Beijing pastor faces fraud charges after 100-officer raid
Wife Jin Young Gu says unregistered church founder Xianfeng Edward Cui was detained in October.
By Meera Fletcher ·
China has been tightening its grip on religious groups for years, and a new arrest in Beijing shows that pressure is still building.
Pastor Xianfeng Edward Cui, the founder of the unregistered Beijing Jiaquan Church, was formally arrested on Oct. 23. His wife, Jin Young Gu, told The Associated Press this week that he faces fraud charges. Gu lives outside China and said the allegations center on money collected from church members as offerings.
The arrest followed a month of escalating tension. Gu said police first detained Cui on Sept. 4 during a raid on the congregation. That operation involved roughly 100 officers. She believes the fraud claims are tied directly to the church's status as an unregistered body, a designation that leaves it outside the official oversight of the state.
Jiaquan Church has operated since 2006. Gu said the group grew steadily until 2019, when authorities sealed off its main worship facility in the Shijingshan district. After that, the congregation split into smaller groups and moved to different locations to continue meeting. In 2023, officials interrupted a Sunday class to warn the couple that their group had become too large. Gu recalled that they were told Cui should lead only one church with fewer than 100 people. She described the meeting as a direct warning about the size and structure of the faith group.
The arrest places Cui in a line of high-profile detentions under President Xi Jinping's campaign to align religious practice with Communist Party rule. In October 2025, police arrested 30 leaders of the Zion Church network after overnight raids in several cities. Among them was founder Jin Mingri, who was released in July after U.S. President Donald Trump raised his case with Xi during a visit to Beijing.
Gu, a Korean national, said she has been denied a visa since 2023, which has kept her from reuniting with her husband in China. Police in Shijingshan and the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment on the new charges.
