Two Christian organisations had to remove the word ‘Jesus’ from their resources in order to avoid China’s internet censorship laws.
The Christian Chinese online bookstore, Tianfengshuyuan, on Chinese social media platform WeChat had to change the covers and descriptions of their books to remove the references to Christianity.
They are using Chinese pinyin writing to replace ‘Christ’, ‘Jesus’, ‘Christians’.
The bookstore replaced
all Chinese characters for “Christ” with “JD,” as in pinyin
Christ is written “ji du”, or completely
removed “Christ” from its books.
In the book title of “Walking with the mother country-patriotic stories of
Chinese Christians,” ‘Christians’ is covered with colour blocks (Source:
China Aid).
Fuzeng Xing, Dean of Chung Chi Seminary of Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote on his Facebook page: “In their official WeChat store, not only does ‘Christ’ become ‘JD,’ ‘Jesus’ also becomes ‘YS,’ and ‘Bible’ becomes ‘SJ.'”
China Aid said stores are covering other religious terms like “God” and “Lord” with coloured blocks.
The Christian Council of China and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches of China are both official government-sanctioned religious organisations and they are prohibited from selling Christian books under Chinese law.
In 2018, the Chinese government banned the Bible from all online booksellers throughout China.
China Aid said: “Unlike Buddhist and Islamic books, as the “Holy Bible” does not have an ISBN in China, regular bookstores do not sell Bibles there. People can only buy them legally from government-sanctioned “three-self” churches, Christian Council of China stores, or the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches of China scenes.”
Zuoan Wang, head of China’s national religious affairs bureau, said in 2001: “The printing and distributing of the Holy Bible is under a special condition. We delegated the whole thing to the Christian Council of China and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches of China. It’s like granting a ‘special privilege’ to them.”
At the beginning of this month a Chinese Christian bookstore owner was sentenced to seven years in prison for selling unapproved imported religious publications.
Source: Premier Christian News