ABSTRACT
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sets up rules that restrict religious group’s activities. Since Xi Jinping became the president of the People’s Republic of China in 2012, suppression of the Chinese Protestant churches has intensified. In this chapter, I approach this church-state tension by examining key official documents about CCP’s religious policy and regulations as the context in which the tension arises. I also analyze important manifestos, petitions or theses recently produced by unregistered Protestant communities or individuals as responses to the state’s oppression. I argue that both CCP and the unregistered Protestants subscribe to a notion of religious nationalism but emphasize this notion differently and that this difference is a key factor underlying their present antagonistic relationship.
