasheng, I mean, one of the true heroes of, you know, freedom and religious liberty and just fighting for the common man. It was heartbreaking that we don't, I mean, I don't think we even really know if he's dead or alive at this point because no one has seen him in so many years. Yeah, I mean, he even talked to me right before he was last time disappeared,

forced under force about some of his tortures, most torturous moment. Like in a cave, underground cave, he was, put naked and with three or four electric shock buttons, torturing him, and he made a very instant prayer, and then he sensed an enormous, like a supernatural shield, surrounding, holding him, and an unspeakable peace he felt, and he fell asleep quickly, and he can smell you know, the burning of his skin, but he did not feel any pain physically and mentally at all.

And to the point he not only fell to sleep, but he starts snoring. Because those several interrogators, I mean, who were torturing him, kind of woke him up and kind of rebuking him sarcastically, sarcastically, said, oh, we are working so hard, like here, you know, wet with sweat, and you are sleeping and snoring. What happened? Like, why? And then Galdosun uttered word exactly almost word by word of the first John.

in the New Testament, something like, you know, the one who is inside me is much greater or powerful than you have or what you have or something like that, the whole world outside. So there is a, yeah, the exact quote from that Bible, the scripture. But it also tells, right, to what extent, I mean, these torturers want to break your nerve, I mean, treat people, you know, like Gao Zhishong, who is called the conscience of China. Essentially, they want to destroy the conscience of China so that a jungle world can be the north. for the Communist Party to operate. It's incredibly shocking to me how cruelly the communist treat what in our society would be considered, you know, the best people, I would think. You know, something also struck me as you were speaking about this sort of the free information

being kind of a death knell for the Chinese Communist Party. And that's very interesting because we actually have the tools. I know because, for example, at Epoch Times, we have multiple firewall breaking tools that we use all the time that could facilitate, I think, almost unlimited firewall breaking if there was an interest in that, right? We use it as much as we can, so to speak. But these methods exist, and it's incredibly important

how threatening the idea of free speech and free information is to the communist regime because I often say that their ability to disseminate convincing propaganda is probably the thing that every communist regime is the best at, okay, of anything, because they'll convince you that, you know, that it's a huge success, that it's a, you know, utopian society, that the technological advancement is next level. that economically they're a powerhouse, you know, whatever it is, right? And the reality, of course, is much more complicated and often opposite than the thing that you've learned.

I actually recently spoke with a researcher that's been working with a case that happens to be at the Supreme Court right now, Cisco V. Doe, a fascinating case involving the development of what's called the golden shield of which part of which this censorship, what's called the Great Firewall of China, is a part. Okay, let's run this tape and I want to get your reaction to it. Ken, you're a researcher with the Human Rights Law Foundation, and you've been working on this case now at the Supreme Court, Cisco V. Doe for the better part of 15 years. It's amazing actually how long it's been going. You've found some kind of startling new evidence. Before we go there, this case involves the Great Firewall of China, how it was built.

And actually, in fact, the Golden Shield Project. Why don't you actually explain to me how this Great Firewall of China and Golden Shield project are connected and what it in fact is? For sure. So I think there's a very common misconception out there that the Golden Shield is just the Great Firewall of China. It's just a censorship software. The truth is that it's not. The Golden Shield is a comprehensive surveillance system that spans across the entire China

that's built at every single level of public security from the ministerial, the provincial, to the local levels, that maintains lifetime profiles of every single person in China. You know, has your family information, what websites you've seen, who have you been dating, where you work, all of that information in a centralized database that allows the Chinese government to monitor and surveil all of its citizens. But what's the connection of that with the social credit system?

It's a part of it. The social credit system collects, you know, information from big swathor of society, crunches that information, generates a score, and that is, you know, that input, that detection system comes directly from the golden shield. and all of the information that it collects. Explain to me why this case was brought and how we got to the Supreme Court. So according to the complaint, the core allegation is that Cisco, it's an American company from American soil,

has helped the Chinese Communist government develop, build, customize, and implement a far-ranging surveillance system specifically targeted at the Falun Gong. And that system was in fact used by Chinese security to actually identify, arrest, surveil, and ultimately persecute and force transform those Falun Gong practitioners.

