By Brian Spegele
BEIJING -- Chinese authorities are ramping up pressure on lawyers defending a group of jailed Christian church leaders, whose arrests last year drew condemnation from the U.S. government, as Beijing seeks to silence religious faithful who refuse to submit to state control.
Nearly 20 people associated with Zion Church, a large, long-running Protestant congregation in the Chinese capital, were arrested in October, including founder Ezra Jin, part of one China's largest crackdowns on Christians in years.
Jin had been at the forefront of so-called Chinese "house churches," which have long sought to operate outside of the government's tightly controlled system of official churches. In recent years, Jin increasingly took his ministry online, reaching more people while drawing intensifying scrutiny from authorities, culminating in his arrest.
Since the arrests in October, lawyers defending the church have faced growing threats. Authorities revoked the legal license of a lawyer involved in the case, Zhang Kai, according to Ezra Jin's daughter Grace Jin and Li Xiaoming, a Chinese lawyer familiar with the case.
Several others have had their licenses suspended or faced verbal warnings in recent meetings with authorities, they said.
"We feel deeply that this is an open defiance and trampling of justice and the rule of law," representatives of Zion Church said in a letter this week.
China's Ministry of Justice didn't respond to a request for comment.
Zhang is known in legal circles for his defense of Christians in China, including work that led him to be detained by authorities for months beginning in 2015.
The targeting of Zion's lawyers could make it more difficult for Jin's family to obtain information about his condition and mount a robust legal defense, said Grace Jin, who lives in the U.S. and has been advocating for her father's freedom.
The treatment by Chinese authorities of lawyers involved in defending Zion's leaders underscores the seriousness with which Beijing is treating the case. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for Jin's release, as have members of Congress.
Jin came to Christianity in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. A graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary in California, he founded Zion in 2007 during a period of rapid growth of Christianity in China.
Like many other pastors in China, Jin sought to build an evangelical church outside the state's tight controls on religion. In recent years, the number of Christians in China has reached into the tens of millions of people, according to official statistics and survey data.
Since Chinese leader Xi Jinping took power in 2012, authorities have increasingly targeted unsanctioned churches such as Zion, alongside broader restrictions on civil society.
After Zion was raided and its physical church was shut in 2018, it increasingly took its ministry online while establishing small-scale branches around the country. The innovation allowed the church to continue growing despite pressure by authorities, leading to the arrests.
The 18 people including Jin in custody for their connections to Zion are currently being held in a detention center in the southern city of Beihai.
Write to Brian Spegele at Brian.Spegele@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 20, 2026 04:53 ET (08:53 GMT)
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