Chinese police detain church members during Sunday worship raid
Armed police stormed a hotel ballroom in Jiangyou, locking in elderly worshippers and children while more than 30 Early Rain Covenant Church members were taken for interrogation.
Armed police stormed a hotel ballroom in Jiangyou and detained more than 30 members of Early Rain Covenant Church halfway through Sunday worship, locking in congregants including elderly people and children while officers checked identities. The church said at least 50 police officers were present during the raid, and two leaders, Yan Hong and Wu Wuqing, were detained. Others were taken away in several police vehicles and questioned at the Jiangyou detention centre.
The confrontation added a new episode to a long-running campaign against one of China’s best-known house churches. Early Rain Covenant Church was founded in 2008 in Chengdu, Sichuan province, and has refused to join the state-controlled Three-Self Patriotic Movement, placing it outside the system the Chinese Communist Party uses to bring religious life under tighter political supervision. The church’s founding pastor, Wang Yi, was detained in a December 2018 raid and later sentenced to nine years in prison for inciting subversion of state power and illegal business operations. During that earlier crackdown, Chengdu police took into custody more than 100 congregants.
The latest detentions fit a pattern of sustained pressure on Early Rain members throughout 2026. Human Rights Watch said Chinese authorities detained six Early Rain members on January 6, including current leader Li Yingqiang, and named Dai Zhichao, Ye Fenghua, Yan Hong and Zeng Qingtao among those taken into custody. The rights group said Shu Qiong and Wu Wuqing were summoned and later released after questioning. ChinaAid said another coordinated operation against Early Rain members took place on June 4 in Chengdu, when authorities questioned at least five ministers and congregants and searched homes as security tightened around the 37th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Taken together, the raids show how quickly a local police action can become part of a broader apparatus of surveillance and ideological control. The pattern has extended beyond Early Rain, with Human Rights Watch citing the detention of about 100 members of Yayang Church in Wenzhou in December 2025, nearly 30 people linked to Zion Protestant Church in October 2025, and convictions in mid-2025 of about a dozen people affiliated with Linfen Golden Lampstand Church. The Jiangyou raid, carried out in front of elderly worshippers and children, underscored how far authorities are willing to go to keep unofficial Protestant communities under pressure.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
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