So the case has been going on for quite a while now. It started way back in 2008 when allegations, Cisco internal presentations were found in publicly disclosed, publicly disclosed showing that they had targeted Falun Gong in their own internal materials. So Cisco was brought into the U.S. Congress for questioning. So we spent about three years or so collecting evidence from both, you know, within Cisco, you know, came from whistleblowers, from other people who had knowledge of what was going on in China. A hearing was held in what we called the motion to dismiss phase in California in 20,

2014 and the district court there actually supported Coinbase's case to dismiss motion to dismiss we appealed that decision so the knife circuit basically said that you know we had presented enough allegations that allows that the lawsuit to actually proceed Cisco appealed that decision and now it's in front of the Supreme Court and in fact if I can just quickly read quote from the Knife Circuit decision, I quote, according to the complaint, the centralization of information and integration of security systems not only help Chinese security officials with the tracking identification of individual practitioners, but also provide a system through which officials

could track the progression of a given fall and gun practitioner from detection to force conversion to post-detention and post-conversion surveillance. So it's a system that's not just about identifying and tracking them, but also continues the entire life cycle of, you know, forced conversion in sort of the parlance of the CCP using threats, using information about what they, you know, who they are, who their family members are, who their kids are, where their kids go to school to persecute them. And the documents, the evidence that we have, provides pretty clear corroboration of that, you know, that this is what Cisco had held, Chinese Communist Party build. It provides corroboration of the, you know, the sort of interconnected

network that conducts this full-scale cross-pen society surveillance, collecting that information, putting into databases, passing it out to psychiatric hospitals, black jails, detention centers where Falun Gong practitioners are persecuted. With the Falun Gong information databases that Cisco connected to all of these, you know, sites of torture, it's clearly corroborated by some of the other evidence that we have. Well, and you've actually found some new evidence that the specifications of the system, right, from the Ministry of Security, if I understand this correctly, actually include the same sort of structure for House Church Christians and other groups. Yes, for sure. So the case was brought by Falun Gong practitioners. So,

So we've sort of initially focused on the Falun Gong aspects of the system, but among the thousands and thousands of pages that we've been scouring through, we found evidence that you know, a lot of the same systems that have been created to target the Falun Gong also applies to other dissidents. Among the evidence, and we have a couple, there's a Cisco internal document as well there's a 2000 page sort of you know overview and and uh design sort of specifications for the golden shield that corroborates a lot of this um uh you know what cisco had built uh for the chinese communist government um and and for instance we found a very specific work stream in the golden shield that relates to the underground christian and catholic churches how those users would be

identified on the internet, how they would be tracked, how they would be, you know, surveilled and monitored, and ultimately how that information would be stored and used by the public security for, you know, their purposes. What it means is that this case, it's not just about the Falun Gong. It has much broader implications. First of all, you know, it affects every other minority, every other persecuted group in China, the Tibetans, the Catholics, the Christians, the Uyghurs, the Mongolians, the Democratic activists. It's a very broad surveillance system that has been created in China with the help of Cisco that really allows them to cast this extremely wide surveillance network over dissidents in China as well as even

folks, you know, what they're doing outside of China as well. Ken Sun, thank you so much. Yeah, I mean, first of all, I think it shows this so-called golden shield. As your guest said, is not only just internet censorship software. It is really beyond that, it's a comprehensive. program really to target, I mean, the whole population for the control, the absolute control by the Communist Party. So, I mean, it's kind of the Ovalian's, the, the software, the software, to help realize the Ovalian system.

Number two is I think I see it's not only just targeting one group. Of course, I think the system is designed. They can target a particular group or age group or ethnic group or religious group. But obviously, this technology. is applying to every other religious groups, specifically even mentioned about the underground independent house churches, Catholics, and other groups too.

So I have received reports actually even showing the kind of increasing qualitatively the level of control and monitoring. The Greek Jean, the daughter of the Zion Church, Pastor Ezra Jin, even shared me a story with me. She said, when she returned to China, of course, she was grounded, not allowed to come back to the US for a couple years.

But she experienced in person, that time, At that time, the Beijing Zion Church, they were gathering together on a weekly basis. To her surprise, she said at that time, it was just barely a few years ago, when the police or public security agents read it them, of course, all the phones, the computers were confiscated or being taken away. And in the past, when the similar read happened, usually the first thing, the public security agents would order those members of their church

is to give up their passwords of their phone or computer. But at that time, Grace observed that this public security, agents did not make that request anymore. Because before the confiscated their phone or their computers, it seems clearly the public security officers, even in front of the arrested members, they were able to just unlock their phone like this quick quick. They know exactly their password or they already have a kind of monitoring or decoding

system so fast they don't even need to ask at all. So they're now developed this technology not only used to be called face recognition, you know, technology or cameras or videos. Now you rely on the big data, they call the form, like figure recognition system. Based on the way every human being, when you walk or move, each one apparently have a unique way of walking or moving around. And just based on that, they don't need your face or ear or any other biological feature. just on that pattern for moving. They would recognize you, both individually, and also as a group.

If a church or if some members, like by nine o'clock every evening or every Saturday or Sunday, they gather on the street corner of one street, and then based on that pattern, they would quickly recognize there was illegal so-called religious gathering or underground house church gatherings. So they pinpoint that very quickly. I mean, I think the modern, unfortunately, those technological giants in the

West played a rule in helping or enabling the Chinese Communist Party in their development of this horrible system. If you were to summarize for me the current reality for Christians, I want to get like a kind of summarize for me the overall picture in China for Christians right now and how this compares to 10 years ago. Compared to 10 years ago, I think of the persecution of both the, um, the, um, the, um, the, um, the, um, the, um, quality of persecution and the quantity like the number of being persecuted had been dramatically increased. Of course, the Communist Party, coupled with the modern new technology, our wrapping up is a level of persecution we have never seen, really. in the previous like 10 years ago.

And of course, also the Communist Party making this new regulations laws just purposely designed to trap or criminalize those Chinese independent churches and church leaders to punish them. in some cases in very unprecedented ways, you know, like 15 years imprisonment is nothing but a peaceful church leader like a pastor Yang Rung Lee. She was a former college professor and turned to be a house church leader and the Communist Party just using their church, her church, like past 30 years worth of the believers tithing and offering, about 20 some million yuan altogether in 30 years,

and then put on her head as a fraud. She was accused as the head of a fraud case, and her husband, Pastor Wang Xia Wang received for nine years and 10 months imprisonment, and other 10, 10, of the leaders received different years of criminal sentence. So this is very unprecedented. She served previously for seven years already

and for leading her house church. But this 15 years is almost like what Jimmy Le received this 20 years, as a 78-year-old gentleman, Catholic believer in Hong Kong, just because, you know, as a supporter of the Hong Kong peaceful protests against the communist repression in Hong Kong, I mean, received 20 years. It's essentially a death sentence, right? So I think that a lot of new features, of course, the Communist Party has, demonstrated in their new crackdown. But this is kind of a summary of what's happening.

But, I mean, again, I'm not pessimistic in terms of the revival and church growth. Even with this unprecedented wave of a new persecution under SIG-NPin, I think the church will continue to grow and increase. instead of demise or destruction wished by the Communist Party. Listen, given everything you've just told me, what do you make of this Vatican-China deal? Yeah, the Vatican so-called China secret deal, I mean, to me, both through the historical length and what's happening in reality on the ground under this secret deal, it shows it was a total retrieval toward the independent Catholic Church members and church leaders. And this under this secret deal, I mean, we don't know all the details, but obviously the Vatican for the

the first time yield is so authority to nominate and vet and also appoint the Vatican's, I mean the Catholic church leaders in China to the Communist Party. I mean, atheistic, repressive Communist Party of China regime has no authority, no qualification to nominate a Catholic bishop, right? I mean, that's almost a common sense. And yet, in order to yield the pressure by the Communist Party and accommodating the Communist parties, I think even economic and diplomatic pressure,

the Vatican chose to dance with the wolf, that's a huge compromise. I mean, just seeing the unrelending persecution against the Catholic Church and the believers in China, there are a number of bishops are still either in forced disappearance or in prison for like 12 years, 15 years, 20 years, still has no freedom and continue those church leaders under the Cs. the CCP's regime's repression. This is, I mean, it's such a mystery because as you point out, it's not like this deal, presumably the deal was crafted to, you know,

lower the pressure on the Catholics in China, except that the persecution of Catholics has only increased since the deal. This is kind of, it kind of leaves me with my scratch, scratching my head, basically. But Bob, this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you. Do you have a final thought as we finish? Thank you, Young. I think I really want to thank you for leading the conversation

and share the light in the middle of the Communist Party's propaganda, not only to the 1.3 billion people, the Chinese, but the international propaganda, right? I hope more and more conscientious, freedom-loving people can know the truth about China and especially the nature of the Communist Party and be vigilant more from our end. Well, Bob Fu, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you, Young. Thank you all for joining Bob Fu and me.

on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Yanya Kellick